O F 
 
ECTUKE 
 OF 
 
 COL R. G. INGERSOLL 
 
 INCLUDING His LETTERS ON THE CHINESE GOD. Is SUICIDE 
 
 A SIN? THE RIGHT TO ONE'S LIFE. 
 
 ETC., ETC., ETC. 
 
 fQtCSf 
 
 CHICAGO: 
 
 RHODES & MCCLURE PUBLISHING Co. 
 1898. 
 
Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1897 by the 
 
 RHODES & MCCLURE PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
 in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C. 
 
 All Rights Reserved. 
 
 GIFT 
 
Thomas Paine 429 
 
 Liberty of Man, Woman and Child 483 
 
 Orthodoxy 523 
 
 Blasphemy 577 
 
 Some Reasons Why 590 
 
 Intellectual Development 606 
 
 Human Rights 655 
 
 Talmagian Theology (Second Lecture) 667 
 
 Talmagian Theology (Third Lecture) 679 
 
 Religious Intolerance 68 $ 
 
 Hereafter 69 1 
 
 Review of His Reviewers 716 
 
 How the Gods Grow 730 
 
 The Religion of our Day. 744 
 
 Heretics And Heresies 753 
 
 The Bible 785 
 
 Voltaire 795 
 
 Myth and Miracle 827 
 
 Ingersoll's Letter, on The Chinese God 839 
 
 Ingersoll's Letter, Is Suicide a Sin 840 
 
 Ingersoll's Letter, The Right To One's Life 860 
 
 M808912 
 
THOMAS PAINE. 
 
INGERSOLL'S LECTURE 
 
 ON 
 
 THOMAS PAINE. 
 
 DELIVERED IN CENTRAL MUSIC HALL, CHICAGO, 
 JANUARY 29, l88o. 
 
 (From fhe Chicago Times, Verbatim Report.) 
 
 .LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: It so happened that the 
 first speech the very first public speech I ever made 
 I took occasion to defend the memory of Thomas 
 Paine. 
 
 I did it because I had read a little something of the 
 history of my country. I did it because I felt indebted 
 to him for the liberty I then enjoyed and whatever re- 
 ligion may be true, ingratitude is the blackest of crimes. 
 And whether there is any God or not, in every star that 
 shines, gratitude is a virtue. 
 
 The man who will tell the truth about the dead is a 
 good man, and for one, about this man, I intend to tell 
 just as near the truth as I can. 
 
 Most history consists in giving the details of things 
 that never happened most biography is usually the lie 
 
 (429) 
 
43 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 coming from the mouth of flattery, or the slander com- 
 ing from the lips of malice, and whoever attacks the re- 
 ligion of a country will, in his turn, be attacked. Who- 
 ever attacks a superstition will find that superstition de- 
 fended by all the meanness of ingenuity. Whoever 
 attacks a superstition will find that there is still one 
 weapon left in the arsenal of Jehovah slander. 
 
 I was reading, yesterday, a poem called the "Light 
 of Asia," and I read in that how a Boodh seeing a tigress 
 perishing of thirst, with her mouth upon the dry stone 
 of a stream, with her two cubs sucking at her dry and 
 empty dugs, this Boodh took pity upon this wild and 
 famishing beast, and, throwing from himself the yellow 
 robe of his order, and stepping naked before this tigress, 
 said : (t Here is meat for you and your cubs." In one 
 moment the crooked daggers of her claws ran riot in his 
 flesh, and in another he was devoured. Such, during 
 nearly all the history of this world, has been the history 
 of every man who has stood in front of superstition. 
 
 Thomas Paine, as has been so eloquently said by the 
 gentleman who introduced me, was a friend of man, and 
 whoever is a friend of man is also a friend of God if 
 there is one. But God has had many friends who were 
 the enemies of their fellow-men. There is but one test 
 by which to measure any man who has lived. Did he 
 leave this world better than he found it ? Did he leave 
 in this world more liberty ? Did he leave in this world 
 more goodness, more humanity, than when he was born? 
 That is the test. And whatever may have been the 
 faults of Thomas Paine, no American who appreciates 
 liberty, no American who believes in true democracy 
 and pure republicanism, should ever breathe one word 
 
ON THOMAS PAINE. 43! 
 
 against his name. Every American, with the divine 
 mantle of charity, should cover all his faults, and with a 
 never-tiring tongue should recount his virtues. 
 
 He was a common man. He did not belong to the 
 aristocracy. Upon the head of his father God had never 
 poured the divine petroleum of authority. He had not 
 the misfortune to belong to the upper classes. He had 
 the fortune to be born among the poor and to feel against 
 his great heart the throb of the toiling and suffering 
 masses. Neither was it his misfortune to have been 
 educated at Oxford. What little sense he had was not 
 squeezed out at Westminster. He got his education 
 from books. He got his education from contact with 
 fellow-men, and he thought ; and a man is worth just 
 what nature impresses upon him. A man standing by 
 the sea, or in a forest, or looking at a flower, or hearing 
 a poem, or looking in the eyes of the woman he loves, 
 receives all that he is capable of receiving and if he is 
 a great man the impression is great, and he uses it for 
 the purpose of benefiting his fellow-man. 
 
 Thomas Paine was not rich , he was poor, and his 
 father before him was poor, and he was raised a sail- 
 maker, a very lowly profession, and yet that man be- 
 came one of the main-stays of liberty in this world. At 
 one time he was an excise man, like Burns. Burns was 
 once speak it softly a gauger and yet he wrote 
 poems that will wet the cheek of humanity with tears 
 as long as the world travels in its orb around the sun. 
 
 Poverty was his brother, necessity his master. He 
 had more brains than books ; more courage than po- 
 liteness ; more strength than polish. He had no ven- 
 eration for old mistakes, no admiration for ancient 
 
43 2 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 lies. He loved the truth for truth's sake and for man's 
 sake. He saw oppression on every hand, injustice 
 everywhere, hypocricy at the altar, venality on the 
 bench, tyranny on the throne, and with a splendid 
 courage he espoused the cause of the weak against the 
 strong, of the enslaved many against the titled few. 
 
 In England he was nothing. He belonged to the 
 lower classes that is, the useful people. England de- 
 pended for her prosperity upon her mechanics and her 
 thinkers, her sailors and her workers, and they are the 
 only men in Europe who are not gentlemen. The only 
 obstacles in the way of progress in Europe were the 
 nobility and the priests, and they are the only gen- 
 tlemen. 
 
 This, and his native genius, constituted his entire 
 capital, and he needed no more. He found the col- 
 onies clamoring for justice ; whining about their griev- 
 ances ; upon their knees at the foot of the throne, im- 
 ploring that mixture of idiocy and insanity, George III., 
 by the grace of God, for a restoration of their ancient 
 privileges. They were not endeavoring to become free 
 men, but were trying to soften the heart of their master. 
 They were perfectly willing to make brick if Pharaoh 
 would furnish the straw. The colonists wished for, 
 hoped for, and prayed for reconciliation. They did not 
 dream of independence. 
 
 Paine gave to the world his ' ' Common Sense. " It 
 was the first argument for separation ; the first assault 
 upon the British form of government ; the first blow for 
 a republic, and it aroused our fathers like a trumpet's 
 blast. He was the first to perceive the destiny of the 
 new world. No other pamphlet ever accomplished such 
 
ON THOMAS PAINE. 433 
 
 wonderful results. It was filled with arguments, reasons, 
 persuasions, and unanswerable logic. It opened a new 
 world. It filled the present with hope and the future 
 with honor. Everywhere the people responded, and in 
 a few months the Continental Congress declared the 
 colonies free and independent states. A new nation was 
 born. 
 
 It is simple justice to say that Paine did more to cause 
 the Declaration of Independence than, any other man. 
 Neither should it be forgotten that his attacks upon 
 Great Britain were also attacks upon monarchy, and 
 while he convinced the people that the colonies ought to 
 separate from the mother country, he also proved to 
 them that a free government is the best that can be in- 
 stituted among men. 
 
 In my judgment Thomas Paine was the best political 
 writer that ever lived. " What he wrote was pure na- 
 ture, and his soul and his pen ever went together." 
 Ceremony, pageantry, and all the paraphernalia of power 
 had no effect upon him. He examined into the why 
 and wherefore of things. He was perfectly radical in 
 his mode of thought. Nothing short of the bed-rock 
 satisfied him. His enthusiasm for what he believed to 
 be right knew no bounds. During all the dark scenes 
 of the revolution never for a moment did he despair. 
 Year after year his brave words were ringing through 
 the land, and by the bivouac fires the .weary soldiers 
 read the inspiring words of " Common Sence," filled 
 with ideas sharper than their swords, and consecrated 
 themselves anew to the cause of freedom. 
 
 Paine was not content with having aroused the spirit 
 of independence, but he gave every energy of his soul to 
 
434 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 keep that spirit alive. He was with the army. He 
 shared its defeats, its dangers, and its glory. When the 
 situation became desperate, when gloom settled upon 
 all, he gave them the ' ' Crisis. " It was a cloud by day 
 and a pillar of fire by night, leading the way to freedom, 
 honor, and glory. He shouted to them " These are the 
 times that try men's souls." The summer soldier and 
 the sunshine patriot, will, in this crisis, shrink from the 
 service of his country ; but he that stands it now de- 
 serves the love and thanks of man and woman. 
 
 To those who wished to put the war off to some future 
 day, with a lofty and touching spirit of self-sacrifice, he 
 said : ''Every generous parent should say : , If there 
 must be war, let it be in my day, that my child may 
 have peace.' ' To the cry that Americans were rebels, 
 he replied : ' ' He that rebels against reason is a real 
 rebel ; but he that in defense of reason rebels against 
 tyranny, has a better title to ' Defender of the Faith ' 
 than George III." 
 
 Some said it was to the interest of the colonies to be 
 free. Paine answered this by saying : ' 'To know 
 whether it be the interest of the continent to be inde- 
 pendent, we need ask only this simple, easy question : 
 ' Is it the interest of man to be a boy all his life ? ' ' 
 He found many who would listen to nothing, and to 
 them he said : <4 That to argue with a man who has re- 
 nounced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead." 
 This sentiment ought to adorn the walls of every ortho- 
 dox church. 
 
 There is a world of political wisdom in this : 4 ' En- 
 gland lost her liberty in a long chain of right reasoning 
 
ON THOMAS PAINE. 435 
 
 from wrong principles;" and there is real discrimination 
 in saying: "The Greeks and Romans were strongly 
 possessed of the spirit of liberty, but not the principles, 
 for at the time they were determined not to be slaves 
 themselves, they employed their power to enslave the 
 rest of mankind." 
 
 In his letter to the British people, in which he tried 
 to convince them that war was not to their interest, 
 occurs the following passage brimful of common sense : 
 ' ' War never can be the interest of a trading nation any 
 more than quarreling can be profitable to a man in bus- 
 iness. But to make war with those who trade with us 
 is like setting a bull-dog upon a customer at the shop 
 door. " 
 
 The writings of Paine fairly glitter with simple, com- 
 pact, logical statements that carry conviction to the 
 dullest and most prejudicial. He had the happiest pos- 
 sible way of putting the case, in asking questions in such 
 a way that they answer themselves, and in stating his 
 premises so clearly that the deduction could not be 
 avoided. 
 
 Day and night he labored for America. Month after 
 month, year after year, he gave himself to the great 
 cause, until there was " a government of the people and 
 for the people," and until the banner of the stars floated 
 over a continent redeemed and consecrated to the hap- 
 piness of mankind . 
 
 At the close of the Revolution no one stood higher in 
 America than Thomas Paine. The best, the wisest, 
 the most patriotic were his friends and admirers ; and 
 had he been thinking only of his own good he might 
 
43^ iNGERSOLlJs LECTURES. 
 
 have rested from his toils and spent the remainder of 
 his life in comfort and in ease. He could have been 
 what the world is pleased to call ' respectable." He 
 could have died surrounded by clergymen, warriors, and 
 statesmen, and at his death there would have been an 
 imposing funeral, miles of carriages, civic societies, 
 salvos of artillery, a Nation in mourning, and, above all, 
 a splendid monument covered with lies. He choose 
 rather to benefit mankind. At that time the seeds sown 
 by the great infidels were beginning to bear fruit in 
 France . The eighteenth century was crowning its gray 
 hairs with the wreath of progress. 
 
 On every hand science was bearing testimony against 
 the church. Voltaire had filled Europe with light ; 
 D'Holbach was giving to the elite of Paris the prin- 
 ciples contained in his " System of Nature." The 
 encyclopaedists had attacked superstition with informa- 
 tion for the masses. The foundation of things began 
 to be 'examined. A few had the courage to keep their 
 shoes on and let the bush burn. Miracles began to 
 get scarce. Everywhere the people began to inquire. 
 America had set an example to the world. The word 
 liberty was in the mouths of men, and they began to 
 wipe the dust from their superstitious knees. The 
 dawn of a new day had appeared. 
 
 Thomas Paine went to France . Into the new move- 
 ment he threw all his energies. His fame had gone 
 before him, and he was welcomed as a friend of the 
 human race and as a champion of free government. 
 
 He had never relinquished his intention of pointing 
 out to his countrymen the defects, absurdities, and 
 abuse of the English government. For this purpose 
 
ON THOMAS PAINE. 437 
 
 he composed and published his greatest political work, 
 4 'The Rights of Man." This work should be read by 
 every man and woman. It is concise, accurate, rational, 
 convincing, and unanswerable. It shows great thought, 
 an intimate knowledge of the various forms of govern- 
 ment, deep insight into the very springs of human action, 
 and a courage that compels respect and admiration. 
 The most difficult political problems are solved in a 
 few sentences. The venerable arguments in favor of 
 wrong are refuted with a question answered with a 
 word. For forcible illustration, apt comparison, ac- 
 curacy and clearness of statement, and absolute thor- 
 oughness, it has never been excelled . 
 
 The fears of the administration were aroused, and 
 Paine was prosecuted for libel, -and found guilty ; and 
 yet there is not a sentiment in the entire work that 
 will not challenge the admiration of every civilized man. 
 It is a magazine of political wisdom, an arsenal of 
 ideas, and an honor not only to Thomas Paine, but to 
 nature itself. It conld have been written only by the 
 man who had the generosity, the exalted patriotism, 
 the goodness to say : ' ' The world is my country, and 
 to do good my religion. " 
 
 There is in all the utterances of the world no grander, 
 no sublimer sentiment. There is no creed that can 
 be compared with it for a moment. It should be 
 wrought in gold, adorned with jewels, and impressed 
 upon every human heart : ' ' The world is my country, 
 and to do good my religion." 
 
 In 1792, Paine was elected by the department of 
 Calais as their representative in the National Assembly. 
 So great was his popularity in France, that he was 
 
INGERSOLLS LECTURES. 
 
 selected about the same time by the people of no less 
 than four departments. 
 
 Upon taking his place in^ the assembly, he was ap- 
 pointed as one of a committee to draft a constitution 
 for France. Had the French people taken the advice 
 of Thomas Paine, there would have been no "reign of 
 terror." The streets of Paris would not have been 
 rilled with blood in that reign of terror. There were 
 killed in the City of Paris not less, I think, than seven- 
 teen thousand people and on one night, in the mas- 
 sacre of St. Bartholomew, there were killed, by assas- 
 sination, over sixty thousand souls men, women, and 
 children. The revolution would have been the grandest 
 success of the world. The truth is that Paine was too 
 conservative to suit the leaders of the French revolution. 
 They, to a great extent, were carried away by hatred 
 and a desire to destroy. They had suffered so long, 
 they had borne so much, that it was impossible for them 
 to be moderate in the hour of victory. 
 
 Besides all this, the French people had been so robbed 
 by the government, so degraded by the church, that they 
 were not fit material with which to construct a republic. 
 Many of the leaders longed to establish a beneficent and 
 just government, but the people asked for revenge. 
 Paine was filled with a real love for mankind. His phil- 
 anthropy was boundless. He wished to destroy monar- 
 chy not the monarch. He voted for the destruction 
 of tyranny, and against the death of the tyrant. He 
 wished to establish a government on a new basis one 
 that would forget the past ; one that would give privileges 
 to none, and protection to all. 
 
 In the assembly, where all were demanding the execu- 
 
ON THOMAS PAINE. 439 
 
 tion of the king, where to differ with the majority was 
 to be suspected, and where to be suspected was almost 
 certain death Thomas Paine had the courage, 
 the goodness, and the justice to vote against 
 death. To vote against the execution of the king 
 was a vote against his own life. This was the 
 sublimity of devotion to principle. For this he was 
 arrested, imprisoned, and doomed to death. There is 
 not a theologian who has ever maligned Thomas Paine 
 that has the courage to do this thing. When Louis 
 Capet was on trial for his life before the French conven- 
 tion, Thomas Paine had the courage to speak and vote 
 against the sentence of death. In his speech I find the 
 following splendid sentiments : 
 
 My contempt and hatred for monarchical governments 
 are sufficiently well known, and my compassion for the 
 unfortunate, friends or enemies, is equally profound. 
 
 I have voted to put Louis Capet upon trial, because 
 it was necessary to prove to the world the perfidy, the m 
 corruption, and the horror of the monarchical system. 
 
 To follow the trade of a king destroys all morality, 
 just as the trade of a jailer deadens all sensibility. 
 
 Make a man a king to-day and to-morrow he will be a 
 brigand. 
 
 Had Louis Capet been a farmer, he might have been 
 held in esteem by his neighbors, and his wickedness re- 
 sults from his position rather than from his nature. 
 
 Let the French nation purge its territory of kings 
 without soiling itself with their impure blood. 
 
 Let the United States be the asylum of Louis Capet, 
 where, in spite of the overshadowing miseries and crimes 
 .of a 'royal life, he will learn by the continual contempla- 
 
44 INGERSOLI/S LECTURES. 
 
 tion of the general prosperity that the true system of 
 government is not that of kings, but of the people. 
 
 I am an enemy of kings, but I can not forget that they 
 belong to the human race. 
 
 It is always delightful to pursue that course where 
 policy and humanity are united. 
 
 As France has been the first of all the nations of 
 Europe to destroy royalty, let it- be the first to abolish 
 the penalty of death. 
 
 As a true republican, I consider kings as more the ob- 
 jects of contempt than of vengeance." 
 
 Search the records of the world and you will find but 
 few sublimer acts than that of Thomas Paine voting 
 against the king's death. He, the hater of despotism, 
 the abhorrer of monarchy, the champion of the rights of 
 man, the republican, accepting death to save the life 
 of a deposed tyrant of a throneless king ! This was 
 the last grand act of his political life the sublime con- 
 clusion of his political career. 
 
 All his life he had been the disinterested friend of 
 man. He had labored not for money, not for fame, 
 but for the general good. He had aspired to no office. 
 He had no recognition of his services, but had ever 
 been content to labor as a common soldier in the army 
 of progress, confining his efforts to no country, looking 
 upon the world as his field of action. Filled with a 
 genuine love for the right, he found himself imprisoned 
 by the very people he had striven to save. 
 
 Had his enemies succeeded in bringing him to the block, 
 he would have escaped the calumnies and the hatred of 
 the Christian world. And let me tell you how near 
 they came getting him to the block. He was in prison, 
 
ON THOMAS PAINE. 44! 
 
 there was a door to his cell it had two doors, a door 
 that opened in and an iron door that opened out. It 
 was a dark passage, and whenever they concluded to 
 cut a man's head off the next day, an agent went along 
 and made a chalk mark upon the door where the poor 
 prisoner was bound. Mr. Barlow, the American minister, 
 .happened to be with him and the outer door was shut, 
 that is, open against the wail, and the inner door was shut, 
 and when the man came along whose business it was to 
 mark the door for death, he marked this door where 
 Thomas Paine was, but he marked the door that was 
 against the wall, so when it was shut the mark was in- 
 side, and the messenger of death passed by on the next 
 day. If that had happened in favor of some Methodist 
 preacher, they would have clearly seen, not simply the 
 hand of God, but both hands. In this country, at least, 
 he would have ranked with the proudest names. On 
 the anniversary of the Declaration, his name would have 
 been apon the lips of all orators, and his memory in the 
 hearts of all the people. 
 
 Thomas Paine had not finished his career. He had 
 spent his life thus far in destroying the power of kings, 
 and now turned his attention to the priests. He knew 
 that every abuse had been embalmed in scripture that 
 every outrage was in partnership with some holy text. 
 He knew that the throne skulked behind the altar, and 
 both behind a pretended revelation of God. By this 
 time he had found that it was of little use to free the 
 body and leave the mind in chains. He had explored 
 the foundations of despotism, and had found them in- 
 finitely rotten . He had dug under the throne, and it 
 occurred to him that he would take a look behind the 
 
442 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 altar. The result af this investigation was given to the 
 world in the ''Age of Reason." From the moment of 
 its publication he became infamous. He was calumni- 
 ated beyond measure. To -slander him was to secure 
 the thanks of the church.' All his services were instantly 
 forgotten, disparaged, or denied. He was shunned as 
 though he had been a pestilence . Most of his old friends 
 forsook him. He was regarded as a moral plague, and 
 at the bare mention of his name the bloody hands of 
 the church were raised in horror. He was denounced 
 as the most despiceable of men. 
 
 Not content with following him to his grave, they pur- 
 sued him after death with redoubled fury, and recounted 
 with infinite gusto and satisfaction the supposed horrors 
 of his death-bed : gloried in the fact that he was forlorn 
 and friendless, and gloated like fiends over what they 
 supposed to be the agonizing remorse of his lonely 
 death. 
 
 It is wonderful that all his services are thus forgotten. 
 It is amazing that one kind word did not fall from some 
 pulpit ; that some one did not accord to him, at least- 
 honesty. Strange that in the general denunciation some 
 one did not remember his labor for liberty, his devotion 
 to principle, his zeal for the rights of his fellow-men. 
 He had, by brave and splendid effort, associated his 
 name with the cause of progress. He had made it im- 
 possible to write the history of political freedom with 
 his name left out . He was one of the creators of light ; 
 one of the heralds of the dawn. He hated tyranny in 
 the name of kings, and in the name of God, with every 
 drop of his noble blood. He believed in liberty and 
 justice, and in the sacred doctrine of human equality. 
 
ON THOMAS PAINE. 443 
 
 Under these divine banners he fought the battle of his 
 life. In both worlds he offered his blood for the good of 
 man. In the wilderness of America, in the French 
 assembly, in the sombre cell waiting for death, he was 
 the same unflinching, unwavering friend of his race ; 
 the same undaunted champion of universal freedom. 
 And for this he has been hated ; for this the church has 
 violated even his grave. 
 
 This is enough to make one believe that nothing is 
 more natural than for men to devour their benefactors. 
 The people in all ages have crucified and glorified. 
 Whoever lifts his voice against abuses, whoever arraigns 
 the past at the bar of the present, whoever asks the 
 king to show his commission, or question the authority 
 of the priest, will be denounced as the enemy of man 
 and God. In all ages reason has been regarded as the 
 enemy of religion. Nothing has been considered so 
 pleasing to the Deity as a total denial of the authority 
 of your own mind. Self-reliance has been thought 
 deadly sin ; and the idea of living and dying without 
 the aid and consolation of superstition has always horri- 
 fied the church. By some unaccountable infatuation, 
 belief has been and still is considered of immense im- 
 portance. All religions have been based upon the idea 
 that God will forever reward the true believer, and 
 eternally damn the man who doubts or denies. Belief 
 is regarded as the one essential thing. To practice 
 justice, to love mercy, is not euough ; you must believe 
 in some incomprehensible creed. You must say : 
 "Once one is three, and three times one is one." 
 The man who practiced every virtue, but failed to 
 believe, was execrated . Nothing so outrages the feel- 
 
444 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 ings of the church as a moral unbeliever, nothing so 
 horrible as a charitable atheist. 
 
 When Paine was born the world was religious, the 
 pulpit was the real throne, and the churches were mak- 
 ing every effort to crush out of the brain the idea that 
 it had the right to think. He again made up his mind 
 to sacrifice himself. He commenced with the assertion. 
 "That any system of religion that had anything in it 
 that shocks the mind of a child can not be a true sys- 
 tem." What a beautiful, what a tender sentiment ! No 
 wonder the church began to hate him. He believed in 
 one God, and no more. After his life he hoped for hap- 
 piness. He believed that true religion consisted in do- 
 ing justice, loving mercy ; in endeavoring to make our 
 fellow- creatures happy, and in offering to God the fruit 
 of the heart. He denied the inspiration of the scriptures. 
 This was his crime. 
 
 He contended that it is a contradiction in terms to 
 call anything a revelation that comes to us at second- 
 hand, either verbally or in writing. He asserted that 
 revelation is necessarily limited to the first communica- 
 tion, and that after that it is only an account of some- 
 thing which another person says was a revelation to him. 
 We have only his word for it, as it was never made to 
 us. This argument never had been, and probably never 
 will be answered. He denied the divine origin of Christ 
 and showed conclusively that the pretended prophecies 
 of the Old Testament had no reference to Him whatever. 
 And yet he believed that Christ was a virtuous and ami- 
 able man ; -that the morality He taught and practiced 
 was of the most benevolent and elevated character, and 
 that it had not been exceeded by any. Upon this point 
 
ON THOMAS PAINE. 445 
 
 he entertained the same sentiments now held by the 
 Unitarians, and in fact by all the most enlightened 
 Christians. 
 
 In his time the church believed and taught that every 
 word in the Bible was absolutely true. Since his day it 
 has been proven false in its cosmogony, false in its 
 astronomy, false in its chronology and geology, false in 
 its history, so far as the Old Testament is concerned, 
 false in almost everything. There are but few, if any, 
 scientific men, who apprehend that the Bible is literally 
 true. Who on earth at this day would pretend to settle 
 any scientific question by a text from the Bible ? The 
 old belief is'confmed to the ignorant and zealous. The 
 church itself will before long be driven to occupy the po- 
 sition of Thomas Paine. The best minds of the ortho- 
 dox world, to-day, are endeavoring to prove the exist- 
 ence of a personal Deity. All other questions occupy a 
 minor place. You are no longer asked to swallow the 
 Bible whole, whale, Jonah and all ; you are simply re- 
 quired to believe in God and pay your pew-rent. 
 
 There is not now an enlightened minister in the world 
 who will seriously contend that Sampson's strength was 
 in his hair, or that the necromancers of Egypt could turn 
 water into blood, and pieces of wood into serpents. 
 These follies have passed away, and the only reason 
 that the religious world can now have for disliking Paine, 
 is that they have been forced to adopt so many of his 
 opinions. 
 
 Paine thought the barbarites of the Old Testament in- 
 consistent with what he deemed the real character of 
 God. He believed the murder, massacre, and indis- 
 
44$ INGEKSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 criminate slaughter had never been commanded by the 
 Deity. He regarded much of the Bible as childish, un- 
 important and foolish. The scientific world entertains 
 the same opinion. Paine attacked the Bible precisely 
 in the same spirit in which he had attacked the preten- 
 sions of the kings. He used the same weapons. All 
 the pomp in the world could not make him cower. His 
 reason knew no " Holy of Holies," except the abode of 
 truth. The sciences were then in their infancy. The 
 attention of the really learned had not been directed to 
 an impartial examination of our pretended revelation. 
 It was accepted by most as a matter of course. 
 
 The church was all-powerful, and no one alse, unless 
 thoroughly imbued with the spirit of self-sacrifice,, 
 thought for a moment of disputing the fundamental 
 doctrines of Christianity. The infamous doctrine that 
 salvation depends upon belief, upon a mere intellectual 
 conviction, was then believed and preached. To doubt 
 was to secure the damnation of your soul. This absurd 
 and devilish doctrine shocked the common sense of 
 Thomas Paine, and he denounced it with the fervor of 
 honest indignation. This doctrine, although infinitely 
 ridiculous, has been nearly universal, and has been as 
 hurtful as senseless. For the overthrow of this infamous 
 tenet, Paine exerted all his strength. He left few ar- 
 guments to be used by those who should come after him, 
 and he used none that have been refuted. 
 
 The combined wisdom and genius of all mankind can 
 not possibly conceive of an argument against liberty of 
 thought. Neither can they show why anyone should be 
 punished, either in this world or another, for acting 
 honestly in accordance with reason ; and yet a doctrine 
 
ON THOMAS PAINE. 447 
 
 with every possible argument against it has been, and 
 still is, believed and defended by the entire orthodox 
 world. Can it be possible that we have been endowed 
 with reason simply that our souls may be caught in its 
 toils and snares, that we may be led by its false and 
 delusive glare out of the narrow path that leads to joy 
 into the broad way of everlasting death ? Is it possible 
 that we have been given reason simply that we may 
 through faith ignore its deductions and avoid its conclu- 
 sions ? Ought the sailor to throw away his compass and 
 depend entirely upon the fog ? If reason is not to be de- 
 pended upon in matters of religion, that is to say, in re- 
 spect to our duties to the Deity, why should it be relied 
 upon in matters respecting the rights of our fellows ? 
 Why should we throw away the law given to Moses by 
 God Himself, and have the audacity to make some of 
 our own ? How dare we drown the thunders of Sinai 
 by calling the ayes and naes in a petty legislature ? If 
 reason can determine what is merciful, what is just, the 
 duties of man to man, what more do we want either in 
 time or eternity ? 
 
 Down, forever down, with any religion that requires 
 upon its ignorant altar its sacrifice of the goddess Reason; 
 that compels her to abdicate forever the shining throne 
 of the sonl, strips from her form the imperial purple, 
 snatches from her hand the sceptre of thought and makes 
 her the bond-woman of senseless faith. 
 
 If a man should tell you he had the most beautiful 
 painting in the world, and after taking you where it was 
 should insist upon having your eyes shut, you would 
 likely suspect either that he had no painting or 
 that it was some pitiful daub. Should he tell you thai 
 
448 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 he was a most excellent performer on the violin, 
 and yet refused to play unless your ears were stopped, 
 you would think, to say the least of it, that he had an 
 odd way of convincing you of his musical ability. But 
 would this conduct be any more wonderful than that of 
 a religionist who asks that before examining his creed 
 you will have the kindness to throw away your reason ? 
 The first gentleman says : ' ' Keep your eyes shut ; my 
 picture will bear everything but being seen. Keep your 
 ears stopped ; my music objects to nothing but being 
 heard." The last says : " Away with your reason ; my 
 religion dreads nothing but being understood." 
 
 So far as I am concerned, I most cheerfully admit that 
 most Christians are honest and most ministers sincere. 
 We do not attack them ; we attack their creed. We 
 accord to them the same rights that we ask for ourselves. 
 We believe that their doctrines are hurtful, and I am go- 
 ing to do what I can against them. We believe that the 
 frightful text, " He that believes shall be saved, and he 
 that believeth not shall be damned," has covered the 
 earth with blood. You might as well say that all that 
 have red hair shall be damned. It has filled the heart 
 with arrogance, cruelty, and murder. It has caused the 
 religious wars ; bound hundreds of thousands to the 
 stake ; founded inquisitions ; filled dungeons ; invented 
 instruments of torture ; taught the mother to hate her 
 child ; imprisoned the mind ; filled the world with ig- 
 norance ; persecuted the lovers of wisdom ; built the 
 monasteries and convents ; made happiness a crime, in- 
 vestigation a sin, and self-reliance a blasphemy. It has 
 poisoned the springs of learning ; misdirected the ener- 
 gies of the world ; filled all countries with want ; housed 
 
ON THOMAS PAINE. 449 
 
 the people in hovels ; fed them with famine ; and but 
 for the efforts of a few brave infidels, it would have taken 
 the world back to the midnight of barbarism, and left 
 the heavens without a star. 
 
 The maligners of Paine say that he had no right to 
 attack this doctrine, because he was unacquainted with 
 the dead languages, and, for this reason, it was a piece 
 of pure impudence to investigate the scriptures. 
 
 Is it necessary to understand Hebrew in order to know 
 that cruelty is not a virtue, that murder is inconsistent 
 with infinite goodness, and that eternal punishment can 
 be inflicted upon man only by an eternal fiend ? Is it 
 really essential to conjugate the Greek verbs before you 
 can make up your mind as to the probability of dead 
 people getting out of their graves ? Must one be versed 
 in Latin before he is entitled to express his opinion as 
 to the genuiness of a pretended revelation from God ? 
 Common sense belongs exclusively to no tongue. Logic 
 is not confirmed to, nor has it been buried with, the 
 dead languages. Paine attacked the Bible as it is trans- 
 lated. If the translation is wrong, let its defenders cor- 
 rect it . 
 
 The Christianity of Paine's day is not the Christianity 
 of our time. There has been a great improvement since 
 then. It is better now because there is less of it. One 
 hundred and fifty years ago the foremost preachers of 
 our time that gentleman who preaches in this mag- 
 nificent hall would have perished at the stake. Lord, 
 Lord, how John Calvin would have liked to have roasted 
 this man, and the perfume of his burning flesh would 
 have filled heaven with joy. A Universalist would have 
 
45 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 been torn to pieces in England, Scotland, and America. 
 Unitarians would have found themselves in the stocks, 
 pelted by the rabble with dead cats, after which their 
 ears would have been cut off, their tongues bored, and 
 their foreheads branded . Less than one hundred and 
 fifty years ago the following law was in force in Mary- 
 land : 
 
 " Be it enacted by the right honorable, the lord pro- 
 prietor, by and with the advice and consent of his 
 lordship's governor, and the upper and lower houses 
 of the assembly, and the authority of the same : 
 That if any person shall hereafter, within this pro- 
 vince, willingly, maliciously, and advisedly, by writing 
 or speaking, blaspheme or curse God, or deny our 
 Saviour, Jesus Christ, to be the son of God, or shall 
 deny the Holy Trinity, the Father, Son, and the Holy 
 Ghost, or the God-head of any of the three persons, 
 or the unity of the God-head, or shall utter any pro- 
 fane words concerning the Holy Trinity, or the persons 
 thereof and shall therefore be convicted by verdict, 
 shall, for the first offense, be bored through the tongue, 
 and fined 20, to be levied on his body. As for the sec- 
 ond offense, the offender shall be stigmatized by burning 
 in the forehead the letter B, and fined 40. And that 
 for the third offense, the offender shall suffer death with- 
 out the benefit of clergy. 
 
 The strange thing about this law is, that it has never 
 been repealed, and was in force in the District of Col- 
 umbia up to 1875. Laws like this were in force in most 
 of the colonies and in all countries where the church 
 had power. 
 
 In the Old Testament the death penalty was attached 
 
ON THOMAS PAINE. 45 I 
 
 to hundreds of offenses. It has been the same in ali 
 Christian countries. To-day, in civilized governments, 
 the death penalty is attached only to murder and 
 treason ; and in some it has been entirely abolished. 
 What a commentary upon the divine systems of the 
 world ! 
 
 In the days of Thomas Paine the church was ignor- 
 ant, bloody, and relentless. In Scotland the "kirk" 
 was at the summit of its power. It was a full sister of ' 
 the Spanish Inquisition. It waged war upon human 
 nature. It was the enemy of happiness, the hater of joy, 
 and the despiser of liberty. It taught parents to mur- 
 der their children rather than to allow them to propagate 
 error. If the mother held opinions of which the in- 
 famous "kirk" disapproved, her children were taken 
 from her arms, her babe from her very bosom, and she 
 was not allowed to see them, or write them a word. It 
 would not allow shipwrecked sailors to be rescued from 
 drowning on Sunday. 
 
 Oh, you have no idea what a muss it kicks up in 
 heaven to have anybody swim on Sunday. It fills all 
 the wheeling worlds with sadness to see a boy in a boat, 
 and the attention of the recording secretary is called to 
 it. In a voice of thunder they say, " Upset him ! " It 
 sought to annihilate pleasure, to pollute the heart by 
 rilling it with religious cruelty and gloom, and to change 
 mankind into a vast horde of pious, heartless fiends. 
 One of the most famous Scotch divines said : "The kirk 
 holds that religious toleration is not far from blasphemy." 
 And this same Scotch kirk denounced, beyond measure, 
 the man who had the moral grandeur to say, "The world 
 is my country, and to do good my religion . " And this 
 
45 2 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 same kirk abhorred the man who said, " Any system of 
 religion that shocks the mind of a child can not be a true 
 system . " 
 
 At that time nothing so delighted the church as the 
 beauties of endless torment, and listening to the weak 
 wailing of damned infants struggling in the slimy coils 
 and poison folds of the worm that never dies. 
 
 About the beginning of the nineteenth century a boy 
 by the name of Thomas Aikenhead was indicted and 
 tried at Edinburgh for having denied the inspiration of 
 the scriptures, and for having, on several occasions, 
 when "cold, wished himself in hell that he might get 
 warm. Notwithstanding the poor boy recanted and 
 begged for mercy, he was found guilty and hanged. His 
 body was thrown in a hole at the foot of the scaffold 
 and covered with stones, and though his mother came 
 with her face covered with tears, begging for the corpse, 
 she was denied and driven away in the name of charity. 
 That is religion, and in the velvet of their politeness 
 there lurks the claws of the tiger. Just give them the 
 power and see how quick I would leave this part of the 
 country. They know I am going to be burned forever ; 
 they know I am going to hell, but that don't satisfy 
 them. They want to give me a little foretaste here. 
 
 Prosecutions and executions like these were common 
 in every Christian country, and all of them based upon 
 the belief that an intellectnal conviction is a crime. No 
 wonder the church hated and traduced the author of the 
 "Age of Reason." England was rilled with Puritan 
 gloom and Episcopal ceremony. The ideas of crazy 
 fanatics and extravagant poets were taken as sober facts. 
 Milton had clothed Christianity in the soiled and faded 
 
ON THOMAS PAINE. 453 
 
 finery of the gods had added to the story of Christ the 
 fables of mythology. He gave to the Protestant church 
 the most outrageously material ideas of the Deity. He 
 turned all the angels into soldiers made heaven a 
 battle-field, put Christ in uniform, and described God as 
 a militia-general. His works were considered by the Pro- 
 testants nearly as sacred as the Bible itself, and the 
 imagination of the people was thoroughly polluted by 
 the horrible imagery, the sublime absurdity of the blind 
 Milton. 
 
 Heaven and hell were realities the judgment-day 
 was expected books of accounts would be opened. 
 Every man would hear the charges against him read. 
 God was supposed to sit upon a golden throne, sur- 
 rounded by the tallest angels, with harps in their hands 
 and crowns on their heads.. The goats would be thrust 
 into eternal fire on the left, while the orthodox sheep, 
 on the right, were to gambol on sunny slopes forever 
 and ever. So all the priests were willing to save the 
 sheep for half the wool. 
 
 The nation was profoundly ignorant, and consequent- 
 ly extremely religious, so far as belief was concerned . 
 
 In Europe liberty was lying chained up in the inqui- 
 sition, her white bosom stained with blood. In the 
 new world the Puritans had been hanging and burning 
 in the name of God, and selling white Quaker children 
 into slavery in the name of Christ, who said, ' ' Suffer 
 little children to come unto Me." 
 
 Under such conditions progress was impossible. Some 
 one had to lead the way. The church is and always has 
 been, incapable of a forward movement. Religion al- 
 
454 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 ways looks back. The -church has already reduced 
 Spain to a guitar, Italy to a hand-organ, and Ireland to 
 exile. 
 
 Some one, not connected with the church, had to 
 attack the monster that was eating out the heart of the 
 world, Some one had to sacrifice himself for the good 
 of all. The people were in the most abject slavery ; 
 their manhood had been taken from them by pomp, by 
 pageantry, and power. 
 
 Progress is born of doubt and inquiry. The church 
 never doubts never inquires. To doubt is heresy to 
 inquire is to admit that you do not know the church 
 does neither. 
 
 More than a century ago Catholicism, wrapped in 
 robes red with the innocent blood of millions, holding in 
 her frantic clutch crowns and scepters, honors and gold, 
 the keys of heaven and hell, tramping beneath her feet 
 the liberties of nations, in the proud movement of almost 
 universal dominion, felt within her heartless breast the 
 deadly dagger of Voltaire. From that blow the church 
 can never recover. Livid with hatred she launched her 
 eternal anathema at the great destroyer, and ignorant 
 Protestants have echoed the curse of Rome. 
 
 In our country the church was all-powerful, and, al- 
 though divided into many sects, would instantly unite 
 to repel a common foe. Paine did for Protestantism 
 what Voltaire did for Catholicism. Paine struck the first 
 blow. 
 
 The "Age of Reason" did more to undermine the 
 power of the Protestant church than all other books 
 then known. It furnished an immense amount of food 
 for thought. It was written for the average mind, and 
 
ON THOMAS PAINE. 455 
 
 is a straightforward, honest investigation of the Bible, 
 and of the Christian System. 
 
 Paine did not falter from the first page to the last. 
 He gives you his candid thought, and candid thoughts 
 are always valuable. 
 
 The " Age of Reason " has liberalized us all. It put 
 arguments in the mouths of the people ; it put the church 
 on the defensive, it enabled somebody in every village 
 to corner the parson ; it made the world wiser and the 
 church better ; it took power from the pulpit and divided 
 it among the pews. 
 
 Just in proportion that the human race has advanced, 
 the church has lost its power. There is no exception 
 to this rule. No nation ever materially advanced that 
 held strictly to the religion of its founders. No nation 
 ever gave itself wholly to the control of the church with- 
 out losing its power, its honor, and existence. 
 
 Every church pretends to have found the exact truth. 
 This is the end of progress. Why pursue that which 
 you have ? Why investigate when you know. 
 
 Every creed is a rock in running water ; humanity 
 sweeps by it. Every creed cries to the universe, 
 "Halt !" A creed is the ignorant past bullying the en- 
 lightened present. 
 
 The ignorant are not satisfied with what can be de- 
 monstrated. Science is too slow for them, and so they 
 invent creeds. They demand completeness. A sublime 
 segment, a grand fragment, are of no value to them. 
 They demand the complete circle the entire structure. 
 
 In music they want a melody with a recurring accent 
 at measured periods. In religion they -insist upon im- 
 mediate answers to the questions of creation and destiny. 
 
456 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 The alpha and omega of all things must be in the alpha- 
 bet of their superstition. A religion that can not an- 
 swer every question, and guess every conundrum, is in 
 their estimation, worse than worthless. They desire a 
 kind of theological dictionary a religious ready reck- 
 oner, together with guide-boards at all crossings and 
 turns. They mistake impudence for authority, solemn- 
 ity for wisdom, and pathos for inspiration. The begin- 
 ning and the end are what they demand. The grand 
 flight of the eagle is nothing to them. They want the 
 nest in which he was hatched, and especially the dry 
 limb upon which he roosts. Anything that can be 
 learned is hardly worth knowing. The present is con- 
 sidered of no value in itself. Happiness must not be 
 expected this side of the clouds, and can only be attained 
 by self-denial and faith ; not self-denial for the good of 
 others, but for the salvation of your own sweet self. 
 
 Paine denied the authority of Bibles and creeds ; this 
 was his crime, and for this the world shut the door in 
 his face and emptied its slops upon him from the win- 
 dows. 
 
 I challenge the world to show that Thomas Paine ever 
 wrote one line, one word in favor of tyranny in favor 
 of immorality ; one line, one word against what he be- 
 lieved to be for the highest and best interest of Tiankind; 
 one line, one word against justice, charity, or liberty, 
 and yet he has been pursued as though he had 
 been a fiend from hell. His memory had been 
 execrated as though he had murdered some 
 Uriah for his wife ; driven some Hagar into the 
 desert to starve with his child upon her bosom ; defiled 
 his own daughters ; ripped open with the sword the 
 
ON THOMAS PAINE. 457 
 
 sweet bodies of loving and innocent women ; advised 
 one brother to assassinate another ; kept a harem with 
 seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, or 
 had persecuted Christians even unto strange cities. 
 
 The church has pursued Paine to deter others. The 
 church used painting, music, and architecture simply to 
 degrade mankind. But there are men that nothing can 
 awe. There have been at all times brave spirits that 
 dared even the gods. Some proud head has always'been 
 above the waves. Old Diogenes, with his mantle upon 
 him, stiff and trembling with age, caught a small animal 
 bred upon people, went into the Pantheon, the temple 
 of the gods, and took the animal upon his thumb nail, 
 and, pressing it with the other, "he sacrificed Diogenes 
 to all the gods. " Just as good as anything ! In every 
 age some Diogenes has sacrificed to all the gods. True 
 genius never cowers, and there is always some Samson 
 feeling for the pillars of authority. 
 
 Cathedrals and domes, and chimes and chants, tem- 
 ples frescoed and grained and carved, and gilded with 
 gold, altars and tapers, and paintings of virgin and babe, 
 censer and chalice, chasuble, paten and alb, organs, and 
 anthems and incense rising to the winged and blest, 
 maniple, anice and stole, crosses and crosiers, tiaras, 
 and crowns, mitres and missals and masses, rosaries, 
 relics and robes, martyrs and saints, and windows stained 
 as with the blood of Christ, never, never for one moment 
 awed the brave, proud spirit of the infidel. He knew 
 that all the pomp and glitter had been purchased with 
 liberty, that priceless jewel of the soul. In looking at 
 the cathedral he remembered the dungeon. The music 
 of the organ was not loud enough to drown the clank of 
 
458 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 fetters. He could not forget that the taper had lighted 
 the fagot. He knew that the cross adorned the hilt of 
 the sword, and so where others worshiped, he wept and 
 scorned. He knew that across the open Bible lay the 
 sword of war, and so where others worshiped he looked 
 with scorn and wept. And so it has been through all 
 the ages gone. 
 
 The doubter, the investigator, the infidel, have been 
 the saviors of liberty. The truth is beginning to be re- 
 alized, and the truly intellectual are honoring the brave 
 thinker of the past. But the church is as unforgiving as 
 ever, and still wanders why any infidel should be wicked 
 enough to attempt to destroy her power. I will tell the 
 church why I hate it. 
 
 You have imprisoned the htfrhan mind ; you have been 
 the enemy of liberty ; you have burned us at the stake, 
 roasted us before slow fires, torn our flesh with irons ; 
 you have covered us with chains, treated us as outcasts ; 
 you have filled the world with fear ; you have taken our 
 wives and children from our arms ; you have confiscated 
 our property ; you have denied us the right to testify in 
 courts of justice ; you have branded us with infamy ; 
 you have torn out our tongues ; you have refused us 
 burial. In the name of your religion you have robbed 
 us of every right ; and after having inflicted upon us 
 every evil that can be inflicted in this world, you have 
 fallen upon your knees, and with clasped hands implored 
 your God to finish the holy work in hell. 
 
 Can you wonder that we hate your doctrines ; that 
 we despise your creeds ; that we feel proud to know 
 that we are beyond your power ; that we are free in 
 spite of you ; that we can express our honest thought. 
 
ON THOMAS PAINE. 459 
 
 tnd that the whole world is gradually rising into the Hessed light? Can 
 you wonder that we point with pride to the fact that K fidelity has ever 
 been found battling for the rights of man, for the liberty of conscience, 
 and for the happiness of all ? Oan you wonder tdat we are proud to 
 know that we have always been disciples of reason and soldiers of free- 
 dom ; that we have denounced tyranny and superstition, and have kept 
 our hands unstained with human blood? 
 
 I de>:y that religion is the end or object of this life. When it is so 
 considered it becomes destructive of happiness. The real end of life is 
 happiness. It becomes a hydra-headed monster, reaching in terrible 
 coils from the heavens, and thrusting its thousand fangs into the bleed- 
 ing, quivering hearts of men. It devours their substance, builds pal- 
 aces for God (who dwells not in temples made with hands), and allows 
 His children to die in huts and hovels. It fills the earth with mourning^ 
 heaven with hatred, the present with fear, and all the future with fir| 
 and despair. Virtue is a subordination of the passion of the intellect. 
 It is to act in accordance with your highest convictions. It does not 
 consist in believing, but in doing. This is the sublime truth that the 
 infidels in all ages have uttered. They have handed the torch from one 
 to the other through all the years that have fled. Upon the altar of 
 reason they have kept the sacred fire, and through the long midnight of 
 faith they fed the divine flame. Infidelity is liberty; all superstition is 
 slavery. In every creed man is the slave of God, woman is the slave of 
 man, and the sweet children are the slaves of all. We do not want 
 creeds; we wan i some knowledge. We want happiness. And yet we 
 are told by the church that we have accomplished no hing; that we are 
 aimply destroyers; that we tear down without building again. 
 
 Is it nothing to free the mind ? Is it nothing to civilize mankind ? Is 
 it nothing to fill the world with light, with discovery, with science ? Is 
 it nothing to dignify man and exalt the intellect ? Is it nothing to grope 
 your way into the dreary prisons, the damp and dropping dungeons, the 
 dark and silent cells of superstition, where the souls of men are chained 
 to floors of stone; to greet them like a ray of light, like the song of a 
 bird, the murmur of a stream, to see the dull eyes open and grow slowly 
 bright; to feel yourself grasped by the shrunken and unused hands, and 
 hear yourself thanked by a strange and hollow voice ? Is it nothing to 
 conduct these souls gradually into the blessed light of day to let them 
 ee again the happy fields, the sweet, green earth, and hear the everlast- 
 ing music of the waves ? Is it nothing to make men wipe the dust from 
 their swollen knees, the tears from their blanched and furrowed cheeks? 
 Is it a small thing to reave the heavens of an insatiate monster and writ* 
 
460 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 upon the eternal dome, glittering with stars, the grand word liberty? Is 
 it a small thing to quench the thirst of hell with the holy tears of piety, 
 break all the chains, put out the fires of civil war, stay the sword of the 
 fanatic, and tear the bloody hands of the church from the white throat 
 of progress ? Is it a small thing to make men truly free, to destroy the 
 dogmas of ignorance, prejudice, and power, the poisoned fables of 
 superstition, and drive from the beautiful face of the earth the fiend of 
 fear? 
 
 It does seem as though the most zealous Christians must at times en- 
 tertain some doubt as to the divine origin of his religion. For eighteen 
 hundred years the doctrine has been preached. For more than a thou- 
 sand years the church had, to a great extent, the control of the civilized 
 world, and what has been the result ? Are the Christian nations patterns 
 of charity and forbearance ? On th/; contrary, their principal business 
 is to destroy each other. More than five millions of Christians are 
 trained and educated and drilled to murder their fellow-Christians. 
 Every nation is groaning under a vast debt incurred in carrying on war 
 against other Christians, or defending itself from Christian assault. The 
 world is covered with forts to protect Christians from Christians, and 
 wery sea is covered with iron monsters ready to. blow Christian brains 
 uto eternal froth. Millions upon millions are annually expended in the 
 effort to construct still more deadly and terrible engines of death. In- 
 dustry is crippled, honest toil is robbed, and even beggary is taxed to 
 iefray the expenses of Christian murder. There must be some other 
 "ay to reform this world. We have tried creed and dogma and fable, 
 and they have failed and they have failed in all the nations dead. 
 
 Nothing but education scientific education can benefit mankind, 
 We must find out the laws of nature and conform to them. We need 
 free bodies and free minds, free labor and free thought, chainless hands 
 and fetterless brains. Free labor will give us wealth. Free thought will 
 give us truth. We need men with moral courage to speak and write 
 their real thoughts, and to stand by their convictions, even to the very 
 death. We need have no fear of being too radical. The future will 
 verify all grand and brave predictions. Paine was splendidly in advance 
 of his time, but he was orthodox compared to the infidels of to day. 
 
 Science, the great iconoclast, has been very busy since 1809, and by 
 the highway of progress are the broken images of the past. On every 
 hand the people advance. The vicar of God has been pushed from the 
 throne of the CaBsars, and upon the roofs of the Eternal city falls once 
 more the shadow of the eagle. All has been accomplished by the heroic 
 few. The men of science have explored heaven and earth, and with in- 
 
ON THOMAS PAINE. 461 
 
 finite patience have furnished the facts. The brave thinkers have aided 
 them. The gloomy caverns of superstition have been transformed into 
 temples of thought, and the demons of the past are the angels of to- 
 day. 
 
 Science took a handful of sand, constructed a telescope, and with it 
 explored the starry depths of heaven. Science wrested from the gods 
 their thunderbolts; and now, the electric spark freighted with thought 
 and love, flashes under all the waves of the sea. Science took a tear 
 from the cheek of unpaid labor, converted it into steam, and created a 
 giant that turns with tireless arm the countless wheels of toil. 
 
 Thomas Paine was one of the intellectual heroes, one of the men to 
 whom we are indebted. His name is associated forever with the great 
 republic. He lived a long, laborious, and useful life. The world is 
 better for his having lived. For the sake of truth he accepted hatred and 
 reproach for his portion. He ate the bitter bread of neglect and sorrow. 
 His friends were untrue to him because he was true to himself and true 
 to them. He lost the respect of what is called society, but kept his 
 own. His life is what the world calls failure, and what history calls 
 success. 
 
 If to love your fellow-men more than self is goodness, Thomas Paine 
 was good. If to be in advance of your time, to be a pioneer in the 
 direction of right, is greatness, Thomas Paine was great. If to avow 
 your principles and discharge your duty in the presence of death is 
 heroic, Thomas Paine was a hero. 
 
 At the age of 73, death touched his tired heart. He died in the land 
 his genius defended, under the flag he gave to the skies. Slander can 
 not touch him now; hatred can not reach him more. He sleeps in the 
 sanctuary of the tomb, beneath the quiet of the stars. A few more years, 
 a few more brave men, a few more rays of light, and mankind will ven- 
 erate the memory of him who said: 
 
 Any system of religion that shocks the mind of a child can not be a 
 true system. The world is my country, and to do good my religion. 
 
 The next question is: Did Thomas Paine recant? Mr. Paine had 
 prophesied that fanatics would crawl and cringe around him during his 
 last moments. He believed that they would put a lie in the mouth of 
 death. When the shadow of the coming dissolution was upon him, two 
 clergymen, Messrs. Milledollar and Cunningham, called to annoy the 
 dying man. Mr. Cunningham had the politeness to say: "You have 
 now a full view of death ; you can not live long ; whoever does not believe 
 in the Lord Jesus Christ, will assuredly be damned." Mr. Paine replied : 
 " Let me have none of your popish stuff. Get away with you. Good 
 
462 
 
ON THOMAS PAINE. 463 
 
 morning." On another occasion a Methodist minister obtruded himself. 
 Mr. Willet Hicks was present. The minister declared to Mr. Paine thai 
 "unless he repented of his unbelief he would be damned." Paine, 
 although at the door of death, rose in his bed and indignantly requested 
 the clergyman to leave the room. On another occasion, two brothers by 
 the name of Pigott sought to convert him. He was displeased, and re- 
 quested their departure. Afterward, Thomas Nixon and Capt. Daniel 
 Pelton visited him for the express purpose of ascertaining whether he 
 had, in any manner, changed his religious opinions. They were assured 
 by the dying man that he still held the principles he had expressed in 
 his writings. 
 
 Afterward, these gentlemen, hearing that William Gobbet was about 
 to write a life of Paine, sent him the following note: I must tell you 
 now that it is of great importance to find out whether Paine recanted- 
 If he recanted, then the Bible is true you can rest assured that a spring 
 of water gushed out of a dead dry bone. If Paine recanted, there is not 
 the slightest doubt about that donkey making that speech to Mr. Baalam 
 not the slightest and if Paine did not recant, then the whole thing is 
 a mistake. I want to show that Thomas Paine died as he has lived, a 
 friend of man and without superstition, and if you will stay here I will 
 doit. 
 
 NEW YORK, April 24, 1818. SIR: Having been informed that you 
 have a design to write a history of the life and writings of Thomas Paine, 
 if you have been furn shed with materials in respect to his religious 
 opinions, or rather of his recantation of his former opinions before his 
 de th, rill you have heard of his recanting is false. Being aware that 
 such reports would be raised after his death by fanatics who infested his 
 house at the time it was expected he would die, we, the subscribers, in- 
 timate acquaintances <>t Thomas Paine since the year 1776, went to his 
 house. He was sitting up in a chair, and apparently in full vigor and 
 use of all his mental faculties We interrogated him upon his religious 
 opinions, and if he had changed his mind, or repented of anything he 
 had said or wrote on that subject. He answered, l 'Not at all," and 
 appeared rather offended at our supposition that any change should take 
 place in his mind. We took down in writing the questions put to him 
 and his answers thereto, before a number of persons then in his room, 
 among whom were his doctor, Mrs. Bonneville, etc. This paper is mis- 
 laid and can not be found at present, but the above is the substance, 
 which can be attested by many living witnesses. THOMAS NIXON, 
 
 DANIEL PELTON. 
 
 Mr. Jarvis, the artist, saw Mr. Paiue one or two days before his death. 
 To Mr. Jarvis he expressed his belief in his written opinions upon the 
 subject of religion. B. F. Haskin, an attorney of the City of New York, 
 also visited him, and inquired as to his religious opinions. Paine was 
 then upon the threshold of death, but he did not tremble, he was not a 
 
464 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 coward. He expressed his firm and unshaken belief in the religion, 
 ideas he had given to the world. 
 
 Dr. Manly was with him when he spoke hi3 last words. Dr. Manly 
 asked the dying man, and Dr. Manly was a Christian, if he did not wish 
 to believe that Jesus was the Son of God, and the dying philosopher 
 answered : " I have no wish to believe on that subject." Amasa Woods, 
 worth sat up with Thomas Paine the night before his death. In 1839 
 Gilbert Vale, hearing that Woodsworth was living in or near Boston, 
 visited him for the purpose of getting his statement, and the statement 
 was published in The Beacon of June 5, 1839, and here it is: 
 
 We have just returned from Boston. Oue object ' * our visit to that 
 city was to see Mr. Amasa Woodsworth, an engineer, now retired in a 
 handsome cottage and garden at East Cambridge, Boston. This gentle 
 man owned the house occupied by Paine at his death, while he lived 
 next door. As an act of kindness, Mr. Woodsworth visited Mr. Paine 
 every day for six weeks before his death. lie frequently sat up with him 
 and did so on the last two nights of his life. He was always there with 
 Dr. Manly, the physician, and assisted in removing Mr. Paine while his 
 bed was prepared. He was present when Dr. Manly asked Mr. Paine if 
 he wished to believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. He says that 
 lying on his back he used some action and with much emphasis replied; 
 "I have no wish to believe on that subject." He lived some time after 
 this, but was not known to speak, for he died tranquilly. He accounts 
 for the insinuating style of Dr. Manly's letter by stating that that gentle- 
 man, just after its publication, joined a church. He informs us that he 
 has openly proved the doctor for the falsity contained in the spirit of 
 that letter, boldly declaring before Dr. Manly, who is still liviner, that 
 nothing which he saw justified the insinuations. Mr. Woodsworth 
 assures us that he neither heard nor saw anything to justify the belief of 
 any mental change in the opinions of Mr. Paine previous to his death; 
 but that being very ill and in pain, chiefly arising from the skin being 
 removed in some parts by long lying, he was generally too uneasy to 
 enjoy conversation on abstract subjects. This, then, is the best evidence 
 that can be procured on this subject, and we publish it while the contra 
 vening parties are yet alive, and with the authority of Mr. Woodswoi th 
 
 GILBERT VALE. 
 
 A few weeks ago I received the following letter, which confirms the 
 statement of Mr. Vale: 
 
 NEAR STOCKTON, Cal., GREENWOOD COTTAGE, July 9, 1877. COL. 
 INGERSOLL: In 1842 I talked with a gentleman in Boston. I have 
 forgotten his name; but he was then an engineer of the Charleston 
 n ivy yard. I am thus particular so that you can find his name on the 
 books. He told me that he nursed Thomas Paine in his last illness and 
 closed his eyes when dead. I asked him if he recanted and called upon 
 God to save him. He replied: k 'No; he died as he had taught. He 
 had a sore upon his side, and when we turned him it was very painful, 
 and he would cry out, ' O God!' or something like that." " But," said 
 the narrator, u that was nothing, for he believed in a God." I told him 
 Vhat I had often heard it asserted from the pulpit that Mr. Paine ht'd 
 
OX THOMAS PAINE. 465 
 
 recanted in his last moment. The gentleman said that it was not true, 
 and he appeared to be an.intelligent, truthful 'man. With respect, I 
 remain, etc., PHILIP GRAVES, M. D. 
 
 The next witness is Willet Hicks, a Quaker preacher. He says that 
 during the last illness of Mr. Paine he visited him almost daily, and that 
 Paine died firmly convinced of the truth of the religious opinions that 
 he had given to his fellow-men. It was to this same Willet Hicks that 
 Paine applied for permission to be buried in the cemetery of the 
 Quakers. Permission was refused. This refusal settles the question of 
 recantation. If he had recanted, of course there would have been no 
 objection to his body being buried by the side of the best hypocrites in 
 the earth. If Paine recanted, why should he be denied " a little earth 
 for charity?" Had he recanted, it would have been regarded as a vast 
 and splendid triumph for the gospel. It would, with much noise and 
 pomp and ostentation, have been heralded about the world. 
 
 Here is another letter : 
 
 PEORIA, 111., Oct. 8, 1877. ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. Esteemed Friend: 
 My parents were Friends (Quakers). My father died when I was very 
 young. The elderly and middle-aged Friends visited at my mother's 
 house. We lived in the City of New York. Among the number I dis- 
 tinctly remember Elias Hicks, Willet Hicks, aud a Mr. Day, who 
 
 was a bookseller in Pearl St. There were many others whose names I 
 do not now remember. The subject of the recantation of Thomas 
 Paine of his views about the Bible in his last illness, or any other time, 
 was discussed by them in my presence at different times. I learned 
 from them that some of them had attended upon Thomas Paine in his 
 last sickness, and ministered to his wants up to the time of his death. 
 And upon the question of whether he did recant there was but one ex- 
 pression. They all said that he did not recant in any manner. I often 
 heard them say they wished he had recanted. In fact, according tot hem, 
 the nearer he approached death the more positive he appeared to be in 
 his convictions. These conversations were from 1820 to 1822. I was at 
 that time from ten to twelve years old, but these conversations impressed 
 themselves upon me because many thoughtless people then blamed the 
 society of Friends for their kindness to that " arch-infidel," Thomas 
 Paine. Truly yours, A. C. HANKENSON. 
 
 A few days ago I received the following: 
 
 ALBANY, N. Y., Sept. 27, 1877. DEAR SIR: it is over twenty years 
 ago that, professionally, I made the acquaintance of John Hogeboom, 
 a justice of the peace of the County Kensselaer, New York. He was 
 then over seventy years of age, and had the reputation of being a man 
 of candor and integrity. He was a great admirer of Paine. He told 
 me he was personally acquainted with him, and used to see him fre- 
 quently during the last years of his life in the City of New York, where 
 Hogeboom then resided. I asked him if there was any truth in the 
 charge that Paine was in the habit of getting drunk. He said that it 
 was utterly false; that he never heard of such a thing during the life- 
 time of Mr. Paine, and did not believe anyone else did. I asked him 
 
466 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 about the recantation of his religious opinions on his deathbed, and the 
 revolting deathbed scenes that the world heard so much about. He said 
 there was no truth in them; that he had received his information from 
 persons who attended Paine in his last illness, and that he passed 
 peacefully, as we may say, in the sunshine of a great soul. Yours 
 
 W. J. HILTON. 
 
 The witnesses by whom I substantiate the fact that Thomas Paine 
 did not recant, and that he died holding the religious opinions he had 
 published are: 
 
 1. Thomas Nixon, Capt. Daniel Pelton, B. F. Haskin. These gentle- 
 men visited him during his last illness for the purpose of ascertaining 
 whether he had, in any respect, changed his views upon religion. He 
 told them that he had not. 
 
 2. James Cheetham. This man was the most malicious enemy Mr. 
 Paine had, and yet he admits that " Thomas Paine died placidly, and 
 almost without a struggle." Life of Thomas J^aine, by James Cheetham. 
 
 3. The ministers, Milledollar and Cunningham. These gentleman 
 told Mr. Paine that if he died without believing in the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, he would be damned, and Paine replied : " Let me have none oi 
 four popish stuff. Good morning." Sherwin's Life of Paine, page 220. 
 
 4. Mrs. Hedden. She told these same preachers, when they attempted 
 to obtrude themselves upon Mr. Paine again, that the attempt to convert 
 Mr. Paine was> useless ; " that if God did not change his mind, no human 
 power could." 
 
 5. Andrew A. Dean. This man lived upon Paine's farm, at New 
 Rochelle, and corresponded with him upon religious subjects. Paints 
 Theological Works, Page 308. 
 
 6. Mr. Jarvis, the artist with whom Paine lived. He gives an ac- 
 count of an old lady coming to Paine, and telling him that God 
 Almighty had sent her to lell him that unless he repented and believed 
 in the blessed Saviour he would be damned. Paine replied that God 
 would not send such a foolish old waman with such an impertinent 
 message. Clio Rickman's Life of Paine. 
 
 7. William Carver, with whom Paine boarded. Mr. Carver said again 
 and again that Paine did not recant. He knew him well, any had every 
 opportunity of knowing. Life of Paine, by Vale. 
 
 8. Dr. Manly, who attended him in his last sickness, and to whom 
 Paine spoke his last words. Dr. Manly asked him |if he did not wish 
 to believe in Jesus Christ, and he replied: " I have no wish to believe 
 on that subject." 
 
 9. Willet Hicks and Elias Hicks, who were with him frequently dur- 
 ing his last sickness, and both of whom tried to persuade him to recant. 
 
ON THOMAS PAINE. 467 
 
 According to their testimony Mr. Paine died as he lived a believer in 
 God and a friend to man. Willet Hicks was offered money to say 
 something false against Paine. He was even offered money to remain 
 silent, and allow others to slander the dead. Mr. Hicks, speaking of 
 Thomas Paine, said: "He was a good man. Thomas Paine was 'an 
 honest man." 
 
 10. Amasa Woods worth, who was with him every day for some six 
 weeks immediately preceding his death, and sat up with him the last two 
 nights of his life. This man declares that Paine did not recant, and 
 that he died tranquilly. The evidence of Mr. Woodsworth is conclu- 
 sive. 
 
 11. Thomas Paine himself. The will of Mr. Paine, written by him- 
 self, commences as follows: "The last will and testament of me, the 
 subscriber, Thomas Paine, reposing confidence in my Creator, God, and 
 in no other being, for I know of no other, nor believe in any other," and 
 closes with these words: " I have lived an honest and useful life to man- 
 kind. My time has been spent in doing good, and I die in perfect com. 
 posure and resignation to the will of my Creator, God." 
 
 12. If Thomas Paine recanted, why do you pu rsue him ? If he recanted 
 he died in your belief. For what reason, then, do you denounce his death 
 as cowardly? If upon his death-bed he renounced the opinions he had 
 published, the business of defaming him should be done by infidels, 
 not by Christians. I ask Christians if it is honest to throw away the 
 testimony of his friends, the evidence of fair and honorable men, and 
 take the putrid words of avowed and malignant enemies? When 
 Thomas Paine was dying he was infested by fanatics, by the snaky 
 spies of bigotry. In the shadows of death were the unclean birds of 
 prey waiting to tear, with beak and claw, the corpse of him who wrote 
 the "Rights of Man," and there lurking and crouching in the darkness, 
 were the jakals and hyenas of superstition, ready to violate his grave. 
 These birds of prey these unclean beasts are the witnesses produced 
 and relied upon to malign the memory of Thomas Paine. One by one 
 the instruments of torture have been wrenched from the cruel clutch of 
 the church, until within the armory of orthodoxy there remains but one 
 weapon Slander. 
 
 Against the witnesses that I have produced there can be brought just 
 two Mary Roscoe and Mary Hinsdale. The first is referred to in the 
 memoir of Stephen Grellet. She had once been a servant in his house. 
 Grellet tells what happened between this girl and Paine. According to 
 this account, Paine asked her if she had ever read any of his writings, 
 and on being told that she had read very little of them, he inquired 
 
468 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 what she thought of them, adding that from such an one as she he 
 expected a correct answer. 
 
 Let us examine this falsehood. Why would Paine expect a correct 
 answer about his writings from one who read very little of them ? Does 
 not such a statement devour itself? This young lady fuither said that 
 the " Age of Reason '' was put in her hands, and that the more, she read 
 in it, the more dark and distressed she felt, and that she threw the book 
 into the fire. Whereupon Mr. Paine remarked: " I wish all had done 
 as you did, for if the devil ever had any agency in any work, he had in 
 my writing that book." 
 
 The next is Mary Hinsdale. She was a servant in the family of Wil- 
 let Hicks. The church is always proving something by a nurse. She, 
 like Mary Roscoe, was sent to carry some delicacy to Mr. Paine. To 
 this young lady Paine, according to his account, said precisely the same 
 that he did to Mary Roscoe, and she said the same thing to Mr. Paine. 
 
 My own opinion is that Mary Roscoe and Mary Hinsdale are one and 
 the same person, or the same story has been, by mistake, put in the 
 mouths of both. It is not possible that the identical conversation 
 should have taken place between Paine and Mary Roscoe and between 
 him and Mary Hinsdale. Mary Hinsdale lived with Willet Hicks, and 
 he pronounced her story a pious fraud and fabrication. 
 
 Another thing about this witness. A woman by the name of Mary 
 Lockwood, a Hicksite Quaker, died. Mary Hinsdale met her brother 
 about that time and told him that his sister had recanted, and wanted 
 her to say so at her funeral. This turned out to be a lie. 
 
 It has been claimed that Mary Hinsdale made her statement to Charles 
 Collins. Long after the alleged occurrence Gilbert Vale, one of the 
 biographers of Paine, had a conversation with Collins concerning Mary 
 Hinsdale. Vale asked him what he thought of her. He replied that 
 some of the Friends believed that she used opiates, and that they did 
 not give credit to her statements. He also said that he believed what 
 the Friends said, but thought that when a young woman she might have 
 told the truth. 
 
 In 1818 William Cobbett came to New York. He began collecting 
 material for a life of Thomas Paine. In this way he became acquainted 
 with Mary Hinsdale and Charles Collins. Mr. Cobbett gave a full 
 account of what happened in a letter addressed to The Norwich Mercury 
 in 1819. From this account it seems that Charles Collii s told Cobbett 
 that Paine had recanted. Cobbett called for the testimony, and told 
 Mr. Collins that. he must give time, place, and circumstances. He 
 finally brought a statement that he stated had been made by Mary 
 Hinsdale. Armed with this document, Cobbett, in October of that 
 
ON THOMAS PAINE. 469 
 
 year, called upon the said Mary Hinsdale, at No. 10 Anthony Street, 
 New York, and showed her the statement. Upon being questioned by 
 Mr. Cobbettshe said that it was so long ago that she could not speak 
 positively to any part of the matter; that she would not say that any 
 part of the paper was true; that she had never seen the 
 paper, and that she had never given Charles Collins authority 
 to say anything about the matter in her name. And so in the 
 month of October, in the year of grace 1818, in the mist of fog and for. 
 getfuluess, disappeared forever one Mary Hinsdale, the last and only 
 witness against the intellectual honesty of Thomas Paine. 
 
 A letter was written to the editor of The New York World by the 
 Rev. A. W. Cornell, in which he says: 
 
 SIR : I see by your paper that Bob Ingersoll discredits Mary Hins- 
 dale's story of the scenes which occurred at the death bed of Thomas 
 Paine. No one who knew that good old lady would for one moment 
 doubt her veracity, or question her testimony. Both she and her hus- 
 band were Quaker preachers, and well known and respected inhabitants 
 of New York City. 
 
 Ingersoll is right in his conjecture that Mary Roscoe and Mary Hins- 
 dale were the same person. Her maiden mame was Roscoe and she 
 married Henry Hinsdale. My mother was a Roscoe, a niece of Mary 
 Roscoe, and lived with her for some time. 
 
 REV. A. W. CORNELL, Harpersville, N. Y. 
 
 The editor of the New York Observer took up the challenge that I had 
 thrown down. I offered $1 000 in gold to any minister who would 
 prove, or to any person \vlio would prove that Thomas Paine recanted 
 in his last hours. The New York Observer accepted the wager, and then 
 told a falsehood about it. But I kept after the gentlemen until I forced 
 them, in their paper, published on the 1st of November, 1877, to print 
 these words : 
 
 We have never stated in any form, nor have we ever supposed, that 
 Paine actually renounced his infidelity. The accounts agree in stating 
 that he died a blaspheming infidel. 
 
 This, I hope, for all coming time will refute the slanders of the 
 churches yet to be. 
 
 The next charge they make is that Thomas Paine died in destitution 
 and want. That, of course, would show that he was wrong. They 
 boast that the founder of their religion had not whereon to lay his 
 head, but when they found a man who stood for the rights of man, 
 when they say that he did, that is an evidence that this doctrine was a 
 lie. Won't do! Did Thomas Paine die in destitution and want? The 
 charge has been made over and over again that Thomas Paine died in 
 want and destitution ; that he was an abandoned pauper an outcast, 
 without friends and without mouev ^Ms charge is just as false as the 
 10 
 
47 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 rest. Upon his return to this country, in 1802, he was worth $30,000, 
 according to his own statement, made at that time in the following let 
 ter, and addressed to Clio Rickman : 
 
 My dear friend, Mr. Monroe t who is appointed minister extraordinary 
 to France, takes charge of this, to be delivered to Mr. Este, banker, in 
 Paris, to be forwarded to you. 
 
 I arrived in Baltimore, 30th of October, and you can have no idea of 
 the agitation which my arrival occasioned. From New Hampshire to 
 Georgia (an extent of 1,500 miles), every newspaper was tilled with 
 applause or abuse. 
 
 My property in this country has been taken care of by my friends, and is 
 now worth six thousand pounds sterling, which, put in the funds, will 
 bring about 400 sterling a year. 
 
 Remember me in affection and friendship to your wife and family, 
 and iu the circle of your friends. THOMAS PAINE. 
 
 A man in those days worth $30,000 was not a pauper. That amount 
 would bring an income of at least $2,000. Two thousand dollars then 
 would be fully equal to $5,000 now. On the 12th of July, 1809, the 
 year in which he died, Mr. Paine made his will. From this instrument 
 we learn that he was the owner of a valuable farm within twenty miles 
 of New York. He was also owner of thirty shares in the New York 
 Phoenix Insurance Company, worth upward of $1,500. Besides this, 
 some personal property and ready money. By his will he gave to 
 Walter Morton and Thomas Addis Emmet, a brother of Robert Emmet, 
 $200 each, and $100 to the widow of Elihu Palmer. Is it possible that 
 this will was made by a pauper, by a destitute outcast, by a man who 
 suffered for the ordinary necessities of life ? 
 
 But suppose, for the sake of argument, that he was poor, and that he 
 died a beggar, does that tend to show that the Bible is an inspired book, 
 and that Calvin did not burn Servetus ? Do you really regard poverty as 
 a crime? If Paine had died a millionaire, would Christians have 
 accepted his religious opinions? If Paine had drank nothing but cold 
 water, would Christians have repudiated the five cardinal points of Cal- 
 vinism ? Does an argument depend for its force upon the pecuniary 
 condition of the person making it? As a matter of fact, most reform- 
 ersmost men and women of genius have been acquainted with 
 poverty. Beneath a covering of rags have been found some of the 
 tenderest and bravest hearts. 
 
 Owing to the attitude of the churehes for the last fifteen hundred 
 years, truth telling has not been a very lucrative business. As a rule, 
 hypocrisy has worn the robes, and honesty the rags. That day is pass- 
 ing away. You can not now answer a man by pointing at the holes in 
 his coat. Thomas Paine attacked the church when it was powerful; 
 when it had what is called honors to bestow ; when it was the keeper ot 
 
ON THOMAS PAINE. 47 r 
 
 the public conscience ; when it was strong and cruel. The church 
 waited till he was dead, and then attacked his reputation and his clothes. 
 Once upon a time a donkey kicked a lion. The lion was dead. You 
 just don't know how happy I am to-night that justice so long delayed 
 at last is going to be done, and to see so many splendid looking people 
 come here out of deference to the memory of Thomas Paine. I am glad 
 to be here. 
 
 The next thing is: Did Thomas Paine live the life of a drunken 
 beast, and did he die a drunken, cowardly, and beastly death ? Well, we 
 will see. Upon you rests the burden of substantiating these infamous 
 charges. The Christians have, I suppose, produced the best evidence in 
 their possession, and that evidence I will now proceed to examine. 
 Their first witness is Grant Thorburn. He made three charges against 
 Thomas Paine : 
 
 1. That his wife obtained a divorce from him in England for cruelty 
 and neglect. 
 
 2. That he was a defaulter and fled from England to America. 
 
 3. That he was a drunkard. 
 
 These three charges stand upon the same evidence the word of Grant 
 Thorburn If they are not all true, Mr. Thorburn stands impeached. 
 
 The charge that Mrs. Paine obtained a divorce on account of the 
 cruelty and neglect of her husband is utterly false. There is no such 
 record in the world, and never was. Paine and his wife separated by 
 mutual consent. Each respected the other. They remained friends. 
 This charge is without any foundation, in fact, I challenge the Christian 
 world to produce the record of this decree of divorce. According to 
 Mr. Thorburn, it was granted in England. In that country public rec- 
 ords are kept of all such decrees. I will give $1,000 if they will produce 
 a decree, showing that it was given on account of cruelty, or admit that 
 Mr. Thorburn was mistaken. 
 
 Thomas Paine was a just man. Although separated from his wife, he 
 always spoke of her w.th tenderness and respect, and frequently tent 
 her money without letting her know the source from whence it came. 
 Was this the conduct of a drunken beast ? 
 
 The next is that he was a defaulter, and fled from England to America. 
 As I told you in the first place, he was an exciseman; if he was a de- 
 faulter, that fact is upon the records of Great Britain. I will give $1,000 
 in gold to any man who will show, by the records of England, that he 
 was a defaulter of a single, solitary cent. Let us bring these gentlemen 
 to Limerick. 
 
 And they charge that he was a drunkard. That is another falsehood, 
 He drank liquor in his day, as did the preachers. It was no unuauaJ 
 
47 2 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 thing for a preacher going home to stop in a tavern and take a drink of 
 hot rum with a deacon, and it was no unusual thing for the deacon to 
 help the preacher home. You have no idea how they loved the sacra- 
 ment in those days. They had communion pretty much all the time. 
 
 Thorburn says that in 1802 Paine was an " old remnant of mortality, 
 drunk, bloated, and half asleep." Can anyone believe this to be a true 
 account of the personal appearance of Mr. Paine in 1802 ? He had just 
 returned from France. He had been welcomed home by Thomas Jeffer- 
 son, who had said that he was entitled to the hospitality of every 
 American. 
 
 In 1802 Mr. Paine was honored with a public dinner in the City of 
 New York. He was called upon and treated with kindness and respect 
 by such men as De Witt Clinton. In 1806 Mr. Paine wrote a letter to 
 Andrew A. Dean upon the subject of religion. Read that letter and 
 then say that the writer of it was an old remnant of mortality, drunk, 
 bloated, and half asleep. Search the files of Christian papers, from the 
 first issue to the last, and you will find nothing superior to this letter. In 
 1803 Mr. Paine wrote a letter of considerable length, and of great force, 
 to his friend Samuel Adams. Such letters are not written by drunken 
 beasts, nor by remnants of old mortality, nor by drunkards. It was 
 about the same time that he wrote his " Remarks on Robert Hall's Ser- 
 mons." These "Remarks" were not written by a drunken beast, but by 
 a clear-headed and thoughtful man. 
 
 In 1804 he published an essay on the invasion of England and a 
 treatise on gun-boats, full of valuable maritime information ; in 1805 a 
 treatise on yellow fever, suggesting modes of prevention. In short, he 
 was an industrious and thoughtful man. re sympathized with the poor 
 and oppressed of all lands. He looked upon monarchy as a species of 
 physical slavery. He had the goodness to attack that form of govern- 
 ment. He regarded the religion of his day as a kind of mental slavery. 
 He had the courage to give his reasons for his opinion. His reasons 
 filled the churches with hatred. Instead of answering his arguments 
 they attacked him. Men who were not fit to blacken his shoes blackened 
 his character. There is too much religious cant in the statement of Mr. 
 Thorburn. He exhibits too much anxiety to tell what Grant Thorburn 
 said to Thomas Paine. He names Thomas Jefferson as one of the dis- 
 reputable men who welcomed Paine with open arms. The testimony 
 of a man who regarded Thomas Jefferson as a disreputable person, as 
 to the character of anybody, is utterly without value. 
 
 Now, Grant Thorburn this gentleman who was " four feet and a half 
 high, and who weighed ninety eight pounds three and one-half ounces" 
 says that he uaed to sit nights at Carver's, in New York, with Thomas 
 
GN T SO MAS PAINS. 
 
 Paine. Mrs. Ferguson, the daughter of William Carver, says that she 
 knew Thorburn when she saw him, but that she never saw him in her 
 father's house. The denial of Mrs. Ferguson enraged Thorburn, and he 
 at once wrote a few falsehoods about her. Thereupon a suit was com- 
 menced by Mrs. Ferguson and her husband against Thorburn, the writer, 
 and Fanshaw, the publisher, of the libel. Thorburn ran away to Con- 
 necticut. Fanshaw wrote him for evidence of what he had written. 
 Thorburn replied that what he had written about Mrs. Ferguson could 
 not be proved. Fanshaw then settled with the Fergusons,^ paying them 
 the amount demanded. 
 
 In 1859 the Fergusons lived at No. 148 Duane Street, New York. In 
 The Commercial Advertiser of New York, in 1830, appeared the written 
 acknowledgment of this same little Grant Thorburn that he did, on the 
 22cl of August, 1830, at half-past 6 in the morning, take four bottles of 
 cider from the cellar of Mr. Comstook. 
 
 Mr. Comstock says that Thorburn was arrested, and that when brought 
 oefore him he pleaded guilty and threw himself upon his (Comstock's) 
 mercy. 
 
 The Philadelphia Tract Society gave Thorburn $100 to write his rec- 
 ollections of Thomas Paine. 
 
 Let us dispose of this four feet and a half of wretch. In October, 1877> 
 I received the following letter frem James Parton : 
 
 NEWBURYPORT, Mass., Oct 27, 1877. MY DEAR SIR: Touching 
 Grant Thorburn, I personally knew him to have been a liar. At the age 
 of 92 he copied with trembling hand a piece from a newspaper and 
 brought it to the office of The Home Journal as his own. It was I who 
 received it and detected the deliberate forgery. * * JAMES PARTON. 
 
 So much for Grant Thorburn. In my judgment, the testimony of Mr. 
 Thorburn should be thrown aside as utterly unworthy of belief. 
 
 The next witness is the Rev. J. D. Wickham, D. D., who tells what an 
 elder in his church said. This elder said that Paine passed his last days 
 on his farm at New Rochelle, with a solitary female attendant. This i s 
 not true. He did not pass his last days at New Rochelle, consequently, 
 this pious elder did not see him during his last days at that place. Upon 
 this elder we prove an alibi. Mr. Paine passed his last days in the City 
 of New York, in a house upon Columbia Street. The story of the Rev. 
 J. D. Wickham, D. D., is simply false. 
 
 The next competent false witness was the Rev. Charles Hawley, D. D., 
 who proceeds to state that the story of the Rev. J. D. Wickham, D. D., is 
 corroborated by older citizens of New Rochelle. The names of these 
 ancient residents are withheld. According to these unknown witnesses, 
 the account given by the deceased elder was entirely correct. But as the 
 particulars of Mr. Paine's conduct " were too loathsome to be described 
 in prinV' we are left entirely in the dark^as to what he really did. 
 
474 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 While at New Rochelle, Mr. Paine lived with Mr. Purdy, Mr. Dean, 
 with Capt. Pel ton, and with Mr. Staple. It is worthy of note that all oi 
 these gentlemen give the lie direct to Jie statements of " older residents" 
 and ancient citizens spoken of by the Rev. Charles Hawley, D. D., and 
 leave him with the "loathsome particulars" existing only in his own 
 mind. 
 
 The next gentleman brought upon the stand is W. H. Ladd, who 
 quotes from the memoirs of Stephen Grellett. This gentleman also has 
 the misfortune to be dead. According to his account, Mr. Paine made 
 his recantation to a servant girl of his by the name of Mary Roscoe. Mr. 
 Paine uttered the wish thart all who read his book had burned it. I 
 believe there is a mistake in the name of this girl. Her name was prob- 
 ably Mary Hinsdale, as it was once claimed that Paine made the same 
 remark to her. 
 
 These are the witnesses of the church, and the only ones you bring 
 forward to support your charge that Thomas Paine lived a drunken 
 and beastly life, and died a drunken, cowardly, and beastly death. All 
 these calumnies are found in a life of Paine by James Cheetham, the 
 convicted libeler already referred to. Mr. Cheetham was an enemy of 
 the man whose life he pretended to write. In order to show you the 
 estimation in which this libeler was held by Mr. Paine, I will give you 
 a copy of a letter that throws light upon this point: 
 
 OCT. 27, 1807. MR. CHEETHAM : Unless you make a public apology 
 for the abuse and falsehood in your paper of Tuesday, Oct. 27, respect- 
 ing me, I will prosecute you for lying. THOMAS PAINE. 
 
 In another letter, speaking of this same man, Mr. Paine says : "If an 
 unprincipled bully can not be reformed, he can be punished." Cheet- 
 ham has been so long in the habit of giving false information, that truth 
 is to him like a foreign language. 
 
 Mr. Cheetham wrote the life of Mr. Paine to gratify his malice and to 
 support religion. He was prosecuted for libel was convicted and fined. 
 Yet the life of Paine, written by this liar, is referred to by the Chris- 
 tian world as the highest authority. 
 
 As to the personal habits of Mr. Paine, we have the testimony of Wil- 
 liam Carver, with whom he lived; of Mr. Jarvis, the artist, with whom 
 he lived; of Mr. Purdy, \\ ho was a tenant of Paine's; of Mr. Buyer, 
 with whom he was intimate; of Thomas Nixon and Capt. Daniel Pel- 
 ton, both of whom knew him well; of Amasa Woodsworth, who was 
 with him when he died ; of John Fellows, who boarded at the same 
 house; of James Wilburn, with whom he boarded; of B. F. Haskins, a 
 lawyer, who was well acquainted with him, and called upon him during 
 his last illness; of Walter Morton, President of the Phoenix Insurance 
 Company; of Clio liickman, who iiad known him for many years; of 
 
ON THOMAS PAINE. 475 
 
 Willet and Elias Hicks, Quakers, who knew him intimately and well: 
 of Judge Hjrtell, H. Margary, Elihu Palmer aud many others. All 
 these testified to the fact that Mr. Paine was a temperate man. In those 
 days nearly everybody used spirituous liquors. Paine was not an ex- 
 ception, but he did not drink to excess. Mr. Lovett, who kept the City 
 Hotel, where Paine stopped, in a note to Caleb Bingham declared tluit 
 Paine drank less than any boarder he had. 
 
 Against all this evidence Christians produce the story of Grant Thor 
 burn, the story of the Rev. J. D. Wickham, that an elder in his church 
 told him that Paine was a drunkard, corroborated by the Rev. Charles 
 Hawley, and an extract from Lossing's history to the same effect. The 
 evidence is overwhelmingly against them. Will you have the fdrness 
 to admit it? Their witnesses ire merely the repeaters of the falsehoods 
 of James Cheetham, the convicted libeler. 
 
 After all, drinking is not as bad as lying. An honest drunkard is 
 better than a calumniator of the dead. "A remnant of old mortality 
 drunk, bloated, and half-asleep," is better than a perfectly sober de- 
 fender of human slavery. To become drunk is a virtue compared with 
 stealing a babe from the breast of its mother. Drunkenness is one of the 
 beatitudes, compared with editing a religious paper devoted to the 
 defense of slavery upon the ground that it is a divine institution. Do 
 you think that Paine was a drunken beast when he wrote u Common 
 Sense," a pamphlet that aroused three millions "of people, as people 
 were never aroused by words before ? Was he a drunken beast when he 
 wrote the "Crisis?" Was it to a drunken beast that the 'following 
 letter was a .dressed : - 
 
 ROCKY HILL, September 10, 1783. I have learned, since I have been 
 at this place, that you are at Bordentown. Whether for the sa*e of 
 retirement or economy, I know not. Be it for either, or both, or what- 
 ever it may, if you will come to this place and partake with me, I shall 
 be exceedingly happy to see you at it. Your presence may remind Con- 
 gress of your past services to this country; and if it is in my power to 
 impress them, command my best exertions with freedom, as they will 
 be rendered cheerfully by one who entertains a lively sense of th:- im- 
 portance of your works, and who, with much pleasure, subscribes him- 
 self your sincere friend, GEORGE WASHINGTON. 
 
 Do you think that Paine was a drunken beast when the following 
 letters were received by him: 
 
 You express a wish 5n your letter to return to America in a national 
 ship. Mr. Dawson, who brings over the treaty, and who will present 
 you wiih this letter, is charged witli orders to the Captain of the Mary- 
 land to receive and accommodate you l.otk, if you can be ready to 
 depart at such a short warning. You will, in general, find us returned 
 to sentiments worthy of former times; in tht^e it \\\\\ !>c your L'lory to 
 have steadily labored, and with as much effect as any man living. That 
 
4/6 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 you may live long to continue your useful labors, and reap the reward 
 in the thankfulness of nations, is my sincere prayer. Accept the assur- 
 ances of my high esteem and affectionate attachment. 
 
 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 
 
 It has been very generally propagated through the continent that I 
 wrote the pamphlet " Common Sense." I could not have written any- 
 thing in so manly and striking a style. JOHN ADAMS. 
 
 A few more such flaming arguments as were exhibited at Falmouth 
 and Norfolk, added to the sound doctrine and unanswerable reasoning 
 contained in the pamphlet u Common Sense," will not leave numbers 
 at a loss to decide on the propriety of a separation. 
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON. 
 
 It is not necessary for me to tell you how much all your countrymen 
 I speak of the great mass of the people are interested in your wel- 
 fare. They have not forgotten the history of their own revolution, and 
 the difficult scenes through which they passed ; nor do they review its 
 several stages without reviving in their bosoms a due sensibility of the 
 merits of those who served them in that great and arduous conflict. The 
 crime of ingratitude has not yet stained, and I trust never will stain, GUI' 
 national character. You are considered by them as not only having 
 rendered important services in our revolution, but as being on a more 
 extensive scale the friend of human right and a distinguished and able 
 advocate in favor of public liberty. To the welfare of Thomas Paine, 
 the Americans are not, nor can they be, indifferent. 
 
 JAMES MONROE. 
 
 No writer has exceeded Paine in ease and familiarity of style, in 
 perspicuity of expression, happiness of elucidation, and in simple and 
 unassuming language. THOMAS JEFFERSON. 
 
 Was it in consideration of the services of a drunken beast that the 
 Legislature of Pennsylvania presented Thomas Paine with 500 sterling ? 
 Did the State of New York feel indebted to a drunken beast, and confer 
 upon Thomas Paine an estate of several hundred acres ? Did the Con- 
 gress of the United States thank him for his services because he had 
 lived a drunken and beastly life? Was he elected a member of the 
 French convention because he was a drunken beast ? Was it the act of 
 a drunken beast to put his own life in jeopardy by voting against the 
 death of the King? Was it because he was a drunken beast that he op- 
 posed the " Reign of Terror " that he endeavored to stop the shedding 
 of blood, and did all in his power to protect even his own enemies ? Do 
 the following extracts sound like the words of a drunken beast: 
 
 I believe in the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties 
 consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fel- 
 low creatures happy. 
 
 My own mind is my own church. 
 
 It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful 
 to himself. 
 
ON THOMAS PAINE. 477 
 
 ., Any system of religion that shocks the mind of a child can not be a 
 ""true system. 
 
 The work of God is the creation which we behold. 
 
 The age of ignorance commenced with the Christian system, 
 
 It is with a pious fraud as with a bad action it begets a calamitous 
 necessity of going on. 
 
 To read the Bible without horror, we must undo everything that is 
 tender, sympathizing, and benevolent in the heart of man. 
 
 The man does not exist who can say I have persecuted him, or that I 
 have, in any case, returned evil for evil- 
 
 Of all the tyrants that afflict mankind, tyranny in religion is the 
 worst. 
 
 The belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man. 
 
 My own opinion is, that those whose lives have been spent in doing 
 good, and endeavoring to make their fellow-mortals happy, will be 
 happy hereafter. 
 
 The intellectual part of religion is a private affair between every man 
 and his Maker, and in which no third party has any right to interfere. 
 The practical part consists in our doing good to each other. 
 
 No man ought to make a living by religion. One person can not act 
 religion for another every person must act for himself. 
 
 One good school-master is of more use than a hundred priests. 
 
 Let us propagate morality, unfettered by superstition. 
 
 God is the power, or first cause ; nature is the law, and matter is the 
 subject acted upon. 
 
 I believe in one God and no more, and I hope for happiness beyond 
 this life. 
 
 The key of happiness is not in the keeping of any sect, nor ought the 
 road to it to be obstructed by any. 
 
 My religion, and the whole of it, is the fear and love of the Deity, and 
 universal philanthropy. 
 
 I have yet, I believe, some years in store, for I have a good state of 
 health and a happy mind. I taKe care of both, by nourishing the first 
 with temperance and the latter with abundance. 
 
 He lives immured within the bastile of a word. 
 
 How perfectly that sentence describes the orthodox. The bastile in 
 which they are immured is the word " Calvinism." 
 
 Man has no property in man. 
 
 The world is my country, to do good my religion. 
 
 I ask again whether these splendid utterances came from the lips of 
 a drunken beast ? 
 
 " Man has no property in 
 
478 
 
 What a splendid motto that would make for the religious newspapers 
 of this country thirty years ago. I ask, again, whether these splendid 
 utterances came from the lips of a drunken beast ? 
 
 Only a little while ago two or three days I read a report of an ad- 
 dress made by Bishop Doane, an Episcopal Bishop in apostolic succes- 
 sion regular line from Jesus Christ down to Bishop Doane. The 
 Bishop was making a speech to young preachers the sprouts, the 
 theological buds. He took it upon him to advise them all against early 
 marriages. Let us look at it. Do you believe there is any duty that 
 man owes to God that will prevent a man marrying the woman he 
 loves? Is there some duty that I owe to the clouds that will prevent 
 me from marrying some good, sweet woman? Now, just think of that! 
 I tell you, young man, you marry as soon as you can find her and sup- 
 port her. I had rather have one woman that I know than any amount 
 of gods that I am not acquainted with. If there is any revelation from 
 God to man, a good woman is the best revelation He has ever made; 
 and I will admit that that revelation was inspired. 
 
 Now, on the subject of marriage, let me offset the speech of Bishop 
 Doane by a word from this " wretched infidel :" 
 
 Though I appear a sorry wanderer, the marriage state has not a sin- 
 cerer friend than I. It is the harbor of human life, and is, with respect 
 to the things of this world, what the next world is to this. It is home, 
 and that one word conveys more than any other word can express. For 
 a few years we may glide along the tide of a single life, but it is a tide 
 that flows but once, and, what is still worse, it ebbs faster than it flows, 
 and leaves many a hapless voyager aground. I am one, you see, that 
 has experienced the fall I am describing. I have lost my tide; itpassed 
 by while every throb of my heart was on the wing for the salvation of 
 America, and I have now, as contentedly as I can, made myself a little 
 tower of walls on that shore that has the solitary resemblance of home 
 
 I just want you to know what this dreadful infidel thought of home. 
 I just wanted you to know what Thomas Paine thought of home. 
 
 Then here is another letter that Thomas Paine wrote to congress on the 
 21st day of January, 1808, and I wanted you to know those two. It is 
 only a short one: 
 
 To THE HONORABLE THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES: The 
 purport of this address is to state a claim I feel myself entitled to make 
 on the United States, leaving it to their representatives in congress to 
 decide on its worth and its merits. The case is as follows : 
 
 Toward the latter end of the year 1780 the continental money had 
 become depreciated the paper dollar being then not more than a cent 
 that it seemed next to impossible to continue the war. As the United 
 States was then in alliance with France, it became necessary to make 
 France acquainted with our real situation. I therefore drew up a letter 
 to the Count De Vergennes, stating undisguisedly the whole case, and 
 concluding with a request whether France could not, either as a sub- 
 
ON THOMAS PAINE. 479 
 
 sidy or a loan, supply the United States with a million pound* sterling, 
 and continue that supply, annually, during the war. I showed this 
 letter to Mr. Morbois, secretary of the French minister. His remark 
 upon it was that a million sent out of the nation exhausted it more than 
 ten millions spent in it. I then showed it to Mr. Ralph Izard, member 
 of congress from South Carolina. He borrowed the letter of me and 
 said: " We will endeavor to dp something about it in congr< ss." Ac- 
 cordingly, congress then appointed John A. Laurens to go to France and 
 make representation for the purpose of obtaining assistance. Col. 
 Laurens wished to decline the mission, and asked that congress would 
 appoint Col. Hamilton, who did not choose to do it. Col. Laurens then 
 came and stated the case to me, and said that he was well enough 
 acquainted with the military difficulties of the army, but he was not 
 acquainted with political affairs, or with the resources of the country, 
 to undertake such a mission. Said he, '* If you will go with me I will 
 accept the mission." This I agreed to do, and did do. We sailed from 
 Boston in the Alliance frigate February, 1781, and arrived in France in 
 the beginning of March. The aid obtained fro.n France was six millions 
 of liyres, as at present, and ten millions as a loan, borrowed in Holland 
 on the security of France. We sailed from Brest in the French frigate 
 Resolue the 1st of June, and arrived at Boston on the 25th of August, 
 bringing with us two millions and a half in silver, and conveying a ship 
 and a brig laden with clothing and military stores. 
 
 The money was transported with sixteen ox teams to the National 
 bank at Philadelphia, which enable I our army to move to Yorktown to 
 attack in conjunction with the French army under Kochambeau, the 
 British army under Cornwallis. 
 
 As I never had a single cent for these services, I felt myself entitled, 
 as the country is now in a sta f e of prosperity, to state the case to congress. 
 
 As to my political works, beginning with the pamphlet "Common 
 Sense," published the beginning of January 1776, which awakened 
 America to a declaration of independence, as the president and vice- 
 president both know, as they were works done from principle I can not 
 dishonor that principle by ever asking any reward for them. The 
 country has been benefited by them, and I make myself happy in the 
 knowledge of that benefit. It is, however, proper for me to add that the 
 mere independence of America, were it to have been followed by a 
 system of government modeled after the corrupt system of the English 
 government, would not have interested me with the u abated ardor it did. 
 It was to bring forward and establish a representative system of govern- 
 ment. As the work itself will show, that was the leading principle 
 with me in writing that work, and all my other works during the 
 progress of the revolution, and I followed the same principle in 
 writing in English the " Rights of Man.'' 
 
 After the failure of the 5 per cent, duty recommended by congress to 
 pay the interest of the loan to be borrowed in Holland, I wrote to 
 Chancellor Livingston, then minister for foreign affairs, and Robert 
 Morris, minister of finance, and proposed a method for getting over the 
 difficulty at once, which was by adding a continental legislature which 
 should be empowered to make laws for the whole union instead of 
 recommending them. So the method proposed met with their fui. ^ 
 probation. I held myself in reserve to take a step up whenever a 
 lirect occasion occurred. 
 
480 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 In a conversation afterward with GOT. Clinton, of New York, ncro 
 vice-president, it was judged that for the purpose of iny going fully 
 into the subject, and to prevent any misconstruction of my motive or 
 object, it would be best that I received nothing from congress, but to 
 leave it to the states individually to make me what acknowledgment 
 they pleased. The State of New York presented me with a farm, which 
 since my return to America, I have found it necessary to sell, and the 
 State of Pennsylvania voted me 500 of their currency, but none of the 
 states to the east of New York, or the south of Pennsylvania, have 
 made me the least acknowledgment. They had received benefits from 
 me which they accepted, and there the matter ended. This story will 
 not tell well in history. All the civilized world knows I have been of 
 great service to the United States, and have generously given away that 
 which would easily have made me a fortune. I much question if an 
 instance is to be found in ancient or modern times of a man who had 
 no personal interest in the case to take up that of the establishment of 
 a r 'presentative government, and who sought neither place nor office 
 after it was established ; that pursued the same undeviating principles that 
 I had for more than thirty years, and that in spite of dangers, difficulties, 
 and inconveniences of which I have had my share. THOMAS PAINE. 
 
 An old man in Pennsylvania told me once that his father hired a 
 old revolutionary soldier by the name of Thomas Martin to work for 
 him. Martin was then quite an old man ; and there was an old Presby- 
 terian preacher used to come there, by the name of Crawford, and he sat 
 down by the fire and he got to talking one night, among other things, 
 about Thomas Paine what a wretched, infamous dog he was; and 
 while he was in the midst of this conversation the old soldier rose from 
 the fireplace, and he walked over to the preacher, and he said to him : 
 " Did you ever see Thomas Paine ?" " No." 4< Well," he says, " I have ; 
 I saw him at Valley Forge. I heard read at the head of every regiment 
 and company the letters of Thomas Paine. I heard them read the 
 ' Crisis,' and I saw Thomas Paine writing on the head of a drum, sit- 
 ting at the bivouac fire, those simple words that inspired every patriot's 
 bosom, and I want to tell you Mr. Preacher, that Thomas Paine did 
 more for liberty than any priest that ever lived in this world. 
 
 And yet they say he was afraid to die ! Afraid of what ? Is there 
 any God in heaven that hates a patriot ? If there is Thomas Paine 
 ought to be afraid to die. Is there any God that would damn a man for 
 helping to free three millions of people ? If Thomas Paine was in hell 
 to-night, and could get God's attention long enough to point him to the 
 old banner of the stars floating over America, God would have to let 
 him out. What would he be afraid of? Had he ever burned anybody ? 
 No. Had he ever put anybody in the inquisition? No. Ever put the 
 thumb-screw on anybody ? No. Ever put anybody in prison so that 
 some poor wife and mother would come and hold her little babe up at 
 the grated window that the man bound to the floor might get one glimpse 
 f his blue-eyed babe?_ Did he, ever dg that? 
 
ON THOMAS PAINE. 48 1 
 
 Did he ever light a fagot? Did he ever tear human % flesh? Why, 
 what had he to be afraid of? lie had helped to make the world free. 
 He had helped create the only republic then on the earth. What was 
 he afraid of? Was God a tory ? It won't do. 
 
 Oue would think from the persistence with which the orthodox have 
 charged for the last seventy years that Thomas Paine recanted, that there 
 must be some evidence of some kind to support these charges. Even 
 with my ideas of the average honor of the believers in superstition, the 
 average truthfulness of the disciples of fear, I did not believe that all 
 those infamies rested solely upon poorly-attested falsehoods. I had 
 charity enough to suppose that something had been said or done by 
 Thomas Paine capable of being tortured into a foundation of all these 
 calumnies. What crime had Thomas Paine committed that he should 
 have feared to die? The only answer you can give is Unit he denied the 
 inspiration of the scriptures. If that is- crime, the civilized world is 
 filled with criminals The pioneers of human thought, the intellectual 
 leaders of this world, the foremost men in every science, the kings of 
 literature and art, those who stand in the front of investigation, the men 
 who are civilizing and elevating and refining mankind, are all un. 
 believers in the ignorant do^ma of inspiration. 
 
 Why should we think Thomas Paine was afraid to die? and why 
 should the American people malign the memory of that great man? 
 He was the first to advocate the separation from the mother country- 
 He was the first to write these words: "The United States of America." 
 Think of maligning that man ! He was the first to lift his voice against 
 liuman slavery, and while hundreds and thousands of ministers all over 
 the United States not only believed in slavery, but bought and sold 
 women and babes in the name of Jesus Christ, this infidel, this wretch 
 who is now burning in the flames of hell, lifted his voice against human 
 slavery and said: " It is robbery, and a slaveholder is a theif; the 
 whipper of women is a barbarian; the seller of a child is a savage." 
 No wonder that the theiving hypocrite of his day hated him! 
 
 I have no love for any man who ever pretended to own a human being. 
 I have no love for a man that would sell a babe from the mother's throb- 
 bing, heaving, agonized breast. I have no respect for a man who 
 considered a lash on the naked back as a legal tender for labor performed. 
 So write it down, Thomas Paine was the first great abolitionist of 
 America 
 
 Now let me tell you another thing. He was the first man to raise his 
 voice for the abolition of the death penalty in the French convention. 
 What more did he do? He was the first to suggest a federal constitu- 
 tion for the United States. He saw that the old articles of confederation 
 
482 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 were nothing; that they were ropes of water and chains of mist, and h 
 said, " We want a federal constitution so that when you pass a law raig. 
 ing 5 per cent, you can make the states pay it.'' Let us give him his 
 due. What were all these preachers doing at that time ? 
 
 He hated superstition; he loved the truth. He hated tyranny; he 
 loved liberty. He was tho friend of the human race. He lived a brave 
 and thoughtful life. He was a good and true and generous man, and 
 lie died as he lived. Like a great and peaceful river with srreen and 
 shaded banks, without a murmur, without a ripple, he flowed into the 
 waveless ocean of eternal peace. I love him; I love every man who 
 gave me, or helped to give me the liberty I enjoy to-night; I love every 
 man who helped me put our flag in heaven. I love every man who has 
 lilted his voice in any age for liberty, fora cha'mless body and a fetterless 
 brain. I love every man who has given to every other human being 
 every right that he claimed for himself. I love every man who has 
 thought more of principle than he has of position. I love the men who 
 have trampled crowns beneath their feet that they might do something 
 for mankind, and for that reason I love Thomas Paine. 
 
 I thank you all, ladies and gentlemen, every one every one, toe *&* 
 Attention you have given me this evening. 
 
INGEKSOLL'S LECTUKE 
 
 ON 
 
 LIBERTY OF MAN, WOMAN AND CHILD, 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: In my judgment slavery is 
 the child of ignorance. Liberty is born of intelligence. 
 Only a few years ago there was a great awakening in the 
 human mind, Men began to inquire, By what right does 
 a crowned robber make me work for him? The man 
 who asked this question was called a traitor. Others 
 said, by what right does a robed priest rob me? That 
 man was called an infidel. And whenever he asked a 
 question of that kind, the clergy protested. When they 
 found that the earth was round, the clergy protested; 
 when they found that the stars were not made out of the 
 scraps that were left over on the sixth day of 'creation, 
 but were really great, shining, wheeling worlds, the 
 clergy protested and said: " When is this spirit of inves- 
 tigation to stop? " They said then, and they say now, 
 that it is dangerous for the mind of man to be free. I 
 deny it. Out on the intellectual sea there is room 
 
 483 
 
484 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 for every sail. In the intellectual air, there is space 
 enough for every wing. And the man who does not do 
 his own thinking is a slave, and does not do his duty to 
 his fellow men. For one, I expect to do my own 
 thinking. And I will take my own oath this minute that 
 I will express what thoughts I have, honestly and sin- 
 cerely. I am the slave ol no man and of no organiza- 
 tion. I stand under the blue sky and the stars, under 
 the infinite flag of nature, the peer of every human be- 
 ing. Standing as I do in the presence of the Unknown, 
 I have the same right to guess as though I had been 
 through five theological seminary. I have as much in- 
 terest in the great absorbing questions of origin and des- 
 tiny as though I had D.D., L. L. D. at the end of my 
 name. 
 
 All I claim, all I plead is simple liberty of thought. 
 That is all. I do not pretend to tell what is true and 
 all the truth. I do not claim that I have floated level 
 with the heights of thought, or that I have descended to 
 the depths of things; I simply claim that what ideal have 
 I have a right to express, and any man that denies it to 
 me is an intellectual thief and robber. That is all. I 
 say, take those chains off from the human soul; I say, 
 break these orthodox fetters, and if there are wings to 
 the spirit let them be spread. That is all I say. And I 
 ask you if I have not the same right to think that any 
 other human has? If I have no right to think, why 
 have I such a thing as a thinker. Why have I a 
 brain? And if I have no right to think, who has? If 
 I have lost my right, Mr. Smith, where did you 
 find yours? If I have no right, have three or four 
 men or 300 or 400, who get together and sign a card 
 
LIBERTY. 485 
 
 and build a house and put a steeple on it with a bell in 
 it have they any more right to think than they had be- 
 fore? That is the question . And I am sick of the whip 
 and lash in the region of mind and intellect. And I say 
 to these men, '-Let us alone. Do your own think- 
 ing; express your own thoughts." And I want to say to- 
 night that I claim no right that I am not willing to give 
 to every other human being beneath the stars none 
 whatever. And I will fight to-night for the right of 
 those who disagree with me to express their thoughts 
 just as soon as I will fight for my owu right to express 
 mine. 
 
 In the good old times, our fathers had an idea that 
 they could make people believe to suit them. Our an- 
 cestors in the ages that are gone really believed that by 
 force you could convince a man. You cannot change 
 the conclusion of the brain by force, but I will tell you 
 what you can do by force, and what you have done by 
 force. You can make hypocrites by the million. You 
 can make a man say that he has changed his mind, but 
 he remains of the same opinion still. Put fetters all 
 over him; crush his feet in iron boots; lash him to the 
 stock; burn him if you please, but his ashes are of the 
 same opinion still. I say our fathers, in the good old 
 times and the best thing I can say about them is, they 
 are dead they had an idea they could force men to 
 think their way, and do you know that idea is still prev- 
 lent even in this country? Do you know they think 
 they can make a man think their way if they say, 
 ,, We will not trade with that man; we won't 
 vote for that man; we won't hire him, if he is a 
 lawyer; we will die before we take his medicine, if he is a 
 
486 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 doctor, we won't invite him; we will socially ostracise 
 him; he must come to our church; he must thiuk our 
 way or he is not a gentleman. There is much of that 
 even in this blessed country not excepting the city of 
 Albany itself. 
 
 Now in the old times of which I have spoken, they 
 said, "We can make all men think alike." All the me- 
 chanical ingenuity of this earth cannot make two clocks 
 run alike, and how are you going to make millions of 
 people of different quantities and qualities and amount 
 of brain, clad in this living robe of passionate flesh how 
 are you going to make millions of them think alike? If 
 the infinite God, if there is one, who made us, wished us 
 to think alike, why did he give a spoonful of brains to 
 one man, and a bushel to another? Why is it that we 
 have all degrees of humanity, from the idiot to the 
 genius, if it was intended that all should think alike ? I 
 say our fathers concluded they would do this by force, 
 and I used to read in books how they persecuted man- 
 kind, and do you know I never appreciated it; I did not. 
 I read it, but it did not burn itself, as it were, into my 
 very soul what infamies had been committed in the name 
 of religion, and I never fully appreciated it until a little 
 while ago I saw the iron arguments our fathers used to 
 use. I tell you the reason we are through that, is, be- 
 cause we have better brains than our fathers had. Since 
 that day we have become intellectually developed, and 
 there is more real brain and real good sense in the world 
 to-day than in any other period of its history, and that is 
 the reason we have more liberty, that is the rea- 
 son we have more kindness. But I say I saw these 
 iron arguments our fathers used to use. I saw 
 
LIBERTY. 487 
 
 there the thumb-screw two little innocent looking 
 pieces of iron, armed on the inner surface with protuber- 
 ences to prevent their slipping and when some man de- 
 nied the efficacy of baptism, or may be said, " I do not 
 believe that the whale ever swallowed a man to keep him 
 from drowning," then they put these pieces ot iron upon 
 his thumb, and there was a screw at each end, and then, 
 in the name of love and forgiveness, they began screw- 
 ing these pieces of iron together. A great many men, 
 when they commenced, would say, " I recant." I ex- 
 pect I would have been one of them. I would have 
 said, "Now you just stop that; I will admit anything on 
 earth that you want. I will admit there is one god or a 
 million, one hell or a billion; sutt yourselves, but stop 
 that." But I want to say, the thumbscrew having got 
 out of the way, I am going to have my say. 
 
 There was now and then some man who wouldn't turn 
 Judas Iscariot to his own soul; there was now and then 
 a man willing to die for his conviction, and if it were not 
 for such men we would be savages to-night. Had it not 
 been for a few brave and heroic souls in every age, we 
 would have been naked savages this moment, with pic- 
 tures of wild beasts tattoed upon our naked breasts, 
 dancing around a dried snake fetish; and I to-night thank 
 every good and noble man who stood up in the face of 
 opposition, and hatred, and death for what he believed 
 to be right. And then they screwed this thumbscrew 
 down as far as they could and threw him into some 
 dungeon, where, in throbbing misery and the darkness 
 of night, he dreams of the damned; but that was done 
 in the name of universal love. 
 
 I saw there at the same time what they called the 
 
488 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 4< collar of torture." Imagine a circle of iron, and on the 
 inside of that more than a hundred points as sharp as 
 needles. This being fastened upon the throat, the suf- 
 ferer could not sit down, he could not walk, he could 
 not stir without being punctured by those needles, and in 
 a little while the throat would begin to swell, and finally 
 suffocation would end the agonies of that man, when 
 may be the only crime he had committed was to say, 
 with tears upon his sublime cheeks, " I do not believe 
 that God, the father of us all, will damn to eternal pun- 
 ishment any of the children of men." Think of it! 
 
 And I saw there at the same time another instrument, 
 called " the scavenger's daughter," which resembles a 
 pair of shears, with handles where handles ought to be, 
 but at the points as well. And just above the pivot that 
 fastens the blades, a circle of iron through which the 
 hands would be placed, into the lower circles the feet, 
 and into the center circle the head would be pushed, and 
 in that position he would be thrown prone upon the 
 earth, and kept there until the strain upon the muscles 
 produced such agony that insanity and death would end 
 his pain. And that was done in the name of "Who- 
 soever smiteth thee upon one cheek, turn him the other 
 also." Think of it! 
 
 And I saw also the rack, with the windlass and chains, 
 upon which the sufferer was laid. About his ankles 
 were fastened chains, and about his wrists also, and then 
 priests began turning this windlass, and they kept turn- 
 ing until the ankles, the shoulders and the wrists were 
 all dislocated, arid the sufferer was wet with the sweat 
 of agony. And they had standing by a physician to feel 
 his pulse. What for? To save his life? Yes. What 
 
LIBERTY. 489 
 
 for? In mercy? No. Simply that they might preserve 
 his life, that they might rack him once again. And this 
 was done recollect it it was done in the name of civ- 
 ilization, it was done in the name of law and order, it 
 was done in the name of morality, it was done in the 
 name of religion, it was done in the name of God. 
 
 Sometimes when I get to reading about it, and when I 
 get to thinking about it, it seems to me that I have suf- 
 fered all these horrors myself, as though I had stood 
 upon the shore of exile and gazed with a tear-filled eye 
 toward home and native land; as though my nails had 
 been torn from my hands, and into my throat the sharp 
 needles had been thrust; as though my feet had been 
 crushed in iron boots; as though I had been chained in 
 the cells of the Inquisition, and had watched and waited 
 in the interminable darkness to hear the words of release; 
 as thongh I had been taken from my fireside, from my 
 wife and children, and taken to the public square, chained, 
 and fagots had been piled around me; as though the 
 flames had played around my limbs, and scorched the 
 sight from my eyes; as though my ashes had been scat- 
 tered to the four winds by the hands of hatred; as though 
 I had stood upon the scaffold and felt the glittering ax 
 fall upon me. And while I feel and see all this, I swear 
 that while I live I will do what little I can to augment 
 the liberty of man, woman and child. 
 
 My friends, it is all a question of sense; it is all a ques- 
 tion of honesty. If there is a man in this house who is 
 not willing to give to everybody else what he claims for 
 himself he is just so much nearer to the barbarian than 
 I am. It is a simple question of honesty; and the man 
 who is not willing to give to every other human being the 
 
490 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 same intellectual rights he claims himself is a rascal, 
 and you know it. It is a simple question. I say, of in- 
 tellectual development and of honesty. And I want to 
 say it now, so you will see it. You show me the narrow, 
 contracted man; you show me the man who claims every- 
 thing for himself and leaves nothing for others, and that 
 man has got a distorted and deformed brain. That is 
 the matter with him. He has no sense; not a bit. Let 
 me show you. 
 
 A little while ago I saw models of everything man has 
 made for his use and for his convenience. I saw all the 
 models of all the watercraft, from the dug-out, in which 
 floated a naked savage one of our ancestors a naked 
 savage, with teeth two inches long, with a spoonful of 
 brains in the back of his head; I saw the watercraft of 
 the world, from that dug-out up to a man-of-war that 
 carries a hundred guns and miles of canvas; from that 
 dug-out to the steamship that turns its brave prow from 
 the port of New York through 3,000 miles ot billows, 
 with a compass like a conscience, that does not miss 
 throb or beat of its mighty iron heart from one shore to 
 the other. I saw at the same time the weapons that 
 man has made, from a rude club, such as was grasped by 
 that savage when he crawled from his den, from his 
 hole in the ground, and hunted a snake for his dinner 
 from that club to the boomerang, to the sword, to the 
 cross-bow, to the blunderbus, to the flint-lock, to the 
 cap-lock, to the needle-gun, up *to the cannon cast by 
 Krupp, capable of hurling a ball of 2,000 pounds through 
 eighteen inches of solid steel. I saw, too, the arrno? 
 from the turtle-shell that our ancestor lashed upon hii 
 skin when he went out to ffght for his country, to the 
 
LIBERTY. 491 
 
 skin of the porcupine, with the quills all bristling, which 
 he pulled over his orthodox head to defend himself from 
 his enemies I mean, of course, the orthodox head of 
 that day up to the shirts of mail that were worn in the 
 middle ages, capable of resisting the edge of the sword 
 and the point of the spear; up to the iron-clad, to the 
 monitor completely clad in steel, capable only a few 
 years ago of defying the navies of the globe. 
 
 I saw at the same time the musical instruments, from 
 the tomtom, which is a hoop with a couple of strings of 
 rawhide drawn across it from that tomtom up to the 
 instruments we have to-day, which make the common 
 air blossom with melody. I saw, too, the paintings, 
 from the daub of yellow mud up to the pieces which adorn 
 the galleries of the world. And the sculpture, from the 
 rude gods, with six legs and a half dozen arms, and the 
 rows of ears, up to the sculpture of now, wherein the 
 marble is clad with such loveliness that it seems almost 
 a sacrilege to touch it; and in addition I saw there ideas 
 of books books written upon skins of wild beasts, 
 books written upon shoulder-blades of sheep; books writ- 
 ten upon leaves, upon bark, up to the splendid volumes 
 that adorn the libraries of our time. When I think of 
 libraries, I think of the remark of Plato, ' ' The house 
 that has a library in it has a soul." 
 
 I saw there all these things, and also the implements 
 of agriculture, from a crooked stick up to the plow which 
 makes it possible for a man to cultivate the soil without 
 being an ignoranris. I saw at the same time a row of 
 skulls, from the lowest skull that has ever been found; 
 skulls from the central portion of Africa, skulls from the 
 bushmen of Australia, up to the best skulls of the last 
 generation. 
 
49 2 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 And I notice that there was the same difference be- 
 tween those skulls that there is between the products of 
 those skulls. And I said to myself: " It is all a question 
 of intellectual development. It is a question of brain 
 and sinew." I noticed that there was the same differ- 
 ence between those skulls that there was between that 
 dug-out, and that man-of-war and that steamship. That 
 skull was low. It had not a forehead a quarter of an 
 inch high. But shortly after, the skulls became doming 
 and crowning, and getting higher and grander. That 
 skull was a den in which crawlee the base and meaner 
 instincts of mankind, and this skull was a temple in 
 which dwelt joy, liberty and love. So said I: "This is 
 all a question of brain, and anything that tends to de- 
 velop, intellectually, mankind, is the gospel we want." 
 
 Now I want te be honest with you. Honor bright! 
 Nothing like it in the world! No matter what I believe. 
 Now, let us be honest. Suppose a king, if there was a 
 king at the time this gentleman floated in the dug-out 
 and charmed his ears with the music of the tomtom; 
 suppose the king at that time, if there was one, and the 
 priest, if there was one, had said: "That dug-out is the 
 best boat that ever can be built. The pattern of that 
 came from on high, and any man who says he can im- 
 prove it, by putting a log or a stick in the bottom of it, 
 with a rag on the end, is an infidel." Honor bright, 
 what, in your judgment, wonld have been the effect upon 
 the circumnavigation of the globe? That is the question. 
 Suppose the king, if there was one, and the priest, if 
 there was one and I presume there was, because it was 
 a very ignorant age suppose they had said: "That tom- 
 tom is the most miraculous instrument of music that any 
 
LIBERTY. 493 
 
 man can conceive of; that is the kind of music they have 
 in heaven. An angel, sitting upon the golden edge of a 
 fleecy cloud, playing upon that tomtom, became so en- 
 raptured, so entranced with her own music, that she 
 dropped it, and that is how we got it and any man that 
 says that it can be improved by putting a back and front 
 to it, and four strings and a bridge on it, and getting 
 some horsehair and resin, is no better than one of the 
 weak and unregenerate. " 
 
 I ask you what effect would that have had upon mu- 
 sic? I ask you, honor bright, if that course had been 
 pursued, would the human ears ever have been enriched 
 witn the divine symphonies of Beethoven? That is th* 
 question. And suppose the king, if there was one, and 
 the priest had said: * ' That crooked stick is the best plow 
 we can ever have invented. The pattern of that plow 
 was given to a pious farmer in a holy dream, and that 
 twisted straw is the ne plus ultra of all twisted things; 
 and any man who says he can make an improvement, 
 we will twist him." Honor bright, what, in your judg- 
 ment, would have been the effect upon the agricultural 
 world? 
 
 Now, you see, the people said, "We want better weap- 
 ons with which to kill our enemies;" the people said, 
 " we want better plows;" the people said, "we want 
 better music;" the people said, "we want better paint- 
 ings; " and they said, ' ' whoever will give us better plows, 
 and better arms, and better paintings, and better music, 
 we will give him honor; we will crown him with glory; 
 we will robe him in the garments of wealth; " and every 
 incentive has been held ont to every human being to im- 
 prove something in every direction. And that is the 
 
494 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 reason the club is a cannon; that the reason the dug- 
 out is a steamship; that the reason the daub is a paint- 
 ing, and that is the reason that that piece of stone has 
 finally become a glorified statue. 
 
 Now, then, this fellow in the dug-out had a religion. 
 That fellow was orthodox. He had no doubt; he was 
 settled in his mind. He did not wish to be insulted. He 
 wanted the bark of his soul to lie at the wharf of ortho- 
 doxy, and rot in the sun. He wanted to hear the sails 
 of old opinions flap against the mast of old creeds. He 
 wanted to see the joints in the sides open and gape, as 
 though thirsty for water, and he said: " Now don't dis- 
 turb my opinions; you'll get my mind unsettled; I have 
 got it all made up, and I don't want to hear any infidel- 
 ity, either.'" As far as I am concerned, I want to be 
 out on the high sea; I want to take my chance with wind 
 and wave and star; and I had rather go down in the 
 glory and grandeur of the storm than to rot at any ortho- 
 dox wharf. Of course I mean by orthodoxy all that 
 don't agree with my doxy. Do you understand? 
 
 Now this man had a religion. That fellow believed 
 in hell. Yes, sir; and he thought he wonld be happier 
 in heaven if he could just lean over and see certain peo- 
 ple that he disliked, broiled. That fellow has had a 
 great many intellectual descendents. It is an unhappy 
 fact in nature that the ignorant multiply much faster 
 than the intellectual. This fellow believed in the devil, 
 and his devil had a cloven hoof. (Many people think I 
 have the same kind of footing.) He had a long tail, 
 armed with a fiery dart, and he breathed brimstone. 
 And do you know there has not been a patentable im- 
 provement made on that devil for 4,000 years? That 
 
LIBERTY. 495 
 
 fellow believed that God was a tyrant. That fellow be- 
 lieved that the earth was flat. That fellow believed, as 
 I told you, in a literal burning, seething lake of fire and 
 brimstone. That is what he believed in. That fellow, 
 too, had his idea of politics, and his idea was, "Might 
 makes right." And it will take thousands of years be- 
 fore the world will behevingly say, ' ' Right makes might. " 
 
 Now all I ask is the same privilege of improving on 
 that gentleman'e theology as upon his musical instru- 
 ment; the same right to improve upon his politics as 
 upon his dug-out. That is all. I ask for the human 
 soul the same liberty in every direction. And that is 
 all. That is the only crime that I have committed. 
 That is all. I say, let us have a chance. Let us think, 
 and let each one express his thoughts. Let us become 
 investigators, not followers; not cringers and crawlers. 
 If there is in heaven an infinite being, he never will be 
 satisfied with the worship of cowards and hypocrites. 
 Honest unbelief will be a perfume in heaven when hypoc- 
 risy, no matter however religious it may be outwardly, 
 will be a stench, That is my doctrine. That is all 
 there is to it; give every other human being all the 
 chance you claim for yourself. To keep your mind 
 open to the voices of nature, to new ideas, to new 
 thoughts, and to improve upon your doctrine whenever 
 you can; that is my doctrine. 
 
 Do you know we are improving all the time? Do you 
 know that the most orthodox people in this town to-day, 
 three hundred years ago would have been burned for 
 heresy? Do you know some ministers who denounce 
 me would have been in the Inquisition themselves two 
 hundred years ago? Do you know where once boirned 
 
496 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 and blazed the bivouac fires of the army of progress, the 
 altars of the church glow to-day? Do you know that the 
 church to-day occupies about the same ground that un- 
 believers did one hundred years ago? Do you know that 
 while they have followed this army of progress, protest- 
 ing and denouncing, they have had to keep within pro- 
 testing and denouncing distance, but they have followed 
 it? They have been the men, let me say, in the valley; 
 the men in swamps, shouting to and cursing the pio- 
 neers on the hills; the men upon whose forehead was the 
 light of the coming dawn, the coming day but they 
 have advanced. In spite of themselves, they have ad- 
 vanced! If they had not, I would not speak here to- 
 night. If they had not, not a solitary one of you could 
 have expressed your real and honest thought. But we 
 are advancing, and we are beginning to hold all kinds of 
 slavery in utter contempt; do you know that? And we 
 are beginning to question wealth and power; we are 
 questioning all creeds and all dogmas; and we are not 
 bowing down, as we used to, to a man simply because he 
 is in the robe of a clergyman, and we are not bowing 
 down to a man now simply because he is a king. No! 
 We are not bowing down simply because he is rich. We 
 used to worship the golden calves, but we do not now. 
 The worst you can say of an American, is, he worships 
 the gold of the calf, not the calf; and even the calves 
 are beginning to see this distinction. 
 
 It no longer fills the ambition of a man to be emperor 
 or king. The last Napoleon was not satisfied with being 
 Emperor of the French; he was not satisfied with hav- 
 ing a circlet of gold about his head; he wanted some ev- 
 idence that he had something within his head, so he wrote 
 
LIBERTY. 497 
 
 the life of Julius Caesar, that he might become a member 
 of the French Academy. Compare, for instance, in the 
 German Empire, King William and Bismarck. King 
 William is the one anointed of the most high, as they 
 claim the one upon whose head has been poured the 
 divine petroleum of authority. Compare him with Bis- 
 marck, who towers, an intellectual Colossus, above this 
 man. Go into England and compare George Eliot with 
 Queen Victoria Queen Victoria, clothed in the gar- 
 ments given to her by blind fortune and by chance. 
 George Elliot, robed in garments of glory, woven in the 
 loom of her own genius. Which does the world pay 
 respect to? I tell you we are advancing! The pulpit 
 does not do all the thinking; the pews do it; nearly all 
 of it. The world is advancing, and we question the au- 
 thority of those men who simply say " it is so." Down 
 upon your knees and admit it! 
 
 When I think of how much this world has suffered, I 
 am amazed- when I think of how long our fathers were 
 slaves, I am amazed. Why, just think of it! This 
 world has only been fit for a gentleman to live in fifty 
 years. No, it has not. It was not until the year 1808 
 that Great Britain abolished the slave trade. Up to 
 that time her judge, sitting upon the bench in the name 
 of justice; her priests, occupying the pulpit in the name 
 of universal love, owned stock in slave ships and lux- 
 uriated in the profits of piracy and murder. It was not 
 until the year 1808 that the United States abolished the 
 slave trade between this and other countries, but pre- 
 served it as between the States. It w r as not until the 
 28th day of August, 1833, that Great Britain abolished 
 human slavery in her colonies; and it was not until the 
 
498 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 1st day of January, 1863, that Abraham Lincoln wiped 
 from our flag the stigma of disgrace. Abraham Lincoln 
 in my judgment, the grandest man ever president of 
 the United States, and upon whose monument these 
 words could truthfully be written: "Here lies the only 
 man in the history of the world who, having been clothed 
 with almost absolute power, never abused it except on 
 the side of mercy." 
 
 Think, I say, how long we clung to the institution of 
 human slavery; how long lashes upon the naked back 
 were the legal tender for labor performed! Think of it! 
 when the pulpit of this country deliberately and willfully 
 changed the Cross of Christ into the whipping-post. 
 Think of it! And tell me then if I am right when I say 
 this world has only been fit for a gentleman to live in 
 fifty years. I hate with every drop of my blood every 
 form of tyranny. I hate every form of slavery. I hate 
 dictation I want something like liberty; and what do I 
 mean by that? The right to do anything that does not 
 interfere with the happiness of another, physically. Lib- 
 erty of thought includes the right to think right and the 
 right to think wrong. Why? Because that is the means 
 by which we arrive at truth; for if we knew the truth 
 before, we needn't think. Those men who mistake their 
 ignorance for facts, never do think. You may say to 
 me, "How far is it across this room?" I say 100 feet. 
 Suppose it is 105; have I committed any crime? I 
 made the best guess I could. You ask me about any 
 thing; 1 examine it honestly, and when I get through, 
 what should I tell you what I think or what you think? 
 What should I do?" 
 
 There is a book put in my hands. They say "That is 
 
LIBERTY. 499 
 
 the koran; that was written by inspiration; read it." I 
 read it. Chapter VII, entitled "The Cow;" chapter 
 IX, entitled "The Bee," and so on. I read it. When 
 I get through with it, suppose I think in my heart and 
 in my brain, "I don't believe a word of it; " and you 
 ask me, " What do you think of it?" Now, admitting 
 that I live in Turkey, and have a chance to get an 
 office, what should I say? Now, honor bright, should I 
 just make a clean breast of it and say " Upon my honor, 
 I don't believe it?" Then is it right for you to say 
 "That fellow will steal that fellow is a dangerous man 
 he is a robber? " Now, suppose I read the book 
 called the bible (and I read it, honor bright), and when I 
 get through with it I make up my mind that book was 
 written by men; and along comes the preacher of my 
 church, and he says "Did you read that book?" "I 
 did." " Do you think it is divinely inspired?" I say to 
 myself, " Now if I say it is not, they will never send me 
 to Congress from this district on earth." Now, honor 
 bright, what ought I to do? Ought I to say, "I have 
 read it. I have been honest about it; don't believe it?" 
 Now, ought I to say that, if that is a real transcript of 
 my mind, or ought I to commence hemming and hawing 
 and pretend that I do believe it, and go away with the 
 respect of that man, hating myself for a cringing coward? 
 Now which? For my part I would rather a man would 
 tell me what he honestly thinks, and he will preserve his 
 manhood. I had rather be a manly unbeliever than an 
 unmanly believer. I think I will stand higher at the 
 judgment day, if there is one, and stand with as good a 
 chance to get my case dismissed without costs as a man 
 who sneaks through life pretending he beeves what he 
 
5oo INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 does not. I tell you one thing; there is going to be one 
 free fellow in this world. I am going to say my say, I 
 tell you. I am going to do it kindly, I am going to do 
 it distinctly, but I am going to do it. 
 
 Now, if men have been slaves, what about women? 
 Women have been the slaves of slaves; and that's a 
 pretty hard position to occupy for life. They have been 
 the slaves of slaves; and in my judgment it took millions 
 of ages for women to come from the condition of abject 
 slavery up to the institution of marriage. Let me say 
 right here, to-night, I regard marriage as the holiest in- 
 stitution among men. Without the fireside there is no 
 human advancement; without the family relation, there 
 is no life worth living. Every good government is made 
 up of good families. The unit of government is family, 
 and anything that tends to destroy the family is perfectly 
 devilish and infamous. I believe in marriage, and I hold 
 in utter contempt the opinions of long-haired men and 
 short-haired women who denounce the institution of mar- 
 riage. Let me say right here and I have thought a 
 good deal about it let me say right here, the grandest 
 ambition that any man can possibly have is to so live 
 and so improve himself in heart and brain as to be 
 worthy of the love of some splendid woman; and the 
 grandest ambition of any girl is to make herself worthy 
 of the love and adoration of some magnificent man. 
 That is my idea, and there is no success in life without it. 
 If you are the grand emperor of the world, you had bet- 
 ter be the grand emperor of one loving and tender heart, 
 and she the grand empress of yours. The man who has 
 really won the love of one good woman in this world, I 
 do not care if he dies in the ditch a beggar, his life has 
 been a success. 
 
LIBERTY. 5OI 
 
 I say it took millions of years to come from the con- 
 dition of abject slavery up to the condition of marriage. 
 Ladies, the ornaments you bear upon your person to- 
 night are but the souvenirs of your mothers' bondage. 
 The chains around your necks and the bracelets clasped 
 upon your wrists by the thrilling hand of love, have been 
 changed by the wand of civilization from iron to shining, 
 glittering gold. But nearly every religion has accounted 
 for the devilment in this world by the crime of woman. 
 What a gallant thing that is! And if it is true, I had 
 rather live with the woman I love in a world full of 
 trouble, than to live in heaven with nobody but men. 
 
 I say that nearly every religion has accounted for all 
 the trouble in this world by the crime of woman. I 
 read in a book and I will say now that I cannot give 
 the exact language; my memory does not retain the 
 words but I can give the substance. I read in a book 
 that the supreme being concluded to make a world and 
 one man; that he took some nothing and made a world 
 and one man, and put this man in a garden: but he no- 
 ticed that he got lonesome; he wandered around as if he 
 was waiting for a train; there was nothing to interest 
 him; no news; no papers; no politics; no policy; and as 
 the devil had not yet made his appearance, there was no 
 chance for reconciliation; not even for civil service re- 
 form. Well, he would wander about this garden in this 
 condition until finally the supreme being made up his 
 mind to make him a companion; and having used np all 
 the nothing he originally took in making the world and 
 one man, he had to take a part of the man to start a 
 woman with, and so he caused a deep sleep to fall upon 
 
502 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 this man now, understand me, I didn't say this story is 
 true. After the sleep fell upon this man, he took a rib, 
 or, as the French would call it, a cutlet out of this man, 
 and from that he made a woman; and considering the 
 raw material, I look upon it as the most successful job 
 ever performed. Well, after He got the woman done, 
 he was brought to the man; not to see how she liked 
 liim, but to see how he liked her. He liked her, and 
 they started housekeeping; and they were told of certain 
 things they might do, and one thing they could not do 
 and of course they did it. I would have done it in fif- 
 teen minutes, and I know it. There wouldn't have been 
 an apple on that tree half an hour from date, and the 
 limbs could have been full of clubs. And then they were 
 turned out of the park, and an extra force was put on to 
 keep them from getting back. Then devilment com- 
 menced. The mumps, and the measles, and the whoop- 
 ing cough and the scarlet fever started in their race for 
 man, and they began to have the toothache, the roses 
 began to have thorns, and snakes began to have 
 poisoned teeth, and people began to divide about relig- 
 ion and politics; and the world has been full of trouble 
 from that day to this. Now, nearly all of the religions 
 of this world account for the existence of evil by such a 
 story as that . 
 
 I read in another book what appeared to be an account 
 of the same transaction. It was written about 4,000 
 'years before the other; but all commentators agree that 
 the one that was written last was the original, and that 
 the one that was written first was copied from the one 
 that was written last; but I would advise you all not to 
 allow your creed to be disturbed by a little matter of 
 
LIBERTY. 5O3 
 
 four or five thousand years. In this other story the 
 Supreme Brahma made up his mind to make the world 
 and man and woman; and he made the world, and he 
 made the man and he made the woman, and he put them 
 on the island of Ceylon; and according to the account, 
 it was the most beautiful island of which man can con- 
 ceive. Such birds, such songs, such flowers and such 
 verdure! And the branches of the trees were so ar- 
 ranged that when the wind swept through them every 
 tree was a thousand aeolian harps. The Supreme 
 Brahma when he put them there said, " Let them have 
 a period of courtship, for it is my desire and will that 
 true love should forever precede marriage." When I 
 read that, it was so much more beautiful and lofty than 
 the other, that I said to myself, " If either one of these 
 stories ever turns out to be true, I hope it will be this 
 one." 
 
 Then they had their courtship, with the nightingales 
 singing and the stars shining and the flowers blooming, 
 and they fell in love. Imagine the courtship! No pros- 
 pective fathers or mothers in law; no prying and gossip- 
 ing neighbors, nobody to say, ' * Young man, how do 
 you expect to support her? " Nothing of that kind. 
 They were married by the Supreme Brahma, and he 
 said to them: " Remain here; you must never leave this 
 island." Well, after a little while the man and his 
 name was Amond, and the woman's name was Heva 
 and the man said to Heva: "I believe I'll look about a 
 little;" and he went to the northern extremity of the 
 island, where there was a little, narrow neck of land con- 
 necting it with the mainland; and the devil, who is 
 always playing pranks with us, got up a mirage, and 
 
504 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 when he looked over to the mainland, such hills and 
 dells, vales and dales; such mountains, crowned with sil- 
 ver; such cataracts, clad in robes of beauty, did he see 
 there, that he went back and told Heva: "The country 
 over there is a thousand times better than this; let us 
 migrate." She, like every other woman that ever lived, 
 said: "Let well enough alone; we have all we want; let 
 us stay here. " But he said, ' ' No, let us go; " so she fol- 
 lowed him, and when they came to this narrow neck of 
 land he took her on his back like a gentleman and car- 
 ried her over. But the moment they got over they heard 
 a crash, and, looking back, discovered that this narrow 
 neck of land had fallen into the sea, with the exception 
 of now and then a rock, and the mirage had disappeared* 
 and there was naught but rocks and sand; and then a 
 voice called out, cursing them. Then it was that the 
 man spoke up and I have liked him ever since for it 
 " Curse me, but curse not her; it was not her fault, it 
 was mine." That's the kind of man to start a world 
 with. The Supreme Brahma said, " I will save her but 
 not thee." She spoke up out of her feelings of love, out 
 of a heart in which there was love enough to make all of 
 her daughters rich in holy affection, and said, ' ' If thou 
 wilt not spare him, .spare neither me; I do not wish to 
 live without him; I love him." Then the Supreme 
 Brahma said and I have liked him firstrate ever since I 
 read it " I will spare you both and watch over you." 
 
 Honor bright, isn't that the better story? 
 
 And from that same book I want to show you what 
 ideas some of these miserable heathen had the heathen 
 we are trying to convert. We send missionaries over 
 yonder to convert heathen there, and we send soldiers 
 
LIBERTY. 505 
 
 out on the plains to kill heathen there. If we can con- 
 vert the heathen, why not convert those nearest home? 
 Why not convert those we can get at? Why not con- 
 vert those who have the immense advantage of the exam- 
 ple of the average pioneer? But to show you the men 
 we are trying to convert in this book it says: " Man is 
 strength, woman is beauty; man is courage, woman is 
 love. When the one man loves the one woman and the 
 one woman loves the one man, the very angels leave 
 heaven and come and sit in that house and sing for joy.'' 
 /They are the men we are converting. Think of it! I 
 tell you when I read these things I begin to say, " Love 
 is not of any country; nobility does not belong exclu- 
 sively here; " and through all the ages there have been a 
 few great and tender souls lifted far above their fellows . 
 
 Now, my friends, it seems to me that the woman is 
 the equal of the man. She has all the rights I have, 
 and one more, and that is the right to be protected. 
 That's my doctrine. You are married; try and make 
 the woman you love happy; try and make the man you 
 love happy. Whoever marries simply for himself will 
 make a mistake; but whoever loves a woman so well 
 that he says "I will make her happy," makes no mis- 
 take; and so with the woman who says ' ' I will make him 
 happy." There is only one way to be happy, and that is 
 to make somebody else so, and you can't be happy cross- 
 lots; you have got to go the regular turnpike road. 
 
 If there is any man I detest, it is the man who thinks 
 he is the head of the famil} the man who thinks he is 
 "boss." That fellow in the dug-out used that word 
 "boss;" that was one of his favorite expressions that 
 he was *' boss." Imagine a young man and a young 
 
506 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 woman courting, walking out in the moonlight, and the 
 nightingale singing a song of pain and love, as though 
 the thorn touched her heart imagine them stopping 
 there in the moonlight and, starlight and song, and saying 
 " Now here, let's settle who's boss! " I tell you it is an 
 infamous word, and an infamous feeling a man who 
 is " boss," who is going to govern his family, and when 
 he speaks let all the rest of them be still some mighty 
 idea is about to be launched from his mouth. Do you 
 know I dislike this man unspeakably; and a cross man I 
 hate above all things. 
 
 What right has he to murder the sunshine of the day? 
 What right has he to assassinate the joy of life? When 
 you go home you ought to feel the light there is in the 
 house; if it is in the night it will burst out of doors and 
 windows and illuminate the darkness. It is just as well 
 to go home a ray of sunshine as an old sour, cross cur- 
 mudgeon, who thinks he is the head of the family. Wise 
 men think their mighty brains have been in a turmoil; 
 they have been thinking about who will be alderman 
 from the fifth ward; they have been thinking about pol- 
 itics; great and mighty questions have been engaging their 
 minds; they have bought calico at 8 cents, or 6, and 
 want to sell it for 7. Think of the intellectual strain that 
 must have been upon a man, and when he gets home 
 everybody else in the house must look out for his com- 
 fort. A woman who has only taken care of five or six 
 children, and one or two of them may be sick; has been 
 nursing them and singing to them, and taking care of 
 them, and trying to make one yard of cloth do the work 
 of two she, of course, is fresh and fine, and ready to 
 wait upon this great gentleman the head of the family. 
 I don't like him a bit! 
 
LIBERTY. 507 
 
 Do you know another thing? I despise a stingy man. 
 I don't see how it is possible for a man to die worth fifty 
 millions of dollars, or ten millions of dollars, in a city 
 full of want, when he meets almost every day the with- 
 ered hand of beggary and the white lips of famine. How 
 a man can withstand all that, and hold in the clutch of 
 his greed twenty or thirty millions of dollars, is past my 
 comprehension. I do not see how he can do it. I 
 should not think he could do it any more than he could 
 keep a pile of lumber where hundreds and thousands of 
 men were drowning in the sea. I should not think he 
 could do it. 
 
 Do you know I have known men who would trust 
 their wives with their hearts and their honor, but not 
 with their pocketbook ; not with a dollar. When I see 
 a man of that kind I always think he knows which of 
 these articles is the most valuable. Think of making 
 your wife a beggar! Think of her having to ask you 
 every day for a dollar, or for two dollars, err for fifty 
 cents! "What did you do with that dollar I gave you 
 last week?" Think of having a wife that was afraid of 
 you! What kind of children do you expect to have with 
 a beggar and a coward for their mother? Oh, I tell you, 
 if you have but a dollar in the world, and you have got 
 to spend it, spend it like a king; spend it as though it 
 were a dry leaf and you the owner of unbounded forests! 
 That's the way to spend it! I had rather be a beggar 
 and spend my last dollar like a king, than he a king and 
 spend my money like a beggar. If it's got to go, let 
 it go. 
 
 Get the best you can for your family try to look as 
 well as you can yourself. When you used to go court- 
 
508 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 ing, how nice you looked! Ah, your eye was bright, 
 your step was light, and you just put on the very best 
 look you could. Do you know that it is insufferable 
 egotism in you to suppose that a woman is going to love 
 you always looking as bad as you can? Think of it! 
 Any woman on earth will be true to you forever when 
 you do your level best. Some people tell me, " Your 
 doctrine about loving, and wives, and all that is splendid 
 for the rich, but it won't do for the poor." I tell you 
 to-night there is on the average more love in the homes 
 of the poor than in the palaces of the rich; and the 
 meanest hut with love in it is fit for the gods, and a pal- 
 ace without love is a den only fit for wild beasts. That's 
 my doctrine! 
 
 You can't be so poor but that you can help somebody. 
 Good nature is the cheapest commodity in the world; 
 and love is the only thing that will pay 10 per cent to 
 borrower and lender both. Don't tell me that you have 
 got to be rich! We have all a false standard of great- 
 ness in the United States. We think here that a man 
 to be great, must be notorious; must be extremely 
 wealthy, or his name must be between the lips of rumor. 
 It is all nonsense! It is not necessary to be rich to be 
 great, or to be powerful to be happy; and the happy man 
 is the successful man. Happiness is the legal tender of 
 the soul. Joy is wealth. 
 
 A little while ago I stood by the grave of the old 
 Napoleon, a magnificent tomb, fit for a dead deity al- 
 most, and gazed into the great circle at the bottom of it. 
 In the sarcophagus, of black Egyptian marble, at last 
 rest the ashes of that restless man. I looked over the 
 balustrade, and I thought about the career of Napoleon. 
 
LIBERTY. 509 
 
 I could see him walking upon the banks of the Seine con- 
 templating suicide, I saw him at Toulon. I saw him 
 putting down the mob in the streets of Paris. I saw him 
 at the head of the army of Italy. I saw him crossing the 
 bridge at Lodi. I saw him in Egypt, fighting the bat- 
 tle of the pyramids. I saw him cross the Alps, and min- 
 gle the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags. I 
 saw him at Austerlitz. I saw him with his army scat- 
 tered and dispersed before the blast. I saw him at Leip- 
 sic when his army was defeated and he was taken cap- 
 tive. I saw him escape. I saw him land again upon 
 French soil, and retake an empire by the force of his 
 own genius. I saw him captured once more, and again 
 at St. Helena, with his arms behind him, gazing out upon 
 the sad and solemn sea; and I thought of the orphans 
 and widows he had made. I thought of the tears that 
 had been shed for his glory. 
 
 I thought of the only woman who ever loved him, who 
 had been pushed from his heart by the cold hand of am- 
 bition; and as I looked at the sarcophagus, I said, " I 
 would rather have been a French peasant and worn 
 wooden shoes; I would rather have lived in a hut, with 
 a vine growing over the door, and the grapes growing 
 and ripening in the autumn sun; I would rather have 
 been that peasant, with my wife by my side and my 
 children upon my knees, twining their arms of affection 
 about me; I would rather have been that poor French 
 peasant, and gone down at last to the eternal promiscuity 
 of the dust, followed by those who loved me; I would a 
 thousand times rather have been that French peasant 
 than that imperial personative of force and murder." 
 And so I would, ten thousand times. 
 
510 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 It is not necessary to be great to be happy; it is not 
 necessary to be rich to be just and generous, and to have 
 a heart filled with divine affection. No matter whether 
 you are rich or poor, use, your wife as though she were 
 a splendid creation, and she will fill your life with per- 
 fume and joy. And do you know, It is a splendid thing 
 for me to think that the woman you really love will 
 never grow old to you? Through the wrinkles of time, 
 through the music of years, if you really love her, you 
 will always see the face you loved and won. And a 
 woman who really loves a man, does not see that he 
 grows older; he is not decrepit; he does not tremble; he 
 is not old; she always sees the same gallant gentleman 
 who won her hand and heart. I like to think of it in 
 that way I like to think of all passions; love is eternal, 
 and, as Shakespeare says, ' ' Although Time, with his 
 sickle, can rob ruby lips and sparkling eyes, let him reach 
 as far as he can, he cannot quite touch Ibve; that reaches 
 even to the end of the tomb." And to love in that way, 
 and then go down the hill of life together, and as you 
 go down hear, perhaps, the laughter of grandchildren 
 the birds of joy and love sing once more in the leafless 
 branches of age. I believe in the fireside. I believe in 
 the democracy of home. I believe in the republicanism 
 of the family. I believe in liberty and equality with 
 those we love. 
 
 If women have been slaves, what shall I say of 
 children; of the little children in the alleys and sub-cel- 
 lars; the little children who turn pale when they hear 
 their father's footsteps; little children who run away 
 when they only hear their names called by the lips of a 
 mother; little children the children of poverty, the 
 
LIBERTY. 511 
 
 children of crime, the children of brutality wherever you 
 are flotsam and jetsam upon the wild, mad sea of life, 
 my heart goes out to you, one and all. I tell you the 
 children have the same rights that we have, and we 
 ought to treat them as though they were human beings; 
 and they should be reared by love, by kindness, by ten- 
 derness, and not by brutality. That is my idea of 
 children. When your little child tells a lie, don't rush 
 at him as though the world were about to go into bank- 
 ruptcy. Be honest with him. A tyrant father will have 
 liars for children; do you know that? A lie is born of 
 tyranny upon the one hand and weakness upon the 
 other, and when you rush at a poor little boy with a club 
 in your hand, of course he lies. I thank Mother Nature 
 that she has put ingenuity enough in the breast of a child, 
 when attacked by a brutal parent, to throw up a little 
 breastwork in the shape of a lie. 
 
 When one of your children tells a lie, be honest with 
 him; tell him you have told hundreds of them yourself. 
 Tell him it is not the best way; you have tried it. Tell 
 him, as the man did in Maine when his boy left home: 
 "John, honesty is the best policy; I have tried both." 
 Just be honest with him. Imagine now; you are about 
 to whip a child five years of age. What is the child to 
 do? Suppose a man, as much larger than you are larger 
 than a child five years old, should come at you with lib- 
 erty-pole in hand, and in a voice of thunder shout, "Who 
 broke the plate? " There is not a solitary one of you 
 who wouldn't swe^ar you never saw it, or that it was 
 cracked when you found it. Why not be honest with 
 these children? Just imagine a man who deals in stocks 
 putting false rumors afloat! 
 
512 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 Think of a lawyer beating his own flesh and blood for 
 evading the truth, when he makes half of his own living 
 that way! Think of a minister punishing his child for 
 not telling all he thinks! Just think of it! When your 
 child commits a wrong, take it in your arms; let it feel 
 your heart beat against its heart; let the child know 
 that you really and truly and sincerely love it. Yet 
 some Christians, good Christians, when a child commits 
 a fault, drive it from the door, and say, " Never do you 
 darken this house again." Think of that! And then 
 these same people will get down on their knees and ask 
 God to take care of the child they have driven from home. 
 I will never ask God to take care of my chil dren unless I 
 am doing my level best in that same direction. But I 
 will tell you what I say to my children: "Go where 
 you will; commit what crime you may; fall to what 
 depth of degradation you may; you can never commit 
 any crime that will shut my door, my arms, my heart to 
 you; as long as I live you shall have no more sincere 
 friend." 
 
 Do you know, I have seen some people who acted as 
 though they thought when the Savior said, " Suffer little 
 children to come unto me, for such is the Kingdom of 
 Heaven," that he had a rawhide under his mantle and 
 made that remark to get the children within striking dis- 
 tance. I don't believe in the government of the lash. 
 If any one of you ever expect to whip your children 
 again after you hear me, I want you to have a photo- 
 graph taken of yourself when you are in the act, with 
 your face red with vulgar anger; and then the face of 
 the little child, with eyes swimming in tears, and the lit- 
 tle chin dimpled with fear, like a piece of water struck 
 
LIBERTY. 513 
 
 by a sudden, cold wind. Have the picture taken. If 
 that little child should die, I cannot find a sweeter way 
 to spend an autumn afternoon than to go out to the cem- 
 etery, when the maples are clad in bright colors, and lit- 
 tle scarlet runners are coming, like poems of regret, 
 from the sad heart of the earth than to go out to the 
 cemetery and sit down upon the grave and look at this 
 photograph, and think of the flesh, now dust, that you 
 beat. 
 
 I tell you it is wrong; it is no way to raise children! 
 Make your home happy. Be honest with them, divide 
 fairly with them in everything. Give them a little lib- 
 erty, and you cannot drive them out of the house. They 
 will want to stay there. Make home pleasant. Let 
 them play any game they want to. Don't be so foolish 
 as to say: " You may roll balls on the ground, but you 
 must not roll them on green cloth. You may knock 
 them with a mallet, but you must not push them with a 
 cue. You may play with little pieces of paper which 
 have * Authors' written on them, but you must not have 
 'keerds.'' Think of it! "You may go to a minstrel 
 show, where people blacken themselves up and degrade 
 themselves, and imitate humanity below themselves, but 
 you must not go to the theater and see the characters of 
 immortal genius put upon the stage." Why? Well, I 
 can't think of any reason in the world except " minstrel " 
 is a word of two syllables and theater has three. Let 
 children have some daylight at home if you want to 
 keep them there, and don't commenee at the cradle and 
 yell, "Don't!" "Don't!" "Stop!" That is nearly all 
 that is said to a youngone from the cradle until he is 
 twenty-one years old, and when he comes of age other 
 
514 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 people begin saying "Don't!" And the church says 
 "Don't!" And the party that he belongs to says 
 "Don't!" I despise that way of going through this 
 world. Let us have a little, liberty just a little bit. 
 
 There is another thing. In old times, you know, 
 they thought some days were too good for a child to en- 
 joy himself in. When I was a boy Sunday was consid- 
 ered altogether too good to be happy in; and Sunday 
 used to commence then when the sun went down Satur- 
 day night. That was to get good ready a kind of run- 
 ning jump; and when the sun went down, a darkness 
 ten thousand times deeper than that of night fell on that 
 house. Nobody said a word then; nobody laughed; and 
 the child that looked the sickest was regarded the most 
 pious. You couldn't crack hickory nuts; you couldn't 
 chew gum; and if you laughed, it was only another evi- 
 dence of the total depravity of man. That was a sol- 
 emn night; and the next morning everybody looked sad, 
 mournful, dyspeptic and thousands of people think they 
 have religion when they have only got dyspepsia thou- 
 sands! 
 
 But there is nothing in this world that would break np 
 the old orthodox churches as quick as some specific for 
 dyspepsia some sure cure. 
 
 Then we went to church, and the minister was up in 
 a pulpit about twenty feet high, with a little sounding- 
 board over him, and he commenced with Firstly and 
 went on to about twenty-thirdly, and then around by 
 way of application, and then divided it off again once or 
 twice, and after having put in about two hours, he got to 
 Revelations. We were not allowed to have any fire, 
 even if it was in the winter. It was thought to be out- 
 
LIBERTY. 5 I 5 
 
 rageous to be comfortable while you are thanking the 
 Lord, and the first church that ever had a stove put in it 
 in New England was broken up on that account. Then 
 we went a-nooning, and then came the catechism, the 
 chief end of man. We went through that; and then 
 this same sermon was preached, commencing at the other 
 end, and going back. After that was over we started 
 for home, solemn and sad " not a soldier discharged his 
 farewell shot;" not a word was said and when we got 
 home, if we had been good boys, they would take us up 
 to the graveyard to cheer us up a little. 
 
 It did cheer rne! When I looked at those tombs the 
 comforting reflection came to my mind that this kind of 
 thing couldn't last always. Then we had some certain 
 books that we read just by way of cheerfulness. There 
 wasMilner's <l History of the Wilderness," Baxter's <( Call 
 to the Unconverted," and Jenkins' "On the Atonement." 
 I used to read Jenkins' "On the Atonement;" and I 
 have often thought the atonement would have to be very 
 broad in its provisions to cover the case of a man who 
 would write a book like that for a boy to read. Well, 
 you know, the Sunday had to go at last; and the mo- 
 ment the sun went down Sunday night we were free. 
 About 4 or 5 o'clock we would go to see how the sun was 
 coming out. Sometimes it seemed to me that it was 
 just stopping from pure cussedness; but finally it had to 
 go down, and when the last rim of light sank below the 
 horizon, out would come our traps, and we would give 
 three cheers for liberty once more. In those times it 
 was thought wrong for a child to laugh on Sunday. Think 
 of that! A little child a little boy could go out in 
 the garden, and there would be a tree laclen with blos- 
 soms, and this little fellow would lean up against the 
 
516 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 tree, and there would be a bird singing and swinging, 
 and thinking about four little speckled eggs, warmed by 
 the breast of its mate singing and swinging, and the mu- 
 sic coming rippling out of its throat, and the flowers 
 blossoming and the air full of perfume, and the great 
 white clouds floating in the sky; and that little boy would 
 lean up against that trunk, and think of hell. 
 
 That's true! I have heard them preach when I sat in 
 the pew, and my feet didn't come within eighteen inches 
 of the floor, about that hell. And they said, "Suppose 
 that once in a million years a bird would come from 
 some far distant planet, and carry og in its bill a grain of 
 sand, the time would finally come when the last atom 
 composing this earth would be carried away;" and the 
 old preacher said, in order to impress upon the boys the 
 length of time they would have to stay, "it wouldn't be 
 sun-up in hell yet." 
 
 Think of that to preach to children! I tell you, my 
 friends, no day can be so sacred but that the laugh of a 
 little child will make it holier still no day! And yet, at 
 that time, the minds of children were polluted by this in- 
 famous doctrine of eternal punishment; and I denounce 
 it to-day as an infamous doctrine beyond the power of 
 language to express. Where did that doctrine of eternal 
 punishment for the children of men come from? It came 
 from that wretch in the dug-out. Where did he get it? 
 It was a souvenir from the animals, and the doctrine of 
 eternal punishment was born in the eyes of snakes when 
 they hung in fearful coils watching for their prey. It 
 was a doctrine born of the howling and barking and 
 growling of wild beasts; it was born in the grin of the 
 hyenas, and of the depraved chatter of the baboons; and 
 
LIBERTY . 517 
 
 I despise it with every drop of my blood. Tell me there 
 is a God in the serene heaven that will damn his children 
 for the expression of an honest belief! 
 
 There have been more men who died in their sins, ac- 
 cording to your orthodox religion, than there are leaves 
 on all the forests of this world ten thousand times over. 
 Tell me they are in hell ! Tell me they are to be pun- 
 ished for ever and ever! I denounce it as an infamous 
 lie! 
 
 And when the great ship containing the hope and as- 
 piration of the world, when the great ship freighted with 
 mankind goes down in the night of death and disaster, I 
 will go down with the ship. I don't want to paddle off 
 in any orthodox canoe. I will go down with the ship; 
 and if there is a God who will damn his children forever 
 I had rather go to hell than to go to heaven and keep 
 the society of such an infamous Deity. 
 
 I make my choice now. I despise that doctrine, and 
 I'll tell you why. It has covered the cheeks of this 
 world with tears. It has polluted the heart of children. 
 It has been a pain and terror to every man that ever be- 
 lieved it. It has filled the good with horror and fear, but 
 it has had no effect upon the infamous and base. I tell 
 you it is a bad doctrine. I read in the papers to-day 
 what Henry Ward Beecher, whom I regard as the most 
 intellectual preacher in the pulpit of the United States 
 I will read from the paper what he said yesterday, and 
 you will see an abstract of it in the New York Times of 
 to-day. He has had the courage, and he has had the 
 magnificent manhood, to say: 
 
 "I say to you, and I swear to you, by the wounds in 
 the hands of Christ I swear to you by the wounds in 
 
5i8 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 the body and feet of Christ, that this doctrine of eternal 
 hell is a most infamous nightmare of theology! It never 
 should be preached again." 
 
 What right have you, sir; you, minister, as you are, to 
 stand at the portal of eternity, or the portal of the tomb, 
 and fill the future with horror and with fear? You have 
 no right to do it. I don't believe it, and neither do you. 
 You would not sleep one night. Any man who believes 
 it, who has got a decent heart in his bosom, will go in- 
 sane. Yes, sir, a man that really believes that doctrine 
 and does not go insane, has got the conscience of a snake 
 and the intellect of a hyena. O! I thank my stars that 
 you do not believe it. You cannot believe it, and you 
 never will believe it. Old Jonathan Edwards, the dear 
 old soul, he is in heaven I suppose, said: "Can the be- 
 lieving husband in heaven be happy with his unbeliev- 
 ing wife in hell? Can the believing father in heaven be 
 happy with his unbelieving children in hell? Can the 
 loving wife in heaven be happy with her unbelieving hus- 
 band in hell? I tell you yea. Such will be their sense 
 of justice that it will increase rather than diminish their 
 happiness." 
 
 Think of these infamous doctrines that have been 
 taught in the name of religion! Do not stuff these 
 things into the minds of your children. Give them a 
 chance. Let them read. Let them think. Do not 
 treat your children like posts, to be set in the orthodox 
 road, but like trees, that need light and sun and air. Be 
 honest with them. Be fair with them. In old times 
 they used to make all children go to bed when they were 
 not sleepy, and all of them got up when they were sleepy. 
 I say let them go to bed when they are sleepy and 
 
LIBERTY. 519 
 
 get up when they are not. But they say that will do for 
 the rich, but not for the poor. Well, if the poor have 
 to wake their children early in the morning, it is as easy to 
 wake them with a kiss as with a club. I believe in let- 
 ting children commence at which end of the dinner they 
 want to. 
 
 Let them eat what they want. It is their business. 
 They know what they want to eat. And it they have 
 had their liberty from the first, they can beat any doctor 
 in the world. All the improvement that has ever been 
 made in medicine has been made by the recklessness of 
 patients. Yes, sir. Thousands and thousands of years 
 the doctors wouldn't let a man have water in fever. 
 Every now and then some fellow got reckless and said: 
 "I will die, I am so thirsty, "and drank two or three 
 quarts of water and got well. And they kept that up un- 
 til finally the doctors said, " that is the best thing for a 
 fever you can do. " 
 
 I have more confidence to agree with nature about 
 these things than any of the conclusions of the schools. 
 
 Just let your children have freedom, and they will fall 
 right into your ways and do just as you do. But you 
 try to make them, and there is some magnificent, splen- 
 did thing in the human heart that will not be driven. 
 And do you know it is the luckiest thing for this world 
 that ever happened that people are so. What would we 
 have been if the people in any age of the world had 
 done just as the doctors told them? They would have 
 been all dead. What would we have done if, at any 
 age of the world, we had followed implicitly the direction 
 of the church? We would have been all idiots, everyone. 
 
 It is a splendid thing that there is always some fellow 
 
520 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 who won't mind, and will think for himself. And I be- 
 lieve in letting children think for themselves. I believe 
 in having a family like a democracy. If there is any- 
 thing splendid in this world it is a home of that kind. 
 They used to tell us, <( Let your victuals close your 
 mouth. " We used to eat as though it was a religious 
 performance. I like to see the children about, and 
 every one telling what he has seen and heard. I like to 
 hear the clatter of the knives and spoons mingling with 
 the laughter of their voices. I had rather hear it than 
 any opera that has ever been put upon the boards. Let 
 them have liberty; let them have freedom, and I tell you 
 your children will love you to death. 
 
 Now, I have some excuses to offer for the race to which 
 I belong. I have two. My first excuse is that this is 
 not a very good world to raise folks in anyway. It is 
 not very well adapted to raising magnificent people. 
 There's only a quarter of it land to start with. It is 
 three times better fitted for raising fish than folks, and 
 in that one quarter of land there is not a tenth part fit 
 to raise people on. You can't raise people without a 
 good climate. You have got to have the right kind of 
 climate, and you have got to have certain elements in 
 the soil, or you can't raise good people. Do you know 
 that there is only a little zig-zag strip around the world 
 within which have been produced all men of genius? 
 
 The southern hemisphere has never produced a man of 
 genius, never; and never will until civilization, fighting 
 the heat that way and the cold this, widens this portion 
 of the earth until it is capable of producing great men 
 and great women. It is the same with men that it is with 
 vegetation; you go into a garden, and find there flowers 
 
LIBERTY. 521 
 
 growing. And as you go up the mountain, the birch 
 and the hemlock and the spruce are to be found. And 
 as you go toward the top, you find little, stunted trees 
 getting a miserable subsistence out of the crevices of the 
 rocks, and you go on up and up and up, until finally you 
 find at the top little moss-like freckles. You might as 
 well try to raise flowers where those freckles grow as to 
 raise great men and women where you havn't got the 
 soil. 
 
 I don't believe man ever came to any high station 
 without woman. There has got to be some restraint, 
 something to make you prudent, something to make you 
 industrious. And in a country where you don't need any 
 bedquilt but a cloud, revolution is the normal condition 
 of the people. You have got to have the fireside; you 
 have got to have the home, and there by the fireside will 
 grow and bloom the fruits of the human race. I recol- 
 lect a while ago I was in Washington when they were 
 trying to annex Santo Domingo. They said: "We 
 want to take in Santo Domingo." Said I: "We don't 
 want it." "Why," said they, "it is the best climate 
 the earth can produce. There is everything you want." 
 "Yes, "said I, "but it won't produce men. We don't 
 want it. We have got soil enough now. Take 5,000 
 ministers from New England, 5,000 presidents of col- 
 leges, and 5,000 solid business men, and their families, 
 and take them to Santo Domingo; and then you will see 
 the effect of climate. The second generation, you will 
 see barefooted boys riding bareback on a mule, with 
 their hair sticking out of the top of their sombreros, with 
 a rooster under each arm, going to a cock-fight on Sun- 
 day. " 
 
522 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 You have got to have the soil; you have got to nave 
 the climate, and you have got to have another thing 
 you have got to have the fireside. That is one excuse I 
 have for us. 
 
 The next excuse is that I think we came up from the 
 lower animals. Else how can you account for all this 
 snake and hyena and jackal in man? Now, when I first 
 heard that doctrine, I didn't like it. I felt sorry for peo- 
 ple who had nothing but ancestors to be proud of. It 
 touched my heart to think that they would have to go 
 back to the Duke Orangoutang or the Duchess Chimpan- 
 zee. I was sorry, and I hated to believe it. I don't 
 know that it is the truth now. I am not satisfied upon 
 that question; I stand about eight to seven. 
 
 I thought it over. I read about it. 1 read about 
 these rudimentary bones and muscles. I didn't like that. 
 I read that everybody had rudimentary muscles coming 
 from the ear right down here (indicating); that the most 
 intellectual people in the world have got them. I say, 
 "What are they?" "Rudimentary muscles." "What 
 kind of muscles?" " Muscles that your ancestors used 
 to have fully developed." "What for?" "To flap 
 their ears with." 
 
 Weli, whether we ever had them or not, I know of lots 
 of men who ought to have them yet. And finally I said, 
 "Well, I guess we came up from the lower animals." I 
 thought it all over; the best I could, and I said, " I guess 
 we did." And after a while I began to like it, and I like 
 it better now than I did before. 
 
 Do you know that I would rather belong to a race 
 that started with skull-less vertebrae in the dim Lauren- 
 tian seas, wiggling without knowing why they wiggled, 
 
LIBERTY. 523 
 
 swimming without knowing where they were going; but 
 kept developing and getting a little further up and a lit- 
 tle further up, all through the animal world, and finally 
 striking this chap in the dug-out A getting a little big- 
 ger, and this fellow calling that fellow a heretic, and that 
 fellow calling the other an infidel, and so on. For in 
 the history of the world, the man who has been ahead has 
 always been called a heretic. Recollect this! 
 
 I would rather come from a race that started from that 
 skull-less vertebrae, and came up and up and up, and 
 finally produced Shakespeare, who found the human in- 
 tellect wallowing in a hut, and touched it with a wand 
 of his genius, and it became a palace dome and pinna- 
 cle. I would rather belong to a race that commenced 
 then, and produced Shakespeare, with the eternal hope 
 of an infinite future for the children of progress leading 
 from the far horizon, beckoning men forward forward 
 and onward forever. I had rather belong to this race, 
 and commence there, with that hope, than to have 
 sprung from a perfect pair on which the Lord has lost 
 money every day since. 
 
 These are the excuses I have for my race. 
 
 Now, my friends, let me say another thing. I do not 
 pretend to have floated even with the heights of thought; 
 I do not pretend to have fathomed the abyss. All I 
 pretend is to give simply my honest thought. Every 
 creed that we have to-day has upon it the mark of whip 
 and chain and fagot. I do not want it. Free labor 
 will give us wealth, and has given us wealth, and why? 
 Because a free brain goes into partnership with a free 
 hand. That is why. And when a man works for his 
 wife and children, the problem of liberty is, how to do 
 
524 INGERSOLLS LECTURES. 
 
 the most work in the shortest space of time; but the 
 problem of slavery is, how to do the least work in the 
 longest space of time. Slavery is poverty; liberty is 
 wealth. 
 
 It is the same in thought. Free thought will give us 
 truth; and the man who is not in favor of free thought 
 occupies the same relation to those he can govern that 
 the slaveholder occupied to his slaves, exactly. Free 
 thought will give us wealth. There has not been a gen- 
 eration of free thought yet. It will be time to write a 
 creed when there have been a few generations of free-^ 
 brained men and splendid women in this world. I don't 
 know what the future may bring forth; I don't know 
 what inventions are in the brain of the future; I don't 
 know what garments may be woven, with the years to 
 come; but I do know, coming from the infinite sea of 
 the future, there will never touch this ' ' bank and shoal of 
 time " a greater blessing, a grander glory, than liberty 
 for man, woman and child. 
 
 Oh, liberty! Float not forever in the far horizon! 
 Remain not forever in the dream of the enthusiast and 
 the poet and the philanthropist! But come and take up 
 thine abode with the children of men forever! 
 
LNGERSOLLS LECTURE 
 
 ON 
 
 ORTHODOXY" 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: It is utterly inconceivable 
 that any man believing in the truth of the Christian 
 religion could publicly deny it, because he who believes 
 in that religion would believe that, by a public denial, he 
 would peril the eternal salvation of his soul. It is con- 
 ceivable, and without any great effort of the mind, that 
 millions who don't believe in the Christian religion should 
 openly say that they did. In a country where religion is 
 supposed to be in power where it has rewards for pre- 
 tense, where it pays a premium upon hypocrisy, where it 
 at least is willing to purchase silence it is easily con- 
 ceivable that millions pretend to believe what they do 
 not. And yet I believe it has been charged against my- 
 self, not only that I was insincere, but that I took the 
 side I am on for the sake of popularity; and the audience 
 to-night goes far toward justifying the accusation. 
 
 It gives me immense pleasure to say to this immense 
 
 525 
 
526 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 audience that orthodox religion is dying out of the civil- 
 ized world. It is a sick man. It has been attacked 
 with two diseases softening of the brain and ossification 
 of the heart. It is a religion that no longer satisfies the 
 intelligence of this country; a religion that no longer 
 satisfies the brain; a religion against which the heart of 
 every civilized man and woman protests. It is a religion 
 that gives hope only to a few; a religion that puts a 
 shadow upon the cradle; a religion that wraps the coffin 
 in darkness and fills the future of mankind with flame 
 and fear. It is a religion that I am going to do what 
 little I can while I live to destroy; and in its place I 
 want humanity, I want good-fellowship, I want a brain 
 without a chain, I want a religion that every good heart 
 will cheerfully applaud. 
 
 We must remember that this is a world of progress, a 
 world of change. There is perpetual death and there is 
 perpetual birth . By the grave of the old forever stands 
 youth and joy; and, when an old religion dies, a better 
 one is born. When we find but that an assertion is a 
 falsehood, a shining truth takes its place, and we need 
 not fear the destruction of the false. The more false we 
 destroy the more room there will be for the true. There 
 was a time when the astrologer sought to read in the 
 stars the fate of men and nations. The astrologer has 
 faded from the world, but the astronomer has taken his 
 place. There was a time when the poor alchemist, bent 
 and wrinkled and old, over his crucible, endeavored to 
 find some secret by which he could change the baser 
 metals into purest gold. The alchemist is gone; the 
 chemist took his place; and, although he finds nothing 
 to change metals into gold, he finds something that cov- 
 
ORTHODOXY. 527 
 
 ers the earth with wealth. There was a time when the 
 soothsayer and auger flourished, and after them came 
 the parson and the priest; and the parson and priest 
 must go. The preacher must go, and in his place must 
 come the teacher that real interpreter of nature. We 
 are done with the supernatural. We are through with 
 the miraculous and the wonderful. There was once a 
 prophet who pretended to read in the book of the future. 
 His place was taken by the philosopher, who reasons 
 from cause to effect a man who finds the facts by which 
 he is surrounded and endeavors to reason from these 
 premises, and to tell what in all probability will happen 
 in the future. The prophet is gone, the philosopher is 
 here. There was a time when man sought aid entirely 
 from heaven when he prayed to the deaf sky. There 
 was a time when the world depended upon the supernat- 
 uralist. That time in Christendom has passed. We 
 now depend upon the naturalist not upon the disciple 
 of faith, but upon the discoverer of facts upon the 
 demonstrator of truth. At last we are beginning to 
 build upon a solid foundation, and just as we progress 
 the supernatural must die. 
 
 Religion of the supernatural kind will fade from this 
 world, and in its place we will have reason. In the place 
 of the worship of something we know not of, will be the 
 religion of mutual love and assistance -the great religion 
 of reciprocity. Superstition must go. Science will re- 
 main. The church, however, dies a little hard. The 
 brain of the world is not yet developed. There are 
 intellectual diseases the same as diseases of the body. 
 Intellectual mumps and measles still afflict mankind. 
 Whenever the new comes, the old protests, and the old 
 
528 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 fights for its place as long as it has a particle of power. 
 And we are now having the same warfare between super- 
 stition and science that there was between the stage- 
 coach and the locomotive. But the stage-coach had to 
 go. It had its day of glory and power, but it is gone. It 
 went West. In a little while it will be driven into the 
 Pacific, with the last Indian aboard. So we find that 
 there is the same conflict between the different sects and 
 the different schools, not only of philosophy, but of med- 
 icine. Recollect that everything except the demonstrated 
 truth is liable to die. That is the order of nature. 
 Words die. Every language has a cemetery. Every 
 now and then a word dies and a tombstone is erected, 
 and across it is written the word "obsolete." New words 
 are continually being born. There is a cradle in which 
 a word is rocked. A thought is molded to a sound, and 
 the child-word is born. And then comes a time when 
 the word gets old, and wrinkled, and expressionless, and 
 is carried mournfully to the grave, and that is the end of 
 it. So in the schools of medicine. You can remember, 
 so can I, when the old alopathists reigned supreme. If 
 there was anything the matter with a man, they let out 
 his blood. Called to the bedside, they took him to the 
 edge of eternity with medicine, and then practiced all 
 their art to bring him back to life. One can hardly 
 imagine how perfect a constitution it took a few years 
 ago to stand the assault of a doctor. And long after it 
 was found to be a mistake, hundreds and thousands of 
 the old physicians clung to it, carried around with them, 
 in one pocket, a bottle of jalap, and in the other a rusty 
 lancet, sorry that they couldn't find some patient idiotic 
 enough to allow the experiment to be made again. 
 
ORTHODOXY. S 2 9 
 
 So these schools, and these theories, and these relig- 
 ions die hard. What else can they do? Like the paint- 
 ings of the old masters, they are kept alive because so 
 much money has been invested in them. Think of the 
 amount of money that has been invested in superstition! 
 Think of the schools that have been founded for the 
 more general diffusion of useless knowledge! Think of 
 the colleges wherein men are taught that it is dangerous 
 to think, and that they must never use their brains ex- 
 cept in an act of faith! Think of the millions and 
 billions of dollars that have been expended in churches, 
 in temples and in cathedrals! Think of the thousands 
 and thousands of men who depend for their living upon 
 the ignorance of mankind! Think of those who grow 
 rich on credulity and who fatten on faith! Do you sup- 
 pose they are going to die without a struggle? They will 
 die if they don't struggle. What are they to do? From 
 the bottom of my heart I sympathize with the poor cler- 
 gyman that has had all his common sense educated out 
 of him, and is now to be thrown out upon the cold and 
 uncharitable world. His prayers are not answered; he 
 gets' no help from on high, and the pews are beginning 
 to criticise the pulpit. What is the man to do? If he 
 suddenly change, he is gone. If he preaches what he 
 really believes, he will get notice to quit. And yet if he 
 and the congregation would come together and be per- 
 fectly honest, they would all admit they didn't believe 
 anything of it. 
 
 Only a little while ago a couple of ladies were riding 
 together from a revival in a carriage late at night, and 
 one said to the other, as they rode along: " I am going 
 to say something that will shock you, and I beg of you 
 
530 INGERSOLLS LECTURES. 
 
 never to tell it to anybody else. I am going to tell it to 
 you." "Well, what is it?" Says she: "I don't believe 
 in the bible." The other replied: "Neither do I." I 
 have often thought how splendid it would be if the min- 
 isters could but come together and say: "Now let us be 
 honest. Let us tell each other, honor bright like Dr. 
 Currie did in the meeting here the other day let us tell 
 just what we believe." They tell a story that in the old, 
 time a lot of people, about twenty, were in Texas in a 
 little hotel, and one fellow got up before the fire, put his 
 hands behind him, and says he: "Boys, let us all tell 
 our real names." If the ministers and the congregations 
 would only tell their real thoughts they would find that 
 they are nearly as bad as I am, and that they believe 
 just about as little. 
 
 Now, I have been talking a great deal about the ortho- 
 dox religion; and, after having delivered a lecture, I 
 would meet some good, religious person, and he would 
 say to me: "You don't tell it as we believe it." "Well, 
 but I tell it as you have it written in your creed." "Oh, 
 well," he says, "we don't mind that any more." "Well, 
 why don't you change it?" "Oh, well," he says, "we 
 understand it." Possibly the creed is in the best possi- 
 ble condition for them now. There is a tacit understand- 
 ing that they don't believe it. There is a tacit under- 
 standing that they have got some way to get around it, 
 that they read between the lines; and if they should meet 
 now to form a creed, they might fail to agree; and the 
 creed is now so that they can say as they please, except 
 in public. Whenever they do so in public, the church, 
 in self-defense, must try them; and I believe in trying 
 very minister that doesn't preach the doctrine as he 
 
ORTHODOXY. 53 1 
 
 agrees to. I have not the slightest sympathy with a 
 Presbyterian preacher who endeavors to preach infidelity 
 from his pulpit and receive Presbyterian money. When 
 he changes his views, he should step down and out like 
 a man, and say: "I don't believe your doctrine, and I 
 will not preach it. You must hire some bigger fool than 
 I am." 
 
 But I find that I get the creed very nearly right. To- 
 day there was put into my hands the new Congregational 
 creed. I have just read it, and I thought I would call 
 your attention to it to-night,, to find whether the church 
 has made any advance; to find whether it has been 
 affected by the light of science; to find whether the sun 
 of knowledge has risen in the heavens in vain; whether 
 they are still the children of intellectual darkness; whether 
 they still consider it necessary for you to believe some- 
 thing that you by no possibility can understand, in order 
 to be a winged angel forever. Now, let us see what their 
 creed is. I will read a little of it. They commence by 
 saying that they "believe in one God, the Father 
 Almighty, maker of heaven, and of earth, and of all 
 things visible and invisible." I am perfectly willing that 
 He should make the invisible, if they want Him to. They 
 say, now, that there is this one personal God; that He is 
 the maker of the universe, and its ruler. I again ask the 
 old question: of what did He make it? If matter has 
 not existed through eternity, then this God made it. Of 
 what did He make it? What did He use for the pur- 
 pose? There was nothing in the universe except this 
 God. What had the God been doing for the eternity He 
 had been living? He had made nothing called nothing 
 into existence; never had had an idea, because it is im- 
 
532 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 possible to have an idea unless there is something to 
 excite an idea. What had He been doing? Why doesn't 
 the Congregational Church tell us? How do they know 
 about this infinite being? And if He is infinite, how can 
 they comprehend Him? What good is it to believe 
 something that you don't understand that you never 
 can understand? In the old creeds they described this 
 God as a being without body and parts or passions. 
 Think of that! Something without body and parts or 
 passions. I defy any man in the world to write a letter 
 descriptive of nothing. You can not conceive of a finer 
 word-painting of a vacuum than a something without 
 body and parts or passions. And yet this God,. without 
 passions, is angry at the wicked every day; this God, 
 without passions, is a jealous God, whose anger burneth 
 to the lowest hell . This God, without passions, loves 
 the whole human race, and this God, without passions, 
 damns a large majority of the same. So, too, He is the 
 ruler of the world, and I find here that we find His prov- 
 idence in the government of the nations. What nations? 
 What evidence can you find, if you are absolutely honest 
 and not frightened, in the history of nations, that this 
 universe is presided over by an infinitely wise and good 
 God? How do you account for Russia? How do you 
 account for Siberia? How do you account for the fact 
 that whole races of men toiled beneath the master's lash 
 for ages without recompense and without reward? How 
 do you account for the fact that babes were sold 
 from the arms of mothers arms that had been reached 
 toward God in supplication? How do you account for it? 
 How do you account for the existence of martyrs? How 
 do you account for the fact that this God allows people 
 
ORTHODOXY. 533 
 
 to be burned simply for loving Him? How do you ac- 
 count for the fact that justice doesn't always triumph? 
 How do you account for the fact that innocence is not a 
 perfect shield ? How do you account for the fact that 
 the world has been filled with pain, and grief, and tears? 
 How do you account for the fact that people have been 
 swallowed by volcanoes, swept from the earth by storms, 
 dying by famine, if there is above us a ruler who is in- 
 finitely good and infinitely powerful? 
 
 I don't say there is none. I don't know. As I have 
 said before, this is the only planet I was ever on. I live 
 in one of the rural districts of the universe. I know not 
 about these things as much as the clergy. And if they 
 know no more about the other world than they do about 
 this, it is not worth mentioning. How do they answer 
 all this? They say that God "permits it." What would 
 you say to me if I stood by and saw a ruffian beat out 
 the brains of a child, when I had full and perfect power 
 to prevent it? You would say truthfully that I was as 
 bad as the murderer. That is what you would say. Is 
 it possible for this God to prevent it? Then, if He 
 doesn't, He is a fiend; He is not good. But they say He 
 ' ' permits it . " What for? So we may have freedom of 
 choice. What for? So that God may find, I suppose, 
 who are good and who are bad. Didn't He know that 
 when He made us? Did He not know exactly just what 
 He was making? Why should He make those whom He 
 knew would be criminals? If I should make a machine 
 that would walk your streets and commit murder, you 
 would hang me. Why not ? And if God made a man 
 whom He knew would commit murder, then God is guilty 
 of that murder. If God made a man, knowing he would 
 
534 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 beat his wife, that he would starve his children, that he 
 would str%w on either side of his path of life the wrecks 
 of ruined homes, then, I say, the being who called that 
 wretch into existence is directly responsible. And yet 
 we are to find the providence of God in the history of 
 nations. What little I have read shows me that when 
 man has been helped, man had to do it; when the chains 
 of slavery have been broken, they have been broken by 
 man; when something bad has been done in the govern- 
 ment of mankind, it is easy to trace it to man, and to fix 
 the responsibility upon human beings. You will not look 
 to the sky; you need throw neither praise nor blame; 
 you can find the efficient causes nearer home right 
 here. 
 
 What is the next thing I find in this creed? " We be- 
 lieve that man was made in the image of God, that he 
 might know, love and obey God, and enjoy Him for- 
 ever. " I don't believe that anybody ever did love God, 
 because nobody ever knew anything about Him. We 
 love each other. We love something that we know. 
 We love something that our experience tells us is good 
 and great, and good and beautiful. We cannot by any 
 possibility love the unknown. We can love truth, be- 
 cause truth adds to human happiness. We can love 
 justice, because it preserves human joy. We can love 
 charity. We can love every form of goodness that we 
 know, or of which we can conceive, but we cannot love 
 the infinitely unknown. And how can we be made in 
 the image of something that has neither body and parts 
 nor passions? 
 
 "That our first parents, by disobedience, fell under 
 the condemnation of God, and that all men are so alien- 
 
ORTHODOXY. 535 
 
 ated from God that there is no salvation from the guilt 
 and power of sin except through God's redeeming power." 
 Is there an intelligent man or woman now in the world 
 who believes in the Garden of Eden story? If there is, 
 strike here (tapping his forehead) and you will hear an 
 echo. Something is for rent. Does any human being 
 now believe that God made man of dust and a woman of 
 a rib, and put them in a garden, and put a tree in the 
 middle of it? Wasn't there room outside of the garden 
 to put His tree, if He didn't want people to eat His 
 apple? If I didn't want a man to eat my fruit I would 
 not put him in my orchard. 
 
 Does anybody now believe in the snake story? I pity 
 any man or woman who, in this nineteenth century, be- 
 lieves in that childish fable. Why did they disobey? 
 Why, they were tempted. Who by? The devil. Who 
 made the devil? What did He make him for? Why 
 didn't He tell Adam and Eve about this fellow? Why 
 didn't he watch the devil instead of watching Adam and 
 Eve? Instead of turning them out, why didn't He keep 
 him from getting in? Why didn't He have His flood first 
 and drown the devil, before He made man and woman? 
 
 And yet people who call themselves intelligent pro- 
 fessors in colleges and presidents of venerable institutions 
 teach children, and young men who ought to be chil- 
 dren, that the Garden of Eden story is an absolute, his- 
 torical fact! Well, I guess it will not be long until that 
 will fade from the imagination of men. I defy any man 
 to think of a more childish thing. This God waiting 
 around there, knowing all the while what would happen, 
 made them on purpose so it would happen; and then 
 what does he do? Holds all of us responsible; and we 
 
536 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 were not there. Here is a representative before the con- 
 stituency had been born. Before I am bound by a rep- 
 resentative, I want a chance to vote for or against him; 
 and if I had been there, a.id known all the circumstances, 
 I should have voted against him. And yet, I am held 
 responsible. 
 
 What did Adr.m do? I cannot see that it amounted to 
 much anyway. A god that can create something out of 
 nothing ought not to have complained of the loss of an 
 apple. I can hardly have the patience to speak upon 
 such a subject. 
 
 Now, that absurdity gave birth to another that, while 
 we could be rightfully charged with the rascality of 
 somebody else, we could also be credited with the virtues 
 of somebody else; and the atonement is the absurdity 
 which offsets the other absurdity of the fall of man. Let 
 us leave them both out; it reads a great deal better with 
 both of them out; it makes better sense. 
 
 Now, in consequence of that, everybody is alienated 
 from God. How? Why? Oh, we are all depraved, 
 you know; we all want to do wrong. Well, why? Is 
 that because we are depraved? No. Why do we make 
 so many mistakes? Because there is only on^ right way, 
 and there is an almost infinite number of wrong ones; 
 and as long as we are not perfect in our intellects we 
 must make mistakes. There is no darkness but igno- 
 rance; and alienation, as they call it, from God, is sim- 
 ply a lack of intellect upon our part. Why were we not 
 given better brains? That may account for the aliena- 
 tion. But the church teaches that every soul that finds 
 its way to the shore of this world is against God natu- 
 rally hates God; that the little dimpled child in the 
 
ORTHODOXY. 537 
 
 cradle is simply a chunk of depravity. Everybody against 
 God! It is a libel upon the human race; it is a libel 
 upon all the men who have worked for wife and child; it 
 is a libel upon all the wives who have suffered and 
 labored, wept and worked for children; it is a libel upon 
 all the men who have died for their country; it is a libel 
 upon all who have fought for human liberty; it is a libel 
 upon the human race. Leave out the history of the 
 church, and there is nothing in this world to prove the 
 depravity of man left. 
 
 Everybody that comes is against God. Every soul, 
 they think, is like the wrecked Irishman. He was 
 wrecked in the sea and drifted to an unknown island, 
 and as he climbed up the shore he saw a man, and said 
 to him, ''Have you a government here?" The man 
 said, "We have." "Weil, "said he, "lam agin it!" 
 The church teaches us that that is the attitude of every 
 soul in the universe of God. Ought a god to take any 
 credit to himself for making depraved people? A god 
 that cannot make a soul that is not totally depraved, I 
 respectfully suggest, should retire from the business. 
 And if a god has made us, knowing that we would be 
 totally depraved, why should we go to the same being 
 for repairs? 
 
 What is the next? "That all men are so alienated 
 from God that there is no salvation from the guilt and 
 power of his sin except through God's redeeming grace." 
 
 Reformation is not enough. If the man who steals 
 becomes perfectly honest, that is not enough; if the man 
 who hates his fellow-man changes and loves his fellow- 
 man, that is not enough; he must go through the myste- 
 rious thing called the second birth; he must be born 
 
538 TNGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 again. That is not enough unless he has faith; he must 
 believe something that he does not- understand. Refor- 
 mation is not enough; there must be what they call con- 
 version. I deny it . According to the church, nothing 
 so excites the wrath of God nothing so corrugates the 
 brows of Jehovah with revenge as a man relying on his 
 own good works. He must admit that he ought to be 
 damned, and that of the two he prefers it, before God 
 will consent to save him. I saw a man the other day, 
 and he said to me, " I am a Unitarian Universalist; that 
 is what I am." Said I, " What do you mean by that?" 
 "Well," said he, "here is what I mean: the Unitarian 
 thinks he is too good to be damned, and the Universalist 
 thinks God is too good to damn him, and I believe them 
 both." 
 
 What is the next thing in this great creed? 
 
 "We believe that the scriptures of the old and new 
 testaments are the records of God's revelation of Him- 
 self in the work of redemption; that they are written by 
 men, under the special guidance of the Holy Spirit, and 
 that they constitute an authoritative standard by which 
 religious teaching and human conduct are to be regulated 
 and judged." 
 
 This is the creed of the Congregational Church; that 
 is, it is the result of the high-joint commission appointed 
 to draw up a creed for churches; and there we have the 
 statement that the bible was written " by men, under the 
 special guidance of the Holy Spirit." What part of the 
 bible? All of it; all of it; and yet what is this old testa- 
 ment that was written by an infinitely good God? The 
 being who wrote it did not know the shape of the world 
 He had made. The being who wrote it knew nothing of 
 
ORTHODOXY. 539 
 
 human nature; He commands men to love Him, as if 
 one could love upon command. The same God upheld 
 the institution of human slavery; and the church says 
 the bible that upholds that institution was written by 
 men under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Then I dis- 
 agree with the Holy Ghost upon that institution. 
 
 The church tells us that men, under the guidance of 
 the Holy Ghost, upheld the institution of polygamy I 
 deny it; that under the guidance of the Holy.Ghost these 
 men upheld wars of extermination and conquest I deny 
 it; that under the guidance of the Holy Ghost these men 
 wrote that it was right for a man to destroy the life of 
 his wife if she happened to differ with him on the subject 
 of religion I deny it. And yet that is the book now 
 upheld in this creed of the Congregational Church. If 
 the devil had written upon the subject of slavery, which 
 side v/ould he have taken? Let every minister answer, 
 honor bright. If you knew the devil had written a little 
 work on human slavery, in your judgment would he up- 
 hold slavery or denounce it? Would you regard it as 
 any evidence that he ever wrote it if he upheld slavery? 
 And yet, here you have a work upholding slavery, and 
 you say that it was written by an infinitely good, wise 
 and beneficent God! If the devil upheld polygamy would 
 you be surprised? If the devil wanted to kill somebody 
 for differing with him would you be surprised? If the 
 devil told a man to kill his wife, would you be aston- 
 ished? And yet, you say, that is exactly what the God 
 of us all did. If there be a God, then that creed is blas- 
 phemy. That creed is a libel upon Him who sits upon 
 heaven's throne. I want if there be a God I want 
 Him to write in the book of His eternal remembrance 
 that I denied these lies for Him. 
 
540 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 I do not believe in a slave-holding God; I do not wor- 
 ship a polygamous Holy Ghost; I do not get upon my 
 knees before any being who commands a husband to slay 
 his wife because she expresses her honest thought . 
 
 Did it ever occur to you that if God wrote the old tes- 
 tament, and told the Jews to crucify or kill anybody that 
 disagreed with them on religion, and that God afterward 
 took upon Himself flesh and came to Jerusalem, and 
 taught a different religion, and the Jews killed Him did 
 it ever occur to you that He reaped exactly what he had 
 sown? Did it ever occur to you that He fell a victim to 
 His own tyranny, and was destroyed by His own law! 
 Of course I do not believe that any God ever was the 
 author of the bible, or that any God was ever crucified, 
 or that any God was ever killed or ever will be, but I 
 want to ask you that question. 
 
 Take this old testament, then, with all its stories of 
 murder and massacre; with all its foolish and cruel 
 fables; with all its infamous doctrines; with its spirit of 
 caste; with its spirit of hatred, and tell me whether it 
 was written by a good God. Why, if you will read the 
 maledictions and curses of that book, you would think 
 that God, like Lear, had divided heaven among his 
 daughters, and then, in the insanity of despair, had 
 launched his curses upon the human race. 
 
 And yet, I must say I must admit that the old tes- 
 tament is better than the new. In the old testament, 
 when God got a man dead, He let him alone. When 
 He saw him quietly in his grave He was satisfied. The 
 muscles relaxed, and a smile broke over the Divine face. 
 But in the new testament the trouble commences just at 
 death. In the new testament God is to wreak His re- 
 venge forever and ever. It was reserved for one who 
 
ORTHODOXY. 541 
 
 said, " Love your enemies," to tear asunder the veil be- 
 tween time and eternity and fix the horrified gaze of men 
 upon the gulfs of eternal fire, The new testament is just 
 as much worse than the old, as hell is worse than sleep; 
 just as much worse as infinite cruelty is worse than anni- 
 hilation; and yet, the new testament is pointed to as a 
 gospel of love and peace. 
 
 But "more of that hereafter," as the ministers say. 
 
 ' ' We believe that Jesus Christ came to establish among 
 men the Kingdom of God, the reign of truth and love, of 
 righteousness and peace." 
 
 Well, that may have been the object of Jesus Christ. 
 I do not deny it. But what was the result? The Chris- 
 tian world has caused more war than all the rest of the 
 world besides; all the cunning instruments of death have 
 been devised by Christians; all the wonderful machinery 
 by which the brains are blown out of a man, by which 
 nations are conquered and subdued all these machines 
 have been born in Christian brains. And yet He came 
 to bring peace, they say. But the testament says other- 
 wise: " I came not to bring peace, but a sword." And 
 the sword was brought. What are the Christian nations 
 doing to-day in Europe? Is there a solitary Christian 
 nation that will trust any other? How many millions of 
 Christians are in the uniform of everlasting forgiveness, 
 loving their enemies? 
 
 There was an old Spaniard upon the bed of death, and 
 he sent for a priest, and the priest told him that he would 
 have to forgive his enemies before he died. He says, "T 
 have not any." "What! no enemies?" "Not one," 
 said the dying man: " I killed the last one three weeks 
 ago." 
 
54 2 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 How many millions of Christians are now armed and 
 equipped to destroy their fellow-Christians? Who are 
 the men in Europe crying out against war? Who wishes 
 to have the nations disarmed? Is it the church? No; it 
 is the men who do hot believe in what they call this re- 
 ligion of peace. When there is a war, and when they 
 make a few thousand widows and orphans, when they 
 strew the plain with dead patriots, then Christians as- 
 semble in their churches and sing ' 'Te Deum Laudamus" 
 to God. Why? Because He has enabled a few of His 
 children to kill some others of His children. This is the 
 religion of peace the religion that invented the Krupp 
 gun, that will hurl a bullet weighing 2,000 pounds 
 through twenty-four inches of solid steel. This is the 
 religion of peace, that covers the sea with men-of-war, 
 clad in mail, all in the name of universal forgiveness. 
 
 What effect had this religion upon the nations of the 
 earth? What have the nations been fighting about? 
 What was the Thirty Years' War in Europe for? What 
 was the war in Holland for? Why was it that England 
 persecuted Scotland? Why is it that England persecutes 
 Ireland even unto this day? At the bottom of every one 
 of these conflicts you will find a religious question. The 
 religion of Jesus Christ, as preached by His church, 
 causes war, bloodshed, hatred, and all uncharitableness; 
 and why? Because they say a certain belief is necessary 
 to salvation. They do not say, if you behave yourself 
 pretty well you will get there; they do not say, if you 
 pay your debts and love your wife, and love your chil- 
 dren, and are good to your friends, and your neighbors, 
 and your country, you will get there; that will do you no 
 good; you have got to believe a certain thing. Oh, yes. 
 
ORTHODOXY. 543 
 
 no matter how bad you are, you can instantly be for- 
 given then; and no matter how good you are, if you fail 
 to believe that, the moment you get to the day of judg- 
 ment nothing is left but to damn you forever, and all the 
 angels will shout " Hallelujah!" 
 
 What do they teach to-day? Every murderer goes to 
 heaven; there is only one step from the gallows to God; 
 only one jerk between the halter and heaven. That is 
 taught by this same church. I believe there ought to 
 be a law to prevent the slightest religious consolation 
 being given to any man who has been guilty of murder. 
 Let a Catholic understand that if he imbrues his hands 
 in his brother's blood, he can have no extreme unction; 
 let it be understood that he can have no forgiveness 
 through the church; and let the Protestant understand 
 that when he has committed that crime, the community 
 will not pray him into heaven. Let him go with his 
 victim. The victim, you know, dying in his sins, goes to 
 hell, and the murderer has the happiness of seeing him 
 there. And if heaven grows dull and monotonous, the 
 murderer can again give life to the nerve of pleasure by 
 watching the agony of his victim. I am opposed to that 
 kind of forgiveness. And yet that is the religion of uni- 
 versal peace to everybody. 
 
 Now, what is the next thing that I wish to call your 
 attention to? 
 
 " We believe in the ultimate prevalence of the King- 
 dom of Christ over all the earth." 
 
 What makes you? Do you judge from the manner in 
 which you are getting along now? How many people are 
 being born a year? About fifty millions. How many are 
 you converting a year; really, truthfully? Five or six 
 
544 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 thousand. I think I have overestimated the number. Is 
 orthodox Christianity on the increase? No. There are 
 a hundred times as many unbelievers in orthodox Chris- 
 tianity as there were ten years ago. What are you doing 
 in the missionary world? How long is it since you con- 
 verted a Chinaman? A fine missionary religion, to send 
 missionaries, with their bibles and tracts, to China, but if 
 a Chinaman comes here, mob him, simply to show him 
 the difference between the practical and theoretical work- 
 ings of the Christian religion. How long since you have 
 had a convert in India? In my judgment, never; there 
 never has been an intelligent Hindoo converted from the 
 time the first missionary put his foot upon that soil; and 
 never, in my judgment, has an intelligent Chinaman been 
 converted since the first missionary touched that shore. 
 Where are they? We hear nothing of them, except in 
 the reports. They get money from poor old ladies, trem- 
 bling on the edge of the grave, and go and tell them 
 stories how hungry the average Chinaman is for a copy 
 of the new testament, and paint the sad condition of a 
 gentleman in the interior of Africa without the work of 
 Dr. McCosh, longing for a copy of the Princeton Review. 
 In my judgment, it is a book that would suit a savage. 
 Thus money is scared from the dying and frightened from 
 the old and feeble. About how long is it before this 
 kingdom is to be established? 
 
 What is the next thing here? They all also believe in 
 the resurrection of the dead, and in their confession of 
 faith hereto attached I find they also believe in the resur- 
 rection of the body. Does anybody believe that, that 
 has ever thought? Here is a man, for instance, that 
 weighs 200 pounds, and gets sick and dies weighing 120; 
 
ORTHODOXY. 545 
 
 how much will he weigh in the morning of the resurrec- 
 tion? Here is a cannibal, who eats another man; and 
 we know that the atoms that you eat go into you body 
 and become a part of you. After the cannibal has eaten 
 the missionary, and appropriated his atoms to himself, 
 and then he dies, who will the atoms belong to in the 
 morning of the resurrection in an action of replevin 
 brought by the missionary against the cannibal? It has 
 been demonstrated again and again that there is no crea- 
 tion in nature, and no destruction in nature. It has been 
 demonstrated again and again that the atoms that are in us 
 have been in millions of other beings; grown in the forest, 
 in the grass, blossomed in the flowers, been in the metals; 
 in other words, there are atoms in each one of us that 
 have been in millions of others, and when we die these 
 atoms return to the earth, an again spring in vegetation, 
 taken up in the leaves of the trees, turned into wood. 
 And yet we have a church, in the nineteenth century, 
 getting up this doctrine, presided over by professors, by 
 presidents of colleges, and by theologians, who tell us 
 that they believe in the resurrection of the body. 
 
 They know better. There is not one so ignorant but 
 what knows better. 
 
 And what is the next thing? " And in a final judg- 
 ment." It will be a set day. All of us will be there, 
 and the thousands, and millions, and billions, and 
 trillions, and quadrillions that have died will be there. It 
 will be the day of judgment, and the books will be opened 
 and our case will be called. Does anybody believe in 
 that now that has got the slightest sense? one who 
 knows enough to ' ' chew gum without a string? " 
 
 ' ' The issues of which are everlasting punishment for 
 
546 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 the wicked and everlasting life for the redeemed." That 
 is the doctrine to-day of the Congregational church, and 
 that is the doctrine that I oppose. That is the doctrine 
 that I defy and deny. 
 
 But I must hasten on. Now this comes to us after all 
 the discussion that has been, and we are told that this 
 religion is finally to conquer this world. This is the same 
 religion that failed to successfully meet the hordes of 
 Mohammed. Mohammed wrested from the disciples of 
 the cross the fairest part of Europe. It was known that 
 he was an impostor. They knew he was because the 
 people of Mecca said so, and they knew that Christ was 
 not because the people of Jerusalem said he was. This 
 impostor wrested from the disciples ot Christ the fairest 
 part of Europe, and that fact sowed the seeds of distrust 
 and infidelity in the minds of the Christian world. And 
 the next was an effort to rescue from the infidels the 
 empty sepulchre of Christ. That commenced in the 
 eleventh century and ended in 1291. Europe was almost 
 depopulated. For every man owed a debt, the debt was 
 discharged if he put a cross upon his breast and joined 
 the Crusades. No matter what crime he had committed 
 the doors of the prison were open for him to join the 
 Crusades. And what was the result? They believed that 
 God would give them victory over the infidel, and they 
 carried in front of the first Crusade a goat and a goose, 
 believing that both those animals had been blessed by the 
 indwelling of the Holy Ghost. And I may say that those 
 same animals are in the lead to-day in the orthodox 
 world. Until 1291 they endeavored to get that sepul- 
 chre, until finally the hosts of Christ were driven back, 
 baffled, beaten, and demoralized a poor, miserable re- 
 
ORTHODOXY. 547 
 
 ligious rabble. They were driven back, and that fact 
 sowed the seeds of distrust in Christendom. You know 
 at that time the world believed in trial by battle that 
 God would take the side of right and there had been a 
 trial by battle between the Cross and Mohammed, and 
 Mohammed had been victorious. 
 
 Well, what was the next? You know when Christianity 
 came into power it destroyed every statue it could lay its 
 ignorant hands upon. It defaced and obliterated every 
 painting; it destroyed every beautiful building; it de- 
 stroyed the manuscripts, both Greek and Latin; it de- 
 stroyed all the history, all the poetry, all the philosophy 
 it could find, and burned every library that it could reach 
 with its torch. And the result was the night of the 
 middle ages fell upon the human race. But by accident, 
 by chance, by oversight, a few of the manuscripts es- 
 caped the fury of religious zeal; a few statues had been 
 buried; and the result was, that these manuscripts be- 
 came the seed, the fruit of which is our civilization of 
 to-day. A few forms of beauty were dug from the earth 
 that had protected them, and now the civilized world is 
 filled with art, with painting, and with statuary, in spite 
 of the rage of the early church. 
 
 What is the next blow that that this church received? 
 The discovery of America. That is the next. The 
 Holy Ghost, who inspired a man to write the bible, did 
 not know of the existence of this continent, never dreamed 
 of it; the result was that His bible never spoke of it. 
 He did not dream that the earth is round. He believed 
 it was flat, although He made it Himself, and at that 
 time heaven was just up there beyond the clouds. There 
 was where the gods lived, there was where the angels 
 
548 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 were, and it was against that heaven that Jacob's ladder 
 was that the angels ascended and descended. It was to 
 that heaven that Christ ascended after His resurrection. 
 It was up there where the New Jerusalem was, with its 
 streets of gold, and under this earth was perdition; there 
 was where the devils lived; there was where a pit was 
 dug for all unbelievers, and for men who had brains, and 
 I say that for this reason: That just in proportion that 
 you have brains, just in that proportion your chances for 
 eternal joy are lessened, according to this religion . And 
 just in proportion that you lack brains, your chances are 
 increased. They believe, under there that they discovered 
 America. They found that the earth is round. It was 
 circumnavigated by Magellan. In 1519 that brave man 
 set sail. The church told him: "The earth is flat, my 
 friend; don't go off. You will go off the edge." Magellan 
 said: " I have seen the shadow of the earth upon the 
 moon, and I have more confidence in the shadow even 
 than I have in the church." The ship went round. The 
 earth was circumnavigated. Science passed its hand 
 above it and beneath it, and where was the heaven, and 
 where was the hell? Vanished forever! And they dwell 
 now only in the religion of superstition. We found there 
 was no place for Jacob's ladder to lean against; no place 
 there for the gods and angels to live; no place there to 
 empty the waters of the deluge; no place there to which 
 Christ could have ascended; and the foundations of the 
 New Jerusalem crumbled, and the towers and domes fell 
 and became simply space space sown with an infinite 
 number of stars; not with New Jerusalems, but with con- 
 stellations. 
 
 Then man began to grow great, and with that you 
 
ORTHODOXY. 549 
 
 know came astronomy. Now just see what they did in 
 that. In 1473 Copernicus was born. In 1543 his great 
 work. In 1616 the system of Copernicus was condemned 
 by the pope, by the infallible Catholic church, and the 
 church is about as near right upon that subject as upon 
 any other. The system of Copernicus was denounced. 
 And how long do you suppose the church fought that? 
 Let me tell you. It was revoked by Pius VII. in the 
 year of grace 1821. For 205 years after the death of 
 Copernicus the church insisted that that system was false, 
 and that the old idea was true. Astronomy is the first 
 help that we ever received from heaven. Then came 
 Kepler in 1609, and you may almost date the birth of 
 science from the night that Kepler discovered his first law. 
 That was the dawn of the day of intelligence his first 
 law, that the planets do not move in circles; his second 
 law, that they described equal spaces in equal times; his 
 third law, that there was a direct relation between weight 
 and velocity. That man gave us a key to heaven. That 
 man opened its infinite book, and we now read it, and 
 he did more good than all the theologians that ever lived. 
 I have not time to speak of the others of Galileo, of 
 Leonardo da Vinci, and of hundreds of others that I 
 could mention. 
 
 The next thing that gave this church a blow was*statis- 
 tics. Away went special providence. We found by 
 taking statistics that we could tell the average length of 
 human life; that this human life did not depend upon in- 
 finite caprice; that it depended upon conditions, circum- 
 stances, laws and facts, and that those conditions, cir- 
 cumstances, and facts were ever active. And now you 
 will see the man who depends entirely upon special prov- 
 
550 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 idence gets his life insured. He has more confidence 
 even in one of these companies than he has in the whole 
 Trinity. We found by statistics that there were just so 
 many crimes on an average committed; just so many 
 crimes of one kind and so many of another; just so 
 many suicides, so many deaths by drowning; just so 
 many accidents on an average; just so many men marry- 
 ing women, for instance, older than themselves; just so 
 many murders of a particular kind; just the same number 
 of accidents; and I say to-night statistics utterly demolish 
 the idea of special providence. Only the other day a 
 gentleman was telling me of a case of special providence. 
 He knew it. He had been the subject of it. Yes, sir! 
 A few years ago he was about to go on a ship when he 
 was detained; he didn't go, and the ship was lost and all 
 on board. Yes! I said, " Do you think the fellows that 
 were drowned believed in special providence?" Think of 
 the infinite egotism of such a doctrine. Here is a man 
 that fails to go upon a ship with 500 passengers, and 
 they go down to the bottom of the sea fathers, mothers, 
 children, and loving husbands, and wives waiting upon 
 the shores of expectation. Here is one poor little wretch 
 that didn't happen to go! And he thinks that God, the 
 infinite being, interfered in his poor little withered be- 
 half and let the rest all go. That is special providence! 
 You know we have a custom every year of issuing a 
 proclamation of thanksgfving. We say to God, "Although 
 You have afflicted all the other countries, although You 
 have sent war, and desolation, and famine on everybody 
 else, we have been such good children that You have 
 been kind to us, and we hope you will keep on." It 
 don't make a bit of difference whether we have good 
 
ORTHODOXY. 5 5 I 
 
 times or not not a bit; the thanksgiving is always ex- 
 actly the same. I remember a few years ago a governor 
 of Iowa got out a proclamation of that kind. He went 
 on to tell how thankful the people were, how prosperous 
 the State had been; and there was a young fellow in the 
 State who got out another proclamation, saying: " Fear- 
 ing that the Lord might be misled by official correspond- 
 ence," he went on to say that the governor's proclama- 
 tion was entirely false; that the State was not prosperous; 
 that the crops had been an almost entire failure; that 
 nearly every farm in the State was mortgaged; that if the 
 Lord did not believe him, all he asked was He would 
 send some angel in whom he had confidence to look the 
 matter over for himself. 
 
 Of course I have not time to recount the enemies of 
 the church . Every fact is an enemy of superstition. 
 Every fact is a heretic. Every demonstration is an in- 
 fidel. Everything that ever happened testified against 
 the supernatural. I have only spoken of a few of the 
 blows that shattered the shield and shivered the lance of 
 superstition. Here is another one the doctrine of 
 Charles Darwin. This century will be called Darwin's 
 century, one of the greatest men who ever touched this 
 globe. He has explained more of the phenomena of life 
 than all of the religious teachers. Write the name of 
 Charles Darwin there (on the one hand) and the name 
 of every theologian that ever lived there (on the other 
 hand), and from that name has come more light to the 
 world than from all those. His doctrine of evolution, 
 his doctrine of the survival of the fittest, his doctrine of 
 the origin of species, has removed in every thinking mind 
 the last vestige of orthodox Christianity. He has not 
 
552 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 only stated, but he has demonstrated, that the inspired 
 writer knew nothing of this world, nothing of the origin 
 of man, nothing of geology, nothing of astronomy, noth- 
 ing of nature; that the bible is a book written by ignor- 
 ance by the instigation of fear! Think of the man who 
 replied to him. Only a few years ago there was no 
 parson too ignorant to successfully answer Charles Dar- 
 win; and the more ignorant he was the more cheerfully 
 he undertook the task. He was held up to the ridicule, 
 the scorn, and the contempt of the Christian world, and 
 yet when he died England was proud to put his dust with 
 that of her noblest and her grandest. 
 
 Charles Darwin conquered the intellectual world, and 
 the doctrine of evolution is now an accepted fact. His 
 light has broken in on some of the early clergy, and the 
 greatest man who to-day occupies the pulpit is a believer 
 in the evolution theory of Charles Darwin and that is 
 Henry Ward Beecher a man of more brains than the 
 entire clergy of that entire church put together. And 
 yet we are told in this little creed that orthodox religion 
 is about to conquer the world. It will be driven to the 
 wilds of Africa. It must go to some savage country; it 
 has lost its hold upon civilization, and I tell you it is un- 
 fortunate to have a religion that cannot be accepted by 
 the intellect of a nation. It is unfortunate to have a 
 religion against which every good and noble heart pro- 
 tests. Let us have a good one or none. O! 'my pity has 
 been excited by seeing these ministers endeavor to warp 
 and twist the passages of scripture to fit some demon- 
 stration in science. 
 
 These pious evasions! These solemn pretenses! When 
 they are caught in one way they give a different meaning 
 
ORTHODOXY. 553 
 
 to the words and say the world was not made in seven 
 days. They say " good whiles" epochs. And in this 
 same confession here of faith and creeds they believe the 
 Lord's day is holy every seventh day. Suppose you 
 lived near the north pole, where the day is three months 
 long. Then which day will you keep? Suppose you 
 could get to the north pole, you could prevent Sunday 
 from ever overtaking you. You could walk around the 
 other way f aster than the world could revolve. How would 
 you keep Sunday then? Suppose we ever invent any- 
 thing that can go 1,000 miles an hour? We can just 
 chase Sunday clear around the globe. Is there anything 
 that can be more perfectly absurd than that a space of 
 time can be holy! You might as well talk about a pious 
 vacuum. These pious evasions. I heard the other night 
 of an old man. He was not very well educated, you 
 know, and he got into the notion that he must have read- 
 ing of the bible and have family worship; and there was 
 a bad boy in the family a pretty smart boy and they 
 were reading the bible by course, and in the fifteenth chapte 
 of Corinthians is this passage: " Behold, brethren,! show 
 you a mystery; we shall not all die, but we shall be 
 changed." And this boy rubbed out the "c" in the 
 " changed." So next night the old man got on his specs 
 and got down his bible and said: " Behold, brethren, I 
 show you a mystery; we shall not all die, but we shall be 
 hanged." The old lady said, " Father, I don't think it 
 reads that way." He says, "Who is reading this?" 
 ' ' Yes, mother, it says be hanged, and, more than that, 
 I see the sense of it. Pride is the besetting sin of the 
 human heart, and if there is anything calculated to take 
 the pride out of a man it is hanging." 
 
554 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 I keep going back to this book; I keep going back to 
 the miracles, to the prophecies, to the fables, and people 
 ask me, if I t,ake away the bible, what are we going to do? 
 How can we get along without the revelation that no one 
 understands? What are we going to do if we have no 
 bible to quarrel about? What are we to do without hell? 
 What are we going to do with our enemies? What are 
 we going to do with the people we love but don't like? 
 They tell me that there never would have been any civili- 
 zation if it had not been for this bible. Um! The Jews 
 had a bible; the Romans had not. Which had the greater 
 and the grander government? Let us be honest. Which 
 of those nations produced the greatest poets, the greatest 
 soldiers, the greatest orators, the greatest statesmen, the 
 greatest sculptors? Rome had no bible. God cared 
 nothing for the Roman Empire. He let the men come 
 up by chance. His time was taken up by the Jewish 
 people. And yet Rome conquered the world, apd even 
 conquered God's chosen people. The people that had 
 the bible were defeated by the people who had not. How 
 was it possible for Lucretius to get along without the 
 bible? How did the great and glorious of that empire? 
 And what shall we say of Greece? No bible. Compare 
 Athens with Jerusalem. From Athens comes the beauty 
 and intellectual grace of the world. Compare the 
 mythology of Greece with the mythology of Judea. One 
 covering the earth with beauty, and the other rilling 
 heaven with hatred and injustice. The Hindoos had no 
 bible; they had been forsaken by the Creator, and yet 
 they became the greatest metaphysicians of the world. 
 Egypt had no bible. Compare even Egypt with Judea. 
 What are we to do without the bible? What became of 
 
ORTHODOXY. 555 
 
 the Jews who had no bible; their temple was destroyed 
 and their city was taken; and, as I said before, they 
 never found real prosperity until their God deserted them. 
 Do without the bible? 
 
 Now I come again to the new testament. There are 
 a few things in there, I give you my word, I cannot be- 
 lieve. I cannot I cannot believe in the miraculous 
 origin of Jesus Christ. I believe He was the son of 
 Joseph and Mary; that Joseph and Mary had been duly 
 and legally married; that He was the legitimate offspring 
 of that marriage, and nobody ever believed the contrary 
 until He had been dead 150 years. Neither Matthew, 
 Mark nor Luke ever dreamed that He was of divine 
 origin. He did not say to either Matthew, Mark or 
 Luke, or to any one in their hearing, that He was the son 
 of God, or that He was miraculously conceived. He 
 did not say it. The angel Gabriel, who, they say, brought 
 the news, never wrote a word upon the subject. His 
 mother never wrote a word upon the subject. His father 
 never wrote a word upon the subject. We are lacking in 
 the matter of witnesses. I would not believe it now! I 
 cannot believe it then. I would not believe people I 
 know, much less would I believe people I don't know. I 
 say that at that time Matthew, Mark and Luke believed 
 that He was the son of Joseph and Mary. And why? 
 They say He descended from the blood of David, and in 
 order to show that He was of the blood of David they 
 -gave the geneology of Joseph. And if Joseph was not 
 his father, why not give the geneology of Pontius Pilate 
 or Herod? Could they, by giving the geneology of Jo- 
 seph, show that He was of the blood of David if Joseph 
 was in no way related to David; and yet that is the posi- 
 

 556 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 tion into which the Christian world is now driven. It says 
 the son of Joseph, and then interpolated the words ' * as 
 was supposed." Why, then, do they give a supposed 
 geneology. It will not do. And that is a thing that can- 
 not in any way, by any human testimony, be established; 
 and if it is important for us to know that He was the 
 Son of God, I say then that it devolves upon God to 
 give us evidence. Let Him write it across the face of 
 the heavens, in every language of mankind. If it is 
 necessary for us to believe it, let it grow on every leaf 
 next year. No man should be damned for not believing 
 unless the evidence is overwhelming. And he ought 
 not to be made to depend upon say-so. He should have 
 it directly for himself. A man says God told him so and 
 so, and he tells me, and I haven't anyone's word but 
 that fellow's. He may have been deceived. If God has 
 a message for me He ought to tell it to me, and not 
 somebody that has been dead 4,000 or 5,000 years, and 
 in another language; God may have changed His mind 
 on many things; He has on slavery at least, and polyg- 
 amy; and yet His church now wants to go out here and 
 destroy polygamy in Utah with a sword. Why don't 
 they send missionaries there with copies of the old testa- 
 ment? By reading the lives of Abraham, and Isaac, and 
 Lot, and a few other fellows that ought to have been in 
 the penitentiary, they can soften their hearts. 
 
 Now, there is another miracle I do not believe. I 
 want to speak about it as we would about any ordinary 
 transaction in the world. In the first place, I do not 
 believe that any miracle was ever performed, and if there 
 was, you can't prove it. Why? Because it is altogether 
 more reasonable that the people lied about it than that it 
 
ORTHODOXY. 557 
 
 happened. And why? Because, according to human 
 experience, we know that people will not always tell the 
 truth, and we never saw a miracle, and we have got to 
 be governed by our experience, and if we go by our experi- 
 ence, it is in favor that the thing never happened; that 
 the man is mistaken. Now, I want you to remember it. 
 Here is a man that comes into Jerusalem, and the first 
 thing he does he cures the blind. He lets the light of 
 day visit the darkness of blindness. The eyes are opened 
 and the whole world is again pictured upon the brain. 
 Another man is clothed with leprosy. He touches him, 
 and the disease falls from him, and he stands pure, and 
 clean, and whole. Another man is deformed, wrinked, 
 bent. He touches him and throws upon him again the 
 garment of youth. A man is in his grave, and He says, 
 " Come forth! " and he again walks in life, feeling his 
 heart throb and beat, and his blood going joyously 
 through his veins. They say that happened. I don't 
 know. There is one wonderful thing about the dead peo- 
 ple that were raised we don't hear of them any more. 
 What became of them? Why, if there was a man in 
 this town that had been raised from the dead, I would go 
 to see him to-night. I would say, "Where were you 
 when you got the notice to come back? What kind of 
 country is it? What kind of opening there for a young 
 man? How did you like it?" But nobody ever paid the 
 slightest attention to them there. They didn't even ex- 
 cite interest when they died the second time. Nobody 
 said, ' Why, that man isn't afraid. He has been there." 
 Not a word. They pass away quietly. You see I don't 
 believe it. There is something wrong somewhere about 
 that business. And then there is another trouble in my 
 
558 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 mind. Now, you know I may suffer eternal punishment 
 for all this. 
 
 Here is a man that does all these things, and there- 
 upon they crucify Him. Now, then, let us be honest. 
 Suppose a- man came into Chicago and he should meet a 
 funeral procession, and he should say, "Who is dead?" 
 and they should say, "The son of a widow; her only 
 support," and he should say to the procession, " Halt!" 
 And to the undertaker, "Take out that coffin, unscrew 
 that lid." " Young man, I say unto thee, arise!" And 
 the latter should step from the coffin, and in one moment 
 after hold his mother in his arms. Suppose he should go 
 to your cemetery and should find some woman holding a 
 little child in each hand, while the tears fell upon a new- 
 made grave, and he should say to her, " Who lies buried 
 here?" and she should reply, "My husband," and he 
 should say, "I say unto thee, oh grave, give up thy 
 dead," and the husband should rise and in a moment 
 after have his lips upon his wife's, and the little children 
 with their arms around his neck. Suppose that it is so. 
 Do you think that the people of Chicago would kill him? 
 Do you think any one would wish to crucify him? Do 
 you not rather believe that every one who had a loved 
 .one out in that cemetery would go to him, even upon their 
 knees, and beg him and implore him to give back their 
 dead? Do you believe that any man was ever crucified 
 who was the master of death? Let me tell you to- 
 night if there shall ever appear on this earth the master, 
 the monarch of death, all human knees will touch the 
 earth; he will not be crucified, he will not be touched. 
 All the living who fear death; all the living who have lost 
 a loved one will stand and cling to him. And yet we are 
 
ORTHODOXY. 559 
 
 told that this worker of miracles, this worker of wonders, 
 this man who could clothe the dead in the throbbing flesh 
 of life, was crucified by the Jewish people. It was never 
 dreamed that he did a miracle until 100 years after he 
 was dead. 
 
 There is another miracle I do not believe, I cannot be- 
 lieve it, and that is the resurrection. And why? If it 
 was the fact, if the dead got out of the grave, why did 
 He not show himself to his enemies? Why did He not 
 again visit Pontius Pilate? Why did He not call upon 
 Caiaphas, the high priest? Why did He not make 
 another triumphal entery into Jerusalem? Why did He 
 not again enter the temple and dispute with the doctors? 
 Why didn't He say to the multitude: "Here are the 
 wounds in My feet, and in My hands, and in My side. I 
 am the one you endeavored to kill, but Death is My 
 slave." Why didn't He? Simply because the thing 
 never happened. I cannot believe it. But recollect, it 
 makes no difference with its teachings. They are exactly 
 as good whether He wrought miracles or not. Twice 
 two are four; that needs no miracle. Twice two are five 
 a miracle would not help that. Christ's teachings are 
 worth their effect upon the human race. It makes no 
 difference about miracle or about wonder, but you must 
 remember in that day every one believed in miracles. 
 Nobody had any standing as a teacher, a philosopher, a 
 governor, or a king, about whom there was not a some- 
 ing miraculous. The earth was then covered with the 
 sons and daughters of the gods and goddesses. That 
 was believed in Greece, in Rome, in Egypt, in Hindostan; 
 everybody, nearly, believed in such things. 
 
 Then there is another miracle that 1 cannot believe 
 
560 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 in, and that is the ascension the bodily ascension of 
 Jesus Christ. Where was He going? Since the telescope 
 has been pointed at the stars, where was He going? 
 The New Jerusalem is not there. The abode of the gods 
 is not there. Where was He going? Which way did 
 He go? That depends upon the time of day that He left. 
 If He left in the night He went exactly the opposite way 
 from what He would in the day. Who saw this miracle? 
 They say the disciples. Let us see what they say about 
 it. Matthew did not think it was worth mentioning. He 
 doesn't speak of it at all. On the contrary, he says that 
 the last words of Christ were: "Lo, I am with you 
 always, even unto the end of the world." That is what 
 he says. Mark, he saw it. "So, then, after the Lord 
 had spoken unto them He was received up into heaven 
 and sat on the right hand of God." That is all he has 
 to say about the most wonderful thing that ever blessed 
 human vision about a miracle great enough ' to have 
 stuffed credulity to bursting; and yet we have one poor, 
 little meagre verse. So, then, after He had quit speak- 
 ing, He was caught up and sat on the right hand of God. 
 How does he know He was on the right hand? Did he 
 see Him after He had sat down? Luke says: " And it 
 came to pass while He blessed them He was parted from 
 them and was carried up into heaven." But John does 
 not mention it. He gives as His last words this address 
 to Peter: "Follow thou Me." Of course He did not 
 say that as He ascended. In the Acts we have another 
 account. A conversation is given not spoken of in any 
 of the others, and we find there two men clad in white 
 apparel, who said: " Men of Galilee, why stand ye here 
 gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus that was taken 
 
ORTHODOXY. 561 
 
 up into heaven shall so come in like manner as ye have 
 seen Him go up into Heaven." Matthew didn't see that; 
 Mark forgot it; Luke didn't think it was worth mention- 
 ing, and John didn't believe it; and yet upon that evi- 
 dence we are led to believe that the most miraculous of 
 all miracles actually occurred. I cannot believe it. 
 
 I may be mistaken; but the church is now trying"] to 
 parry, and when they come to the little miracles of the 
 new testament all they say is: " Christ didn't cast out 
 devils; these men had fits." He cured fits. Then I read 
 in another place about the fits talking. Christ held a 
 dialogue with the fits, and the fits told Him his name, 
 and the fits at that time were in a crazy man. And the 
 fits made a contract that they would go out of the man 
 provided they would be permitted to go into swine. How 
 can fits that attack a man take up a residence in swine? 
 The church must not give up the devil. He is the right 
 bower. No devil, no hell; no hell, no preacher; no fire, 
 no insurance. I read another miracle that this devil 
 took Christ and put him on the pinnacle of a temple. 
 Was that fits, too? Why is not the theological world 
 honest? Why do they not come up and admit what they 
 know the book means? They have not the courage. 
 
 Now, their next doctrine is the absolute necessity of 
 belief. That depends upon this: Can a man believe as 
 he wants to? Can you? Can anybody? Does belief 
 depend at all upon the evidence? I think it does some- 
 what in some cases. How is it that when a jury is 
 sworn to try a case, hearing all the evidence, hearing 
 both sides, hearing the charge of the judge, hearing the 
 law, and upon their oaths, are equally divided, six for the 
 plaintiff and six for the defendant? It is because evi- 
 
562 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 dence does not have the same effect upon all people. 
 Why? Our brains are not alike not the same shape; 
 we have not the same intelligence or the same experience, 
 the same sense. And yet I am held accountable for my 
 belief. I must believe in the Trinity three times one 
 is one, once one is three and my soul is to be eternally 
 damned for failing to guess an arithmetical conundrum. 
 And that is the poison part of Christianity that salva- 
 tion depends upon belief that is the poison part, and 
 until that dogma is discarded religion will be nothing but 
 superstition. No man can control his belief. If I hear 
 certain evidence I will believe a certain thing. If I fail to 
 hear it I may never believe it. If it is adapted to my 
 mind I may accept it; if it is not, I reject it. And what 
 am I to go by? My brain. That is the only light I have 
 from nature, and if there be a God, it is the only torch 
 that this God has given me by which to find my way 
 through the darkness and the night called life. I do not 
 depend upon hearsay for that. I do not have to take the 
 word of any other man, nor get upon my knees before a 
 book. Here, in the temple of the mind, I go and con- 
 sult the God that is to say, my reason and the oracle 
 speaks to me, and I obey the oracle. What should I 
 obey? Another man's oracle? Shall I take another man's 
 word and not what he thinks, but what God said to him? 
 I would not know a god if I should see one. I have 
 said before, and I say again, the brain thinks in spite of 
 me, and I am not responsible for my thought. No more 
 can I control the beating of my heart, the expansion and 
 contraction of my lungs for a moment; no more can I 
 stop the blood that flows through the rivers of the veins. 
 And yet I am held responsible for my belief. Then 
 
ORTHODOXY. 563 
 
 why does not the God give me the evidence? They say 
 He has. In what? In an inspired book. But I do not 
 understand it as they do. Must I be false to my under- 
 standing? They say: " When you come to die you will 
 be sorry you did not. " Will I be sorry when I come to 
 die that I did not live a hypocrite? Will I be sorry I did 
 not say I was a "Christian when I was not? Will the 
 fact that I was honest put a thorn in the pillow of death? 
 God cannot forgive me for that. They say when He 
 was in Jerusalem, He forgave His murderers. Now He 
 won't forgive an honest man for differing with Him on 
 the subject of the Trinity. They say that God says to 
 me, " Forgive your enemies." I say, " All right, I do;" 
 but he says, " I will damn mine." God should be con- 
 sistent. If He wants me to forgive my enemies, He 
 should forgive His. I am asked to forgive enemies who 
 can hurt me. God is only asked to forgive enemies who 
 cannot hurt Him. He certainly ought to be as generous 
 as He asks us to be. And I want no God to forgive me 
 unless I do forgive others. All I ask, if that be true, is 
 that this God should live according to His own doctrine. 
 If I am to forgive my enemies I ask Him to forgive His. 
 That is justice, that is right. Here are these millions to- 
 day who say: "We are to be saved by belief, by faith; 
 but what are we to believe? " 
 
 In St. Louis last Sunday I read an interview with a 
 Christian minister one who is now holding a revival. 
 They call him the boy preacher a name that he has 
 borne for fifty or sixty years. The question was whether 
 in these revivals, when they were trying to rescue souls 
 from eternal torture, they would allow colored people to 
 occupy seats with white people, and that revivalist, 
 
564 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 preaching the unsearchable richness of Christ, said he 
 would not allow the colored people to sit with white peo- 
 ple; they must go to the back of the church. The same 
 people go and sit right next- to them in heaven, swap 
 harps with them, and yet this man, believing as he says 
 he does, that if he did not believe in the Lord Jesus 
 Christ he would eternally perish, was not willing that the 
 colored man should sit by a white man while he heard the 
 gospel of everlasting peace. He was not willing that the 
 colored man should get into the lifeboat of Christ, 
 although those white men might be totally depraved, and 
 if they had justice done them, according to his doctrine, 
 would be eternally damned and yet he has the impu- 
 dence to put on airs, although he ought to be eternally 
 damned, and go and sit by the colored man. His doctrine 
 of religion, the color line, has not my respect. I believe 
 in the religion of humanity, and it is far better to love 
 our fellow-men than to love God, because we can help 
 them, and we cannot help Him. You had better do 
 what you can than to be always pretending to do what 
 you cannot. 
 
 Now I come to the last part of the bible this creed 
 and that is, eternal punishment, and I have concluded; 
 and I have said I will never deliver a lecture that I do 
 not give the full benefit of its name. That part of the 
 Congregational creed would disgrace the lowest savage 
 that crouches and crawls in the jungles of Africa. The 
 man who now, in the nineteenth century, preaches the 
 doctrine of eternal punishment, the doctrine of eternal 
 hell, has lived in vain. Think of that doctrine! The 
 eternity of punishment! Why, I find in that same creed 
 that Christ is finally going to triumph in this world and 
 
ORTHODOXY. 565 
 
 establish His kingdom; but if their doctrine is true, He will 
 never triumph in the other world. He-will have billions 
 in hell forever. In this world we never will be perfectly 
 civilized as long as a gallows casts its shadow upon the 
 earth. As long as there is a penitentiary, behind the walls 
 of which a human being is immured, we are not a civil- 
 ized people. We will never be perfectly civilized until 
 we do away with crime and criminals. And yet, accord- 
 ing to this Christian religion, God is to have an eternal 
 penitentiary; He is to be an everlasting jailor, an ever- 
 lasting turnkey, a warden of an infinite dungeon, and 
 He is going to keep prisoners there, not for the purpose 
 of reforming them because they are never going to get 
 any better, only getting worse just for the purpose of 
 punishing them. And what for? For something they 
 did in this world; born in ignorance, educated it may be 
 in poverty, and yet responsible through the countless 
 ages of eternity. No man can think of a greater horror; 
 no man can think of a greater absurdity. For the 
 growth of that doctrine, ignorance was soil and fear was 
 rain. That doctrine came from the fauged mouths of 
 wild beasts, and yet it is the "glad tidings of great joy." 
 " God so loved the world " He is going to damn most 
 everybody, and. if this Christian religion be true, some 
 of the greatest, and grandest, and best who ever lived 
 upon this earth, are suffering its torments to-night. It 
 don't appear to make much difference, however, with this 
 church. They go right on enjoying themselves as well 
 as ever. If their doctrine is true, Benjamin Franklin, 
 one of the wisest and best of men, who did so much to 
 give us here a free government, is suffering the tyranny 
 of God to-night, while he endeavored to establish free- 
 
566 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 dom among men. If the churches were honest, their 
 preachers would tell their hearts, " Benjamin Franklin is 
 in hell, and we warn any and all the youth not to imitate 
 Benjamin Franklin. Thorrras Jefferson, the author of 
 the Declaration of Independence, with its self-evident 
 truths, has been damned these many years." That is 
 what all the ministers ought to have the courage to say. 
 Talk as you believe. Stand by your creed or change it. 
 I want to impress it upon your mind, because the thing 
 I wish to do in this world is to put out the fires of hell. 
 I want to keep at it just as long as there is one little coal 
 red in the bottomless pit. As long as the ashes are warm 
 I shall denounce this infamous doctrine. 
 
 I want you to know that the men who founded this 
 great and glorious government are there. The most of 
 the men who fought in the Revolutionary War and 
 wrested from the clutch of Great Britain this continent 
 have been rewarded by the eternal wrath of God. The 
 old Revolutionary soldiers are in hell by the thousands. 
 Let the preachers have the courage to say so. The men 
 who fought in 1812, and gave to the United States the 
 freedom of the seas, nearly all of them have been 
 damned since 1 81 5 all that were killed. The greatest 
 of heroes, they are there. The greatest of poets, the 
 greatest scientists, the men who have made the world 
 beautiful and grand, they are all, I tell you, among the 
 damned, if this creed is true. Humboldt, who shed light, 
 and who added to the intellectual wealth of mankind; 
 Goethe, and Schiller, and Lessing, who almost created 
 the German language all gone! All suffering the wrath 
 of God to-night, and every time an angel thinks of one 
 of those men he gives his harp an extra twang. 
 
ORTHODOXY. 567 
 
 La Place, who read the heaven like an open book he 
 is there. Robert Burns, the poet of human love he is 
 there because he wrote the ;' Prayer of Holy Willie; " 
 because he fastened upon the cross the Presbyterian 
 creed, and made a lingering crucifixion. And yet that 
 man added to the tenderness of human heart. Dickens, 
 who put a shield of pity before the flesh of childhood 
 God is getting even with him. Our own Ralph Waldo 
 Emerson, although he had a thousand opportunities to 
 hear Methodist clergymen, scorned the means of grace, 
 and the Holy Ghost is delighted that he is in hell to-night. 
 
 Longfellow refined hundreds and thousands of homes, 
 but he did not believe in the miraculous origin of the 
 Savior. No, sir; he doubted the report of Gabriel. He 
 loved his fellow-men; he did what he could to free the 
 slaves; he did what he could to make mankind happy; 
 but God was just waiting for him. He had His consta- 
 ble right there. Thomas Paine, the author of the 
 "Rights of Man," offering his life in both hemisphres for 
 the freedom of the human race, and one of the founders 
 of the Republic it has often seemed to me that if we 
 could get God's attention long enough to point Him to 
 the American flag, He would let him out. Compte, the 
 author of the "Positive Philosophy, " who loved his fellow- 
 men to that degree that he made of humanity a God, who 
 wrote his great work in poverty, with his face covered 
 with tears they are getting their revenge on him now. 
 Voltaire, who abolished torture in France; who did more 
 for human liberty than any other man, living or dead; 
 who was the assassin of superstition, and whose dagger 
 still rusts in the heart of Catholicism all the priests 
 who have been translated have their happiness increased 
 
568 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 by looking at Voltaire. Glorious country where the 
 principal occupation is watching the miseries of the lost. 
 
 Geordani Bruno, Benedict Spinoza, Diderot, the 
 encyclopedist, who endeavored to get all knowledge in a 
 small compass so that he could put the peasant on an 
 equality with the prince intellectually; the man who 
 wished to sow all over the world the seeds of knowledge; 
 who loved to labor for mankind. While the priests 
 wanted to burn, he did all he could to put out the fire- 
 he has been lost long, long ago. His cry for water has 
 become so common that his voice is now recognized 
 through all the realms of hell, and they say to one 
 another, "That is Diderot." David Hume, the philoso- 
 pher, he is there with the rest. 
 
 Beethoven, the Shakespeare of music, he has been lost, 
 and Wagner, the master of melody, and who has made 
 the air of this world rich forever, he is there, and they 
 have better music in hell than in heaven. 
 
 Shelley, whose soul, like his own skylark, was a winged 
 joy-- he has been damned for many, many years; and 
 Shakespeare, the greatest of the human race, who has 
 done ini)re to elevate mankind than all the priests who 
 ever lived and died he is there; and all the founders of 
 Inquisitions, the builders of dungeons, the makers of 
 chains, the inventors of instruments of torture, tearers, 
 and burners, and branders of hunan flesh, stealers of 
 babes and sellers of husbands, and wives, and children, 
 the drawers of the swords, of persecution, and they who 
 kept the horizon lurid with the fagot's flame for a thou- 
 sand years they are in heaven to-night. Well, I wish 
 heaven joy of such company. 
 
 And that is the doctrine with which we are polluting 
 
ORTHODOXY. 569 
 
 the souls of children. Trhat is the doctrine that puts a 
 fiend by tL^ir dying bed and a prophesy of hell over every 
 cradle. That is <( glad tidings of great joy." Only a 
 little while ago, when the great flood came upon the 
 Ohio, sent by him who is ruling in the world and pay- 
 ing particular attention to the affairs of nations, just in 
 the gray of the morning they saw a house floating down, 
 and on its top a human being; and a few men went out 
 to the rescue in a little boat, and they found there a 
 mother, a woman, and they wanted to rescue her, and 
 she said: " No, I am going to stay where I am. I have 
 three dead babes in this house." Think of a love so 
 limitless, stronger and deeper than despair and death, 
 and yet the Christian religion says that if that woman 
 did not happen to believe in their creed, God would send 
 that mother's soul to eternal fire. If there is another 
 world, and if in heaven they wear hats, when such a 
 woman climbs up the opposite bank of the Jordan, 
 Christ should lift His to her. 
 
 That is the trouble I had with this Christian religion- 
 its infinite heartlessness; and I cannot tell them too 
 often that during our last war Christians who knew that 
 if they were shot they would go right to heaven, went 
 and hired wicked men to take their places, perfectly will- 
 ing the men should go to hell, provided they could stay 
 at home. You see they are not honest in it; they do not 
 believe it, or, as the people say, " They don't sense it; " 
 they have not religion enough to conceive what it is they 
 believe and what a terriffic falsehood they assert. And I 
 beg of every one who hears rm to-night, I beg, I im- 
 plore, I beseech you never give "another dollar to build a 
 church in which that lie is preached Never give_another 
 
570 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES- 
 
 cent to send a missionary with his moult** 1 ' stuffed with 
 that falsehood to a foreign land. Why, thtW say, the 
 heathen will go to heaven anyway if you let thei~n alone; 
 what is the use of sending them to hell by enlightening ' 
 them. Let them alone. The idea of going and telling 
 a man a thing that if he does not believe he will be 
 damned, when the chances are ten to one that he won't 
 believe it. Don't tell him, and as quick as he gets to 
 the other world and finds it necessary to believe, he will 
 say "yes." Give him a chance. 
 
 My objection to the Christian religion is that it destroys 
 human love, and tells you and me that the love of your 
 dear ones is not necessary in this world to make a heaven 
 in the next. No matter about your wife, your children, 
 your brother, your sister no matter about all the affec- 
 tions of the human heart when you get there you wjll 
 be along with the angels. I don't know whether I would 
 like the angels. I don't know whether the angels would 
 like me. I would rather stand by the folks who have 
 loved me and whom I know; and I can conceive of no 
 heaven without the love of this earth. That is the trouble 
 with the Christian religion; leave your father, leave your 
 mother, leave your wife, leave your children, leave every- 
 thing and follow Jesus Christ . I will not. I will stay 
 with the folks. I will not sacrifice on the altar of a 
 selfish fear all the grandest and noblest promptings of 
 my heart. You do away with human love, and what are 
 we without it? What would we be in another world, and 
 what would we be here without it? Can any one con- 
 ceive of music without human love? Human love builds 
 every home human love is the author of all the beauty 
 in this world. Love paints every picture, and chisels 
 
ORTHODOXY. 
 
 every statue; love, I tell you, builds every fireside. What 
 would heaven be without love? And yet that is what we 
 are promised a heaven with your wife lost, your mfother 
 lost, some of your children gone. And you expect to be 
 made happy by falling in with some angel. 
 
 Such a religion is demoralizing; and how are you to 
 get there? On the efforts of another. You are to be 
 perpetually a heavenly pauper, and you will have to 
 admit through all eternity that you never would have got 
 here if you hadn't got frightened. "I am here," you 
 will say, ' ' I have these wings, I have this musical in- 
 strument, because I was scared." What a glorious world; 
 and then think of it! No reformation in the next world 
 not the slightest. If you die in Arkansas that is the 
 end of you. At the end you will be told that being born 
 in Arkansas you had a fair chance. Think of telling a 
 boy in the next world, who lived and died in Delaware, 
 that he had a fair show! Can anything be more infamous? 
 All on an equality the rich and the poor, those with 
 parents loving them, those with o^ery opportunity for 
 education, on an equality with the poor, the abject, and 
 the ignorant and the little ray called life, this little 
 moment with a shadow and a tear, this little space be- 
 tween your mother's arms and the grave, that balances 
 an entire eternity. And God can do nothing for you 
 when you get there. A little Methodist preacher can do 
 no more for the soul here than its Creator can when you 
 get there. The soul goes to heaven, where there is noth- 
 ing but good society; no bad examples; and they are all 
 there, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and yet they can do 
 nothing for that poor unfortunate except to damn him. 
 Is there any sense in that? Why should this be a period 
 
572 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 of probation? It says in the bible, I believe, "Now is 
 the accepted time." When does that mean? That 
 means whenever the passage is pronounced. Now is the 
 accepted time. It will be the same to-morrow, won't it? 
 And just as appropriate then as to-day, and if appropriate 
 at any time, appropriate through all eternity. What I 
 say is this: There is no world there can be no world 
 in which every human being will not have an oppor- 
 tunity of doing right. That is my objection to this Chris- 
 tian religion, and if the love of earth is not the love of 
 heaven, if those who love us here are to be separated 
 there, then I want eternal sleep. Give me a good cold 
 grave rather than the furnace of Jehovah's wrath. 
 Gabriel, don't blow! Let me alone! If, when the grave 
 bursts, I am not to meet faces that have been my sun- 
 shine in this life, let me sleep on. Rather than that the 
 doctrine of endless punishment should be tried, I would 
 like to see the fabric of our civilization crumble and fall 
 to unmeaning chaos and to formless dust, where oblivion 
 broods and where even memory forgets. I would rather 
 a Samson of some unprisoned force, released by chance, 
 should so wreck and strain the mighty world that man in 
 stress and strain of want and fear should shudderingly 
 crawl back to savage and barbaric night. I would rather 
 that every planet would in its orbit wheel a barren star 
 rather than that the Christian religion should be true. 
 
 I think it is better to love your children than to love 
 God, a thousand times better, because you can help them, 
 and I am inclined to think that God can get along with- 
 out you. I believe in the religion of the family. I be- 
 lieve that the roof-tree is sacred from the smallest fibre 
 held in the soft, moist clasp of the earth to the little 
 
ORTHODOXY. 5/3 
 
 blossom on the topmost bough that gives its fragrance to 
 the happy air. The family where virtue dwells with love 
 is like a lily with a heart of fire the fairest flower in all 
 this world. And I tell you God cannot afford to damn a 
 man in the next world who has made a happy family in 
 this. God cannot afford to cast over the battlements of 
 heaven the man who has built a happy home here. God 
 cannot afford to be unpitying to a human heart capable 
 of pity. God cannot clothe with fire the man who has 
 clothed the naked here; and God cannot send to eternal 
 pain a man who has done something toward improving 
 the condition of his fellow-man. If he can, I had rather 
 go to hell than to heaven and keep the company of such 
 a God. 
 
 They tell me the next terrible thing I do is to take away 
 the hope of immortality . I do not, I would not, I could 
 not. Immortality was first dreamed of by human love, and 
 yet the church is going to take human love out of im- 
 mortality. We love it; therefore we wish to love. A 
 loved ones dies, and we wish to meet again, and from the 
 affection of the human heart grew the great oak of the 
 hope of immortality. And around that oak has climbed 
 the poisonous vine, superstition. Theologians, pretenders, 
 soothsayers, parsons, priests, popes, bishops, have taken 
 all that hope, and they have had the impudence to stand 
 by the grave and prophesy a future of pain. They have 
 erected their toll-gates on the highway to the other 
 world, and have collected money from the poor people 
 on the way, and they have collected it from their fear. 
 The church did not give us the idea of immortality; the 
 bible did not give us the idea of immortality. Let me 
 tell you now the old testament tells you hovv you lost im- 
 
574 INGERSOLLS LECTURES. 
 
 mortality; it does not say another word about another 
 world from the first mistake in Genesis to the last curse 
 
 in Malachi. There is not in the old testament one burial 
 
 . 
 
 service. 
 
 No man in the old testament stands by the bed and 
 says, " I will meet them again" not one word. From 
 the top of Sinai came no hope of another world. And 
 when we get to the new testament, what do we find 
 there? " Have thy heart counted worthy to obtain that 
 world and the resurrection of the dead." As though 
 some would be counted unworthy to obtain the resurrec- 
 tion of the dead. And, in another place: "Seek for 
 honor, glory, immortality." If you have got it, why seek 
 for it? And in another place: 4< God, who alone hath 
 immortality; " and yet they tell us that we get our ideas 
 of immortality from the bible. I deny it. If Christ was 
 in fact God, why didn't He plainly say there was another 
 life? Why didn't He tell us something about it? Why 
 didn't He turn the tear-stained hope of immortality into 
 the glad knowledge of another life? 
 
 Why did He go dumbly to his death, and leave the 
 world in darkness and in doubt? Why? Because He 
 was a man and didn't know. I would not destroy the 
 smallest star of human hope, but I deny that we got our 
 idea of immortality from the bible. It existed long be- 
 fore Moses existed. We find it symbolized through all 
 Egypt, through all India. Wherever man has lived, his 
 religion has made another world in which to meet the 
 lost. It is not born of the bible. The idea of immor- 
 tality, like the great sea, has ebbed and flowed in the 
 human heart, beating with its countless waves against 
 the rocks and sands of fate and time. It was not born 
 
ORTHODOXY. 575 
 
 of the bible. It was born of the human heart, and it 
 will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and 
 clouds of doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the 
 lips of death. We do not know. We do not prophesy 
 a life of pain. We leave the dead with nature, the 
 mother of us all, under a seven-hued bow of hope. 
 Under the seven-hued arch let the dead sleep. "Ah, 
 but you take the consolation of religion." What conso- 
 lation has religion for the widow of the unbeliever, the 
 widow of a good, brave, kind man who lies dead? What 
 can the orthodox ministers say to relieve the bursting 
 heart of that woman? What can the orthodox ministers 
 say to relieve the aching hearts of the little orphans as 
 they kneel by the grave of that father, if that father 
 didn't happen to be an orthodox Christian? What con- 
 solation have they? I find that when a Christian loses a 
 friend the tears spring from his eyes as quickly as from 
 the eyes of others. Their tears are as bitter as ours. 
 Why? The echo of the promises spoken eighteen 
 hundred years ago is so low, and the sound of the clods 
 upon the coffin so loud, the promises are so far away, 
 and the dead are so near. That is the reason. And 
 they find no consolation there. I say honestly we do not 
 know; we cannot say. We cannot say whether death is 
 a wall or a door; the beginning or end of a day; the 
 spreading of pinions too soar or the folding forever of 
 wings; whether it is the rising or the setting of sun, or 
 an endless life that brings rapture and love to every one 
 we do not know; we can not say. 
 
 There is an old fable of Orpheus and Eurydice: Eury- 
 dice had been captured and taken to the infernal regions, 
 jmd Orpheus went after her, taking with him his harp 
 
576 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 and playing as he went; and when he came to the infer- 
 nal regions he began to play, and Sysiphus sat down 
 upon the stone that he had been heaving up the side ol 
 the mountain so many years, -and which continually rolled 
 back upon him; Ixion paused upon his wheel of fire; 
 Tantalus ceased in his vain efforts for water; the 
 daughters of the Danaidse left off trying to fill their 
 sieves with water; Pluto smiled, and for the first time in 
 the history of hell the cheeks of the Furies were wet 
 with tears; monsters relented and they said, "Eurydice 
 may go with you, but you must not look back." So he 
 again threaded the caverns, playing as he went, and as 
 he again reached the light he failed to hear the footsteps 
 of Eurydice, and he looked back and in a moment she 
 was gone. This old fable gives to us the idea of the per- 
 petual effort to rescue truth from the churches cf mon- 
 sters. Some time Orpheus will not look back. Some 
 day Eurydice will reach the blessed light, and at some 
 time there will fade from the memory of men the super- 
 stition of religion. 
 
LNGERSOLL'S LECTURE 
 
 ON 
 
 "BLASPHEMY" 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: There is an old story of a 
 missionary trying to convert an Indian. The Indian 
 made a little circle in the sand and said, " That is what 
 the Indian knows." Then he made another circle a little 
 larger and said, "that is what missionary knows; but 
 outside there the Indian knows just as much as mission- 
 ary." 
 
 I am going to talk mostly outside that circle to-night. 
 
 First, what is the origin of the crime known as blas- 
 phemy? It is the belief in a God who is cruel, revenge- 
 ful, quick tempered and capricious; a God who punishes 
 the innocent for the guilty; a God wjio listens with delight 
 to the shrieks of the tortured and gazes enraptured on 
 their spurting blood. You must hold this belief before 
 you can believe in the doctrine of blasphemy. You must 
 believe that this God loves ceremonies, that this God 
 knows certain men to whom He has told all His will. It 
 
 577 
 
578 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 then follows that, if this God loves ceremonies and has 
 certain men to teach His will and perform these cere- 
 monies, these men must have a place to live in. This 
 place was called a temple, and it was sacred. And the 
 pots and pans and kettles and all in it were sacred, too. 
 No one but the priests must touch them. Then the God 
 wrote a book in which He told His covenants to men, 
 and gave this book to priests to interpret. While it was 
 sacrilege to touch with the hands the pots and pans of 
 the temple, it was blasphemy to doubt or question any- 
 thing in the book. And then the right to think was gone, 
 and the right to use the brain that God had given was 
 taken away, and religion was intrenched behind that 
 citadel called blasphemy. 
 
 God was a kind of juggler. He did not wish man to 
 be impudent or curious about how He did things. You 
 must sit in audience and watch the tricks and ask no 
 questions. In front of every fact He has hung the im- 
 penetrable curtain of blasphemy. Now, then, all the 
 little reason that poor man had is useless. To say any- 
 thing against the priest was blasphemy and to say any- 
 thing against God was blasphemy to ask a question was 
 blasphemy. Finally we sank to the level of fetichism. 
 We began to worship inanimate things. If you will read 
 your bible you will find that the Jews had a sacred box. 
 In it were the rod oPAaron and a piece of manna and the 
 tables of stone. To touch this box was a crime. You 
 remember that one time when a careless Jew thought the 
 box was going to tip he held it. God killed him. What 
 a warning to baggage smashers of the present day. 
 
 We find also that God concocted a hair oil and threat- 
 ened death to any one who imitated it. And we see that 
 
BLASPHEMY. 5/9 
 
 He also made a certain perfume and it was death to 
 make anything that smelt like it. It seems to me this is 
 carrying protection too far. It always has been blas- 
 phemy to say "I do not know whether God exists or 
 not." In all Catholic countries it is blasphemy to doubt 
 the bible, to doubt the sacredness of the relics. It always 
 has been blasphemy to laugh at a priest, to ask questions, 
 to investigate the Trinity. In a world of superstition, 
 reason is blasphemy. In a world of ignorance, facts are 
 blasphemy. In a world of cruelty, sympathy is a crime, 
 and in a world of lies, truth is blasphemy. Who are the 
 real blasphemers? Webster offers the definition; blas- 
 phemy is an insult offered to God by attributing to Him 
 a nature and qualities differing from His real nature and 
 qualities, and dishonoring Him. A very good definition, 
 if you only know what His nature and qualities are. 
 But that is not revealed; for, studying Him through the 
 medium of the bible, we find Him inimitably contradic- 
 tory. He commands us not to work on the Sabbath day, 
 because it is holy. Yet God works himself on the Sab- 
 bath day. The sun, moon and stars swing round in 
 their orbits, and all the creation attributed to this God 
 goes on as on other days. He says: " Honor thy father 
 and mother," and yet this God, in the person of Christ, 
 offered honors, and glory, and happiness a hundred fold 
 to any who would desert their father and mother for Him. 
 Thou shalt not kill, yet God killed the first-born of Egypt, 
 and he commanded Joshua to kill all His enemies, not 
 sparing old or young, man, woman or child, even an un- 
 born child. "Thou shalt not commit adultery," he says, 
 and yet this God gave the wives of defeated enemies to 
 His soldiers of Joshua's army. Then again He says, 
 
580 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 " Thou shalt not steal." By this command He protected 
 the inanimate property and the cattle of one man against 
 the hand of another, and yet this God who said <4 Thou 
 shalt not steal," established human slavery. The prod- 
 ucts of industry were not to be interfered with, but the 
 producer might be stolen as often as possible. ' ' Thou 
 shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." And 
 yet the God who said this said also, " I have sent lying 
 spirits unto Ahab." The only commandment He really 
 kept was, "Thou shalt have none other gods but Me." 
 Is it blasphemous to describe this God as malicious? 
 You know that laughter is a good index of the character 
 of a man. You like and rejoice with the man whose 
 laugh is free and joyous and full of good will. You fear 
 and dislike him of the sneering laugh. How does God 
 laugh? He says, "I will laugh at their calamity and 
 mock at their misfortune," speaking of some who have 
 sinned. Think of the malice and malignity of that in an 
 infinite God when speaking of the sufferings He is going 
 to impose upon His children. You know that it is said 
 of a Roman emperor that he wrote laws very finely, and 
 posted them so high on the walls that no one could read 
 them, and then he punished the people who disobeyed 
 the laws. That is the acme of tyranny: to provide a 
 punishment for breach of laws the existence of which 
 were unknown. Now we all know that there is sin 
 against the Holy Ghost which will not be forgiven in this 
 world nor in the world to come. Hundreds of thousands 
 of people have been driven to the lunatic asylum by the 
 thought that they had committed this unpardonable sin. 
 Every educated minister knows that that part of the bible 
 is an interpolation, but they all preach it. What that 
 
BLASPHEMY. 581 
 
 sin against the Holy Ghost is, is not specified. I say, 
 " Oh, but my good God, tell me what this sin is." And 
 He answers, "Maybe now asking is the crime. Keep 
 quiet." So I keep quiet and go about tortured with the 
 fear that I have committed that sin. Is it blasphemy to 
 describe God as needing assistance from the Legislature? 
 Calling for the aid of a mob to enforce His will here. 
 Compare that God with a man, even with Henry Bergh. 
 See what Mr. Bergh has done to awaken pity in our peo- 
 ple and call sympathy to the rescue of suffering animals. 
 And yet our God was a torturer of dumb brutes. 
 
 It is blasphemy to say that our God sent the famine 
 and dried the mother's breast from her infant's withered 
 lips? Is it blasphemy to say that He is the author of the 
 pestilence; that He ordered some of His children to con- 
 sume others with fire and sword? Is it blasphemy to be- 
 lieve what we read in the lOQth Psalm? If these things 
 are not blasphemy, then there is no blasphemy. If there 
 be a God I desire Him to write in the book of judgment 
 opposite my name that I denied these lies for Him. 
 
 Let us take another step; let us examine the Presbyte- 
 rian confession of faith. If it be possible to commit 
 blasphemy, then I contend that the Presbyterian creed is 
 most blasphemous, for, according to that, God is a cruel, 
 unrelenting, revengeful, malignant and utterly unreasona- 
 ble tyrant. I propose now to pay a little attention to 
 the creed. First, it confesses that there is such a thing 
 as a light of nature. It is sufficient to make man inex- 
 cusable, but not sufficient for salvation; just light enough 
 to lead man to hell. Now imagine a man who will put 
 a false light on a hilltop to lure a ship to destruction. 
 What would we say of that man? What can we say of 
 
582 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 a God who gives this false light of nature which, if its 
 lessons are followed, results in hell? That is the Pres- 
 byterian God. I don't like Him. Now it occurred to 
 God that the light of nature was somewhat weak, and 
 He thought He'd light another burner. Therefore He 
 made His book and gave it to His servants, the priests, 
 that they might give it to men. It was to be accepted, 
 not on the authority of Moses, or any other writer, but 
 because it was the word of God . How do you know it's the 
 word of God? You're not to take the word of Moses, or 
 David, or Jeremiah, or Isaiah, or any other man, because 
 the authenticity of their work has nothing to do with the 
 matter; this creed expressly lets them out. How are you 
 to know that it is God's word? Because it is God's word. 
 Why is it God's word? What proof have we that it is 
 God's word? Because it is God's word. 
 
 Now, then, I find that the next thing in this wonder- 
 ful confession of faith of the Presbyterians is the decree 
 of predestination. [Reads the decree.] I am pleased 
 to assure you that it is not necessary to understand this. 
 You have only to believe it. You see that by the decree 
 of God some men angels are predestinated to heaven and 
 others to eternal hell, and you observe that their number 
 is so certain and definite that it can neither be changed 
 nor altered. You are asked to believe that billions of 
 years ago this God knew the names of all the men and 
 women whom He was going to save. Had 'em in His 
 book, that being the only thing except Himself that then 
 existed. He had chosen the names by the aid of the se- 
 cret council. The reason they called it secret was be- 
 cause they knew all about it. 
 
 In making His choice, God was not at all bigoted. He 
 
BLASPHEMY. 583 
 
 did not choose John Smith because He foresaw that 
 Smith was to be a Presbyterian, and was to possess a 
 loving nature, was to be honest and true and noble in all 
 his ways, doing good himself and encouraging others in 
 the same. Oh, no! He was quite as likely to pick 
 Brown, in spite of the fact that He knew long before that 
 Brown would be a wicked wretch. You see He was just 
 as apt to send Smith to the devil and take Brown to 
 heaven and all for " His glory." This God also blinds 
 and hardens ah! he's a peculiar God. If sinners per- 
 severe, He will blind and harden and give them over at 
 last to their own wickedness instead of trying to reclaim 
 and save them. 
 
 Now we come to the comforting doctrine of the total 
 depravity of man, and this leads us to consider how he 
 came that way. Can any person read the first chapters 
 of Genesis and believe them unless his logic was assas- 
 sinated in the cradle? We read that our first parents 
 were placed in a pleasant garden; that they were given 
 the full run of the place and only forbidden to meddle 
 with the orchard; that they were tempted as God knew 
 they were to be tempted; that they fell as God knew they 
 would fall, and that for this fall, which He knew would 
 happen before He made them, He fixed the curse of 
 original sin upon them, to be continued to all their chil- 
 dren. Why didn't He stop right there? Why didn't He 
 kill Adam and Eve and make another pair who didn't 
 like apples? Then when He brought His flood why did 
 He rescue eight people if their descendants were to be 
 so totally depraved and wicked? Why didn't He have 
 His flood first, and then drown the devil? That would 
 have solved the problem, and He could then have tried 
 experiments unmolested. 
 
584 INGERSOLI/S LECTURES. 
 
 The Presbyterian confession says this corruption was 
 in all men. It was born with them, it lived through 
 their life, and after death survived in the children. Well, 
 can't man help himself? No. I'll show you. God's got 
 him. Listen to this. [Reads extracts.] So that a 
 natural man is not only dead in sin and unable to accom- 
 plish salvation, but he is also incapable of preparing him- 
 self therefor. Absolutely incapable of taking a trick. 
 He is saved, if at all, completely by the mercy of God. 
 If that's the case, then why doesn't He convert us all? 
 Oh, He doesn't. He wishes to send the most of us to 
 hell to show His justice. Elect infants dying in infancy 
 are regenerate. So also are all persons incapable of un- 
 belief. That includes insane persons and idiots, because 
 an idiot is incapable of unbelief. Idiots are the only 
 fellows who've got the dead wood on God. Then accord- 
 ing to this, the man who has lived according to the light 
 of nature, doing the best he knew how to make this earth 
 happy, will be damned by God because he never heard of 
 His son. Whose fault is it that an infinite God does not 
 advertise? Something wrong about that. I am inclined 
 to think that the Presbyterian church is wrong. 
 
 I find here how utterly unpardonable sin is. There is 
 no sin so small but it is punished with hell, and away 
 you go straight to the deepest burning pit unless your 
 heart has been purified by this confession of faith un- 
 less this snake has crawled in there and made itself a 
 nest. Why should we help religion? I would like people 
 to ask themselves that question. An infinite God, by 
 practicing a reasonable economy, can get along without 
 assistance. Loudly this confession proclaims that salva- 
 tion comes from Christ alone. What, then, becomes of 
 
BLASPHEMY. 585 
 
 the savage who, having never known the name of Christ, 
 has lived according to the light of nature, kind and heroic 
 and generous, and possessed of and cultivating all the 
 natural virtues? He goes to hell. God, you see, loves 
 us. If He had not loved us what would He have done? 
 The light of nature then shows that God is good and 
 therefore to be feared on account of his goodness, to be 
 served and honored without ceasing. And yet this creed 
 says that on the last day God will damn anyone who has 
 walked according to this light. It's blasphemy to walk 
 by the light of nature. 
 
 The next great doctrine is on the preservation of the. 
 saints. Now, there are peculiarities about saints. They 
 are saints without their own knowledge or free will; they 
 may even be down on saints, but its no good. God has 
 got a rolling hitch on them, and they have to come into 
 the kingdom sooner or later. It all depends on whether 
 they have been elected or not. God could have made 
 me a saint just as easy as not, but He passed me by. 
 Now you know the Presbyterians say I trample on holy 
 things. They believe in hell and I come and say there is 
 no hell. I hurt their hearts, they say, and they add 
 that I am going to hell myself. I thank them for that; 
 but now let's see what these tender Presbyterians say of 
 other churches. Here it is: 
 
 This confession of faith calls the pope of Rome anti- 
 Christ and a son of perdition. Now there are forty 
 Roman Catholics to one Presbyterian on this earth. Do 
 not the Presbyterians rather trample on the things that 
 are holy to the Roman Catholics, and do they respect 
 their feelings? But the Presbyterians have a pope them- 
 selves, composed of the presbyters and preachers. This 
 
586 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 confession attributes to them the keys of heaven and hell 
 and the power to forgive sins [Here extracts are read.] 
 Therefore these men must be infallible, for God would 
 never be so foolish as to intrust fallible men with the 
 keys of heaven and hell. I care nothing for their keys, 
 nor for any world these keys would open or lock; I pre- 
 fer the country. 
 
 We are told by this faith that at the last day all the 
 men and women and children who have ever lived on the 
 earth will appear in the self same bodies they have had 
 when on earth. Everyone who knows anything knows 
 the constant exchange which is going on between the 
 vegetable and animal kingdom. The millions of atoms 
 which compose one of our bodies have all come from 
 animals and vegetables, and they in their turn drew them 
 from animals and vegetables which preceded them. 
 The same atoms which are now in our bodies have pre- 
 viously been in the bodies of our ancestors. The negro 
 from Central Africa has many times been mahogany and 
 the mahogany has many times been negro. A mission- 
 ary goes to the cannibal islands and a cannibal eats him 
 and dies. The atoms which composed the missionary's 
 body now compose in great part the cannibal's body. To 
 whom will these atoms belong on the morning of the 
 resurrection? 
 
 How did the devil, who had always lived in heaven 
 among the best society, ever happen to become bad? If 
 a man surrounded by angels could become bad, why can- 
 not a man surrounded by devils become good? 
 
 Here is the last Presbyterian joy: At the day of 
 judgment the righteous shall be caught up to heaven and 
 shall stand at the right hand of Christ and share with 
 
BLASPHEMY. 587 
 
 Him in judging the wicked. Then the Presbyterian hus- 
 band may have the ineffable pleasure of judging his wife 
 and condemning her to eternal hell, and the boy will say 
 to his mother, echoing the command of God: " Depart, 
 thou accursed, into everlasting torment! " Here will 
 come a man who has not believed in God. He was a 
 soldier who took up arms to free the slaves and who 
 rotted to death in Andersonville prison rather than accept 
 the offer of his captors to fight against freedom. He 
 loved his wife and his children and his home and his 
 native country and all mankind, and did all the good he 
 knew. God will say to the Presbyterians, " What shall 
 we do to this man?" and they will answer, "Throw him 
 into hell." 
 
 Last night there was a fire in Philadelphia, and at a 
 window fifty feet above the ground Mr. King stood amid- 
 flame and smoke and pressed his children to his breast 
 one after the other, kissed them, and threw them to the 
 rescuers with a prayer. That was man. At the last day 
 God takes His children with a curse and hurls them into 
 eternal fire. That's your God as the Presbyterians de- 
 scribe Him. Do you believe that God if there is one 
 will ever damn me for thinking Him better than He is? 
 If this creed be true, God is the insane keeper of a mad 
 house. 
 
 We have in this city a clergyman who contends that 
 this creed gives a correct picture of God, and further- 
 more says that God has the right to do with us what He 
 pleases because He made us. If I could change this 
 lamp into a human being, that would not give me the 
 right to torture him, and if I did torture him and he 
 cried out, " Why torturest thou me?" and I replied, 
 
588 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 " Because I made you," he would be right in replying, 
 "You made me, therefore you are responsible for my 
 happiness." No God has a right to add to the sum of 
 human misery. And yet this minister believes an honest 
 thought blasphemy. No doubt he is perfectly honest. 
 Otherwise he would have too much intellectual pride to 
 take the position he does. He says that the bible offers 
 the only restraint to the savage passions of man. In lands 
 where, there has been no bible there have been mild and 
 beneficent philosophers, like Buddha and Confucius. Is 
 it possible that the bible is the only restraint, and yet the 
 nations among whom these men lived have been as moral 
 as we? In Brooklyn and New York you have the bible, 
 yet do you find that the restraint is a great success? Is 
 there a city on the globe which lacks more in certain 
 directions than some in Christendom, or even the United 
 States? 
 
 What are the natural virtues of man? Honesty, hos- 
 pitality, mercy in the hour of victory, generosity do we 
 not find these virtues among some savages? Do we find 
 them among all Christians? I am also told by these 
 gentlemen that the time will come when the infidel will 
 be silenced by society. Why that time came long ago. 
 Society gave the hemlock to Socrates. Society in 
 Jerusalem cried out for Barrabas and crucified Jesus. In 
 every Christian country society has endeavored to crush 
 the infidel. 
 
 Blasphemy is a padlock which hypocrisy tries to put 
 on the lips of all honest men. At one time Christianity 
 succeeded in silencing the infidel, and then came the 
 dark ages, when all rule was ecclesiastical, when the air 
 was filled with devils and spooks, when birth was a mis- 
 
BLASPHEMY. 589 
 
 fortune, life a prolonged misery of fear and torment, and 
 death a horrible nightmare. They crushed the infidels, 
 Galileo, Kepler, Copernicus, wherever a ray of light ap- 
 peared in the ecclesiastical darkness. But I want to tell 
 this minister to-night, and all others like him, that that 
 day is passed. All the churches in the United States can 
 not even crush me. The day for that has gone, never to 
 return. If they think they can crush free thought in this 
 country, let them try it. What must this minister think 
 of you and the citizens of this republic when he says, 
 11 Take the fear of hell out of men's hearts and a majority 
 of them will become ungovernably wicked. " Oh, think 
 of an angel in heaven having to allow that he was scared 
 there. 
 
 This minister calls for my arrest. He thinks his God 
 needs help, and would like to see the police crush the 
 infidel. I would advise Mr. Talmage (hisses) to furnish 
 his God with a rattle, so that when he is in danger again 
 he can summon the police immediately. 
 
 I'll tell you what is blasphemy. It is blasphemy to 
 live on the fruits of other men's labor, to prevent the 
 growth of the human mind, to persecute for opinion's 
 sake, to abuse your wife and children, to increase in any 
 manner the sum of human misery. 
 
 I'll tell you what is sacred. Our bodies are sacred, 
 our rights are sacred, justice and liberty are sacred. 
 
 I'll tell you what is the true bible. It is the sum of all 
 actual knowledge of man, and every man who discovers 
 a new fact adds a new verse to this bible. It is different 
 from the other bible, because that is the sum of all that 
 its writers and readers do not know. 
 
INGERSOLL'S LECTURE 
 
 ENTITLED 
 
 SOME REASONS WHY. 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: The history of the world 
 shows that religion has made enemies instead of friends. 
 That one word " religion " paints the horizon of the past 
 with every form of agony and torture, and when one 
 pronounces the name of "religion" we think of 1,500 
 years of persecution, of 6,000 years of hatred, slander 
 and vituperation. Strange, but true, that those who 
 have loved God most have loved men least; strange that 
 in countries where there has been the most religion there 
 has been the most agony; and that is one reason why I 
 am opposed to what is known as religion. 
 
 By religion I mean the duties that men are supposed 
 to owe to God; by religion I mean, not what man owes 
 to man, but what we owe to some invisible, infinite and 
 supreme being. The question arises, Can any relation 
 exist between finite man and infinite being? An infinite 
 being is absolutely conditional. An infinite being can- 
 not walk, cannot receive, and a finite being cannot give 
 
 590 
 
SOME REASONS WHY. 591 
 
 to the infinite. Can I increase his happiness or decrease 
 his misery? Does he need my strength or my life? 
 What can I do for him? I say, nothing. 
 
 For one, I do not believe there is any God who gives 
 rain or sunshine for praying. For one, I do not be lieve 
 there is any being who helps man simply because he 
 kneels. I may be mistaken, but that is my doctrine 
 that the finite cannot by any possibility help the infinite, 
 or the infinite be indebted to the finite; that the finite 
 cannot by any possibility assist a being who is all in all. 
 What can we do? We can help man; we can help 
 clothe the naked, feed the hungry; we can help break 
 the chains of the slave; we can help weave a garment of 
 joy that will finally cover this world. 
 
 That is all that man can do. Wherever he has en- 
 deavored to do more he has simply increased the mis- 
 ery of his fellows. I can find out nothing of these things 
 myself by my unaided reasoning. If there is an infinite 
 God and I have not reason enough to comprehend His 
 universe, whose fault is it? I am told that we have the 
 inspired will of God. I do not know exactly what they 
 mean by inspired. Not two sects agree on that word. 
 Some tell me that every great work is inspired; that 
 Shakespeare is inspired. I would be less apt to dispute 
 that than a similar remark about any other book on this 
 earth. If Jehovah had wanted to have a book written, 
 the inspiration of which should not be disputed, He 
 should have waited until Shakespeare lived. 
 
 Whatever they mean by inspiration, they at least 
 mean that it is true. If it is true, it does not need to be 
 inspired. The truth will take care of itself. Nothing 
 except a falsehood needs inspiration. What is inspira- 
 
592 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 tion? A man looks at the sea, and the sea says some- 
 thing to him. Another man looks at the same sea, and 
 the sea tells another story to him. The sea cannot tell 
 the same story to any two human beings. There is not 
 a thing in nature, from a pebble to a constellation, that 
 tells the same story to any two human beings. It de- 
 pends upon the man's experience, his intellectual devel- 
 opment, and what chord of memory it touches. One 
 looks upon the sea and is filled with grief; another looks 
 upon it and laughs. 
 
 Last year, riding in the cars from Boston to Ports- 
 mouth, sat opposite me a lady and gentleman. As we 
 reached the latter place the woman, for the first time in 
 her life, caught a burst of the sea, and she looked and 
 said to her husband " Isn't that beautiful!" And he 
 looked and said: " I'll bet you can dig clams right 
 there." 
 
 Another illustration: A little while ago a gentleman 
 was walking with another in South Carolina, at Charles- 
 ton one who had been upon the other side. Said the 
 Northerner to the Southerner, " Did you ever see such a 
 night as this; did you ever in your life see such a moon?" 
 4 'Oh, my God," said he, "you ought to have seen that 
 moon before the war! " 
 
 I simply say these things to convince you that every- 
 thing in nature has a different story to tell every human 
 being. So the bible tells a different story to every man 
 that reads it. History proves what I say. Why so 
 many sects? Why so much persecution? Simply be- 
 cause two people couldn't understand it exactly alike. 
 You may reply that God intended it should be so under- 
 stood, and that is the real revelation that God intended. 
 
SOME REASONS WHY. 593 
 
 For instance, I write a letter to Smith. I want to 
 convey to him certain thoughts. If I am honest I will 
 use the words which will convey to him my thoughts, 
 but not being infinite, I don't know exactly how Smith 
 will understand my words; but if I were infinite I would 
 be bound to use the words that I know Smith would get 
 my exact idea from. If God intended to make a revela- 
 tion to me He has to make it to me through my brain 
 and my reasoning. He cannot make a revelation to 
 another man for me. That other man will have God's 
 word for it but I will only have that man's word for it. 
 As that man has been dead for several thousand years, 
 and as I don't know what his reputation was for truth 
 and veracity in the neighborhood in which he lived, I will 
 wait for the Lord to speak again. 
 
 Suppose when I read it, the revelation to me, through 
 the bible, is that it is not true, and God knew that I 
 would know that when I did read it, and knew, if I did 
 not say it, I would be dishonest. Is it possible that He 
 would damn me for being honest, and give me wings if 
 I would play the hypocrite? 
 
 The inspiration of the bible depends upon the ignor- 
 ance of the gentleman who reads it. Yet they tell me 
 this book was written by the creator of every shining star. 
 Now let us see. I want to be honest and candid . I 
 have just as much at stake in the way of soul as any 
 doctor of divinity that ever lived, and more than some I 
 have met. According to this book, the first attempt at 
 peopling this world was a failure. God had to destroy 
 all but eight. He saved some of the same kind to start 
 again, which I think was a mistake. After that, the 
 people still getting worse, he selected from the wide 
 
594 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 world a few of the tribe of Abraham. He had no time 
 to waste with everybody. He had no time to throw 
 away on Egypt. It had at that time avast and splendid 
 civilization, in which there were free schools; in which 
 the one man married the one wife; where there were 
 courts of law; where there were codes of laws. 
 
 Neither could He give attention to India, that had at 
 that time a literature as splendid almost as ours, a lan- 
 guage as perfect; that had produced poets, philosophers, 
 statesmen. He had no time to waste with them, but 
 took a few of the tribe of Abraham, and He did His 
 best to civilize these people. He was their governor, 
 their executive, their supreme court. He established a 
 despotism, and from Mount Sinai He proclaimed His 
 laws. They didn't pay much attention to them. He 
 wrought thousands of miracles to convince them that He 
 was God.. 
 
 Isn't it perfectly wonderful that the priest of one re- 
 ligion never believes the miracles told by the priest of 
 another? Is it possible that they know each other? I 
 heard a story the other day. A gentleman was telling a 
 very remarkable circumstance that happened to himself, 
 and all the listeners except one said, "Is it possible; 
 did you ever hear such a wonderful thing in all your life? " 
 They noticed that this one man didn't appear to take a 
 vivid interest in the story, so one said to him, "You 
 don't express much astonishment at the story?" "No, 4 
 says he, " I am a liar myself." 
 
 I find by reading this book that a worse government 
 was never established than that established by Jehovah; 
 that the Jews were the most unfortunate people who 
 lived upon the globe. Let us compare this book. In 
 
SOME REASONS WHY. 595 
 
 all civilized countries it is riot only admitted, but passion- 
 ately asserted, that slavery is an infamous crime; that a 
 war of extermination is murder; that polygamy enslaves 
 woman, degrades man and destroys home; that nothing 
 is more infamous than the slaughter of decrepit men and 
 helpless women, and of prattling babes; that the cap- 
 tured maiden should not be giveh to her captors; that 
 wives should not be stoned to death for differing in re- 
 ligion from their husbands. We know there was a time 
 in the history of most nations when all these crimes were 
 regarded as divine institutions. Nations entertaining 
 these views to-day are called savage, and with the ex- 
 ception of the Feejee islanders, some tribes in Central 
 Africa, and a few citizens of Delaware, no human being 
 can be found degraded enough to agree upon those sub- 
 jects with Jehovah. 
 
 To-day, the fact that a nation has abolished and aban- 
 doned those things is the only evidence that it can offer 
 to show that it is not still barbarous; but a believer in 
 the inspiration of the bible is compelled to say there was 
 a time when slavery was right, when polygamy was the 
 highest form of virtue, when wars of extermination were 
 waged with the sword of mercy, and when the creator of 
 the whole world commanded the soldier to sheathe the 
 dagger of murder in the dimpled breast of infancy. The 
 believer of inspiration of the bible is compelled to say 
 there was a time when it was right for a husband to mur- 
 der his wife because they differed upon subjects of re- 
 ligion. I deny that such a time ever was. If I knew 
 the real God said it, I would still deny it. 
 
 Four thousand years ago, if the bible is true, God was 
 in favor of slavery, polygamy, wars of extermination and 
 
596 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 religious persecution. Now we are told the devil is in 
 favor of all those things, and God is opposed to them; 
 in other words, the devil stands now where God stood 
 4,000 years ago; yet they tell me God is just as good 
 now as he was then, and the devil just as bad now as 
 God was then. Other nations believed in slavery, poly- 
 gamy, and war and persecution without ever having re- 
 ceived one ray of light from heaven. That shows that a 
 special revelation is not necessary to teach a man to do 
 wrong. Other nations did no worse without the bible 
 than the Jews did with it. 
 
 Suppose the devil had inspired a book. In what re- 
 spect would he have differed from God on the subject of 
 slavery, polygamy, wars of extermination, and religious 
 persecution? Suppose we knew that after God had fin- 
 ished his book the devil had gotten possession of it, and 
 written a few passages to suit himself, which passages, 
 O Christian, would you pick out now as having probably 
 been written by the devil? Which of these two, " Love 
 thy neighbor as thyself," or "Kill all the males among 
 the little ones, and kill every man, but all the women and 
 girls keep alive for yourselves " which of those two pas- 
 sages would they select as having been written by the 
 devil? 
 
 If God wrote the last, there is no need of a devil. Is 
 there a Christian in the wide world who does not wish 
 that God, from the thunder and lightning of Sinai, had 
 said: "You shall not enslave your fellow-man!" I am 
 opposed to any man who is in favor of slavery. If revo- 
 lution is needed at all it is to prevent man enslaving his 
 fellow-man. 
 
 But they say God did the best He could; that the 
 
SOME REASONS WHY. 597 
 
 Jews were so bad that He had to come up kind of slow. 
 If He had told them suddenly they must not murder and 
 steal, they would not have paid any respect to the ten 
 commandments. Suppose you go to the Cannibal Islands 
 to prevent the gentlemen there from eating missionaries, 
 and you found they ate them raw. The first move is to 
 induce them to cook them. After you get them to eat 
 cooKed missionaries, you will then, without their know- 
 ing it, occasionally slip in a little mutton. We will go 
 on gradually decreasing missionaries and increasing mut- 
 ton until finally the last will be so cultivated that they 
 will prefer the sheep to the priest. Ithink the mission- 
 aries would object to that mode, of course. 
 
 I .know this was written by the Jews themselves. If 
 they were to write it now, it would be different. To- 
 day they are a civilized people. I do not wish it under- 
 stood that a word I say to-night touches the slightest 
 prejudice in any man's mind against the Jewish people. 
 They are as good a people as live to-day. I will say 
 right here, they never had any luck until Jehovah aban- 
 doned them. 
 
 Now we come to the new testament. They tell me 
 that is better than the old. I say it is worse. The 
 great objection to the old testament is that it is cruel; 
 but in the old testament the revenge of God stopped with 
 the portals of the tomb. He never threatened punish- 
 ment after death. He never threatened one thing be- 
 yond the grave. It was reserved for the new testament 
 to make known the doctrine of eternal punishment. 
 
 Is the new testament inspired? I have not time to 
 give many reasons, but I will give some. In the first 
 place, they tell me the very fact that the witnesses 
 
598 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 disagree in minor matters shows that they have not con- 
 spired to tell the same story. Good. And I say in every 
 lawsuit where four or five witnesses testify, or endeavor 
 to testify, to the same transaction, it is natural that they 
 should differ on minor points. Why? Because no two 
 occupy exactly the same position; no two see exactly 
 alike; no two remember precisely the same, and their 
 disagreement is due to and accounted for by the imper- 
 fection of human nature, and the fact that they did not 
 all have an equal opportunity to know. But if you ad- 
 mit or say that the four witnesses were inspired by an 
 infinite being who did see it all, then they should remem- 
 ber all the same, because inspiration does not depend on 
 memory. 
 
 That brings me to another point. Why were there 
 four gospels? What is the use of more than one correct 
 account of anything? If you want to spread it, send cop- 
 ies. No human being has got the ingenuity to tell me 
 why there were four gospels, when one correct gospel 
 would have been enough. Why should there have been 
 four original multiplication tables? One is enough, and 
 if anybody has got any use for it he can copy that one. 
 The very fact that we have got four gospels shows that 
 it is not an inspired book. 
 
 The next point is that, according to the new testament, 
 the salvation of the world depended upon the atone- 
 ment. Only one of the books in the new testament says 
 anything about that, and that is John. The church fol- 
 lowed John, and they ought to follow John, because the 
 church wrote that book called John. According to that, 
 the whole world was to be damned on account of the sins 
 of one man; and that absurdity was the father and 
 
SOME REASONS WHY- 599 
 
 mother of another absurdity that the whole world could 
 be saved on account of the virtue of another man. I deny 
 both propositions. No man can sin forme; no man can 
 be virtuous for me; I must reap what I sow. But they 
 say the law must be satisfied. What kind of a law is it 
 that would demand punishment of the innocent? Just 
 think of it. Here is a man about to be hanged, and 
 another comes up and says: " That man has got a fam- 
 ily, and I have not; that man is in good health and I am 
 not well, and I will be hung in his place." And the gov- 
 ernor says: "All right; a murder has been committed, 
 and we have got to have a hanging we don't care who." 
 
 Under the Mosaic dispensation there was no remis- 
 sion of sins without the shedding of blood. If a man 
 committed a murder he brought a pair of doves or a 
 sheep to the priest, and the priest laid his hands on the 
 animal, and the sins of the man were transferred to the 
 animal. You see how that could be done easy enough. 
 Then they killed the animal, and sprinkled its blood on 
 the altar. That let the man off. And why did God de- 
 mand the sacrifice of a sheep? I will tell you; because 
 priests love mutton. 
 
 To make the innocent suffer is the greatest crime. I 
 don't wish to go to heaven on the virtues of somebody 
 else. If I can't settle by the books and go, I don't 
 wish to go. I don't want to feel as if I was there on suf- 
 ferance that I was in the poorhouse of the universe, 
 supported by the town. 
 
 They teil us Judas betrayed Christ. Well, if Christ 
 had not been betrayed, no atonement would have been 
 made, and then every human soul would have been 
 damned, and heaven would have been for rent. 
 
6oo INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 Supposing that Judas knew the Christian system, then 
 perhaps he thought that by betraying Christ he could get 
 torgiven, not. only for the sins that he had already com- 
 mitted but for the sin of betrayal, and if, on the way to 
 Calvary, and later, some brave, heroic soul had rescued 
 Christ from the mob, he would have made his own 
 damnation sure. It won't do. There is no logic in 
 that. 
 
 They say God tried to civilize the Jews. If He had 
 succeeded, according to the Christian system, we all 
 would have been damned, because if the Jews had been 
 civilized they would not have crucified Christ. They 
 would have believed in the freedom of speech, and as a 
 result the world would have been lost for two thousand 
 years. The Christian world has been trying to explain 
 the atonement, and they have always ended by failing to 
 explain it. 
 
 Now I come to the second objection, which Is that cer- 
 tain belief is necessary to salvation. I will believe ac- 
 cording to the evidence. In my mind are certain scales, 
 which weigh everything, and my integrity stands there 
 and knows which side goes up and which side goes down. 
 If I am an honest man I will report the weights like an 
 honest man. They say I must believe a certain thing or 
 I will be eternally damned. They tell me that to believe 
 is the safer way. I deny it. The safest thing you can 
 do is to be honest. No man, when the shadows of the 
 last hours were gathering around him, ever wished that 
 he had lived the life of a hypocrite. If I find at the Day 
 of Judgment that I have been mistaken, I will say so, 
 like a man. If God tells me then that he is the anthor 
 of the old testament I will admit that he is worse than I 
 
SOME REASONS WHY. 6oi 
 
 thought He was, and when He comes to pronounce sen- 
 tence upon me, I will say to Him: "Do unto others 
 as You would that others should do unto You." I have a 
 right to think; I cannot control my belief; my brain is 
 my castle, and if I don't defend it, my soul becomes a 
 slave and a serf. 
 
 If you throw away your reason, your soul is not worth 
 saving. Salvation depends, not upon belief but upon 
 deed upon kindness, upon justice, upon mercy. Your 
 own deeds are your savior, and you can be saved in no 
 other way. I am told in this testament to love my en- 
 emies. I cannot; I will not. I don't hate enemies; I 
 don't wish to injure enemies, but I don't care about see- 
 ing them. I don't like them. I love my friends, and 
 the man who loves enemies and friends loves me. The 
 doctrine of non-resistance is born of weakness. The 
 man that first said it, said it because it was the best he 
 could do under the circumstances. While the church 
 said, "love your enemies," in her sacred vestments 
 gleamed the daggers of assassination. With her cun- 
 ning hand, she wore the purple for hypocrisy, and placed 
 the crown upon the brow of crime. 
 
 For more than one thousand years larceny held the 
 scales of justice, and hypocrisy wore the mitre, and the 
 tiara of Christ was in fact God. He knew of the future. 
 He knew what crimes and horrors would be committed 
 in His name. He knew the fires of persecution would 
 climb around the limbs of countless martyrs; that brave 
 men and women would languish in dungeons and dark- 
 ness; that the church would use instruments of torture; 
 that in His name His followers would trade in human 
 flesh; that cradles would be robbed and women's breasts 
 
602 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 unbabed for gold, and yet He died with voiceless lips. 
 If Christ was God, why did He not tell His disciples, 
 and through them, the world, ' ' Man shall not persecute 
 his fellow-man? " Why didn't He say, "I am God?" 
 Why didn't He explain the doctrine of the Trinity? why 
 didn't He tell what manner of baptism was pleasing to 
 Him? why didn't He say the old testament is true? why 
 didn't He write His testament himself? why did He leave 
 His words to accident, to ignorance, to malice, and to 
 chance? Why didn't He say something positive, defin- 
 ite, satisfactory, about .another world? Why did He 
 not turn the tear-stained hope of immortality to the glad 
 knowledge of another life? Why did he go dumbly to 
 His death, leaving the world to misery and to doubt? 
 Because He was a man. 
 
 Colonel Ingersoll read several extracts from the bible, 
 which he said originated with Zoroaster, Buddha, Cicero, 
 Epictetus, Pythagoras and other ancient writers, and he 
 read extracts from various pagan writers, which he 
 claimed compared favorably with the best things in the 
 bible. He continued: 
 
 No God has a right to create a man who is to be 
 eternally damned. Infinite wisdom has no right to make 
 a failure, and a man who is to be eternally damned is not 
 a conspicuous success. Infinite wisdom has no right to 
 make an instrument that will not finally pay a dividend. 
 No God has a right to add to the agony of this universe, 
 and yet around the angels of immortality Christianity 
 has coiled this serpent of eternal pain. Upon love's 
 breast the church has placed that asp, and yet people 
 talk to me about the consolations of religion. 
 
 A few days ago the bark Tiger was found upon the 
 
SOME REASONS WHY. 603 
 
 wide sea 126 days from Liverpool. For nine days not a 
 mouthful of food or a drop of water was to be had. 
 There was on board the captain, mate, and eleven men. 
 When they had been out 117 days they killed the 
 captain's dog. Nine days more no food, no water, and 
 Captain Kruger stood upon the deck in the presence of 
 his starving crew, with a revolver in his hand, put it upon 
 his temple, and said, " Boys, this can't last much longer; 
 I am willing to die to save the rest of you." The mate 
 grasped the revolver from his hand, and said, "Wait;' 1 
 and the next day upon the horizon of despair was the 
 smoke of the ship which rescued them. Do you tell me 
 to-night if Captain Kruger was not a Christian and he 
 had sent that ball crashing through his generous brain 
 that there was an Almighty waiting to clutch his naked 
 soul that He might damn him forever? It won't do. 
 
 Ah, but they tell me "You have no right to pick the 
 bad things out of the bible." I say, an infinite God has 
 no right to put bad things into His bible. Does any- 
 body believe if God was going to write a book now He 
 would uphold slavery; that He would favor polygamy; 
 that He would 'say kill the heathen, stab the women, 
 dash out the brains of the children? We have civilized 
 him. We make our own God, and we make Him better 
 day by day. 
 
 Some honest people really believe that in some wonder- 
 ful way we are indebted to Moses for geology, to Joshua 
 for astronomy and military tactics, to Samson for 
 weapons of war, to Daniel for holy curses, to Solomon 
 for the art of cross-examination, to Jonah for the science 
 of navigation, to Saint Paul for steamships and locomo- 
 tives, to the four Gospels for telegraphs and sewing-ma.- 
 
604 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 chines, to the Apocalypse; for looms, saw-mills, and 
 telephones; and that to the sermon on the mount we are 
 indebted for mortars and Krupp guns. We are told that 
 no nation has ever been civilized without a bible. The 
 Jews had one, and yet they crucified a perfectly innocent 
 man. They couldn't have done much worse without a 
 bible. 
 
 God must have known 6,000 years ago that it was im- 
 possible to civilize people without a bible just as well as 
 they know it now. Why did He ever allow a nation to 
 be without a bible? Why didn't He give a few leaves to 
 Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden? Take from the 
 bible the miracles, and I admit that the good passages 
 are true. If they are true they don't need to be inspired. 
 Miracles are the children of mendacity. Nothing can be 
 more wonderful than the majestic, sublime, and eternal 
 march of cause and effect. Reason must be the final 
 arbiter. An inspired book cannot stand against a demon- 
 strated fact. Is a man to be rewarded eternally for be- 
 lieving without evidence or against evidence? Do you 
 tell me that the less brain a man has the better chance 
 he has for heaven? Think of a heaven filled with men 
 who never thought. Better that all that is should cease 
 to be; better that God had never been; better that all the 
 springs and seeds of things should fall and wither in 
 great nature's realm; better that causes and effects should 
 lose relation; better that every life should change to 
 breathless death and voiceless blank, and every star to 
 blind oblivion and moveless naught, than that this 
 religion should be true. 
 
 The religion of the future is humanity. The religion 
 of the future will say to every man, "You have the 
 
SOME REASONS WHY. 
 
 60 5 
 
 right to thinK and investigate for yourself." Liberty is 
 my religion everything that is true, every good thought, 
 every beautiful thing, every self-denying action all these 
 make my bible. Every bubble, every star, are passages 
 in my bible. A constellation is a chapter. Every shin- 
 ing world is a part of it. You cannot interpolate it; you 
 cannot change it. It is the same forever. My bible is 
 all tha| speaks to man. Every violet, every blade of 
 grass, every tree, every mountain crowned with snow, 
 every star that shines, every throb of love, every honest 
 act, all that is good and true combined, make my bible; 
 and upon that book I stand. 
 
INGERSOLL'S LECTURE 
 
 ON 
 
 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: In the first place I want to 
 admit that there are a great many good people, quite 
 pious people, who don't agree with me, and all that 
 proves in the world, is, that I don't agree with them. I 
 am not endeavoring to force my ideas or notions upon 
 other people, but I am saying what little I can to induce 
 everybody in the world to grant to every other person 
 every right .he claims for himself. I claim, standing 
 under the flag of nature, under the blue and the stars, 
 that I am, the peer of any other man, and have the right 
 to think and express my thoughts. I claim that in the 
 presence of" the unknown, and upon a subject that no- 
 body knows anything about, and never did, I have as 
 good a right to guess as anybody else. The gentlemen 
 who hold views against mine, if they had any evidence, 
 would have no fears not the slightest. 
 
 If a man has a diamond that has been examined by the 
 
 606 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. 6o/ 
 
 lapidaries of the world, and some ignorant stonecutter 
 tells him that it is nothing but an ordinary rock, he 
 laughs at him; but if it has not been examined by 
 lapidaries, and he is a little suspicious himself that it is 
 not genuine, it makes him rnad. Any doctrine that will 
 not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of 
 an honest man. Any man who is afraid to have his 
 doctrine investigated is not only a coward but a hypocrite. 
 
 Now, all I ask is simply an opportunity to say my say. 
 I will give that right to everybody else in the world. I 
 understand that owing to my success in the lecture field 
 several clergymen have taken it into their heads to lecture 
 some of them, I believe, this evening. I say all that 
 I claim is the right I give to others, and any man who 
 will not give that right is a dishonest man, no matter 
 what church he may belong to or not belong to if he 
 does not freely accord to all others the right to think, he 
 is not an honest man. I said some time ago that if 
 there was any being who would eternally damn one of his 
 children for the expression of an honest opinion that he 
 was not a God, but that he was a demon; and from that 
 they have said first, that I did not believe in any God, 
 and, secondly, that I called Him a demon. If I did not 
 believe in Him how could I call Him anything? These 
 things hardly hang together. But that makes no differ- 
 ence; I expect to be maligned; I expect to be slandered; 
 I expect to have my reputation blackened by gentlemen 
 who are not fit to blacken my shoes. 
 
 But letting that pass I simply believe in liberty; that 
 is my religion; that is the altar where I worship; that is 
 my shrine that every human being shall have every 
 right that I have that is rny religion. I am going to 
 
608 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 live up to it and going to say what little I can to make 
 the American people brave enough and generous enough 
 and kind enough to give everybody else the rights they 
 have themselves. Can there ever be any progress in this 
 world to amount to anything until we have liberty? The 
 thoughts of a man who is not free are not worth much 
 not much. A man who thinks with the club of a creed 
 above his head a man who thinks casting his eye 
 askance at the flames of hell, is not apt to have very 
 good thoughts. And for my part, I would not care to 
 have any status or social position even in heaven if I 
 had to admit that I never would have been there only I 
 got scared. When we are frightened we do not think 
 very well. If you want to get at the honest thoughts 
 of a man he must be free. If he is not free you will not 
 get his honest thought. You won't trade with a mer- 
 chant, if he is free; you won't employ him if he is a law- 
 yer, if he is free; you won't call him if he is a doctor, 
 if he is free; and what are you going to get out of him but 
 hypocrisy. Force will not make thinkers, but hypocrites. 
 A minister told me awhile ago, " Ingersoll," he 
 says, "if you do not believe the bible you ought 
 not to say so." Says I, "Do you believe the bible? " 
 He says, "I do." I says, " I don't know whether you 
 do or not; may be you are following the advice you gave 
 me; how shall I know whether you believe it or not? " 
 Now, I shall die without knowing whether that man be- 
 lieved the bible or not. There is no way that I can 
 possibly find out. because he said that even if he did not 
 believe it he would not say so. Now, I read, for instance, 
 a book. Now, let us be honest. Suppose that a clergy- 
 man and I were on an island nobody but us two and I 
 were to read a book, and I honestly believed it untrue, 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. 609 
 
 and he asked me about it what ought I to say? Ought 
 I to say I believed it, and be lying, or ought I to say I 
 did not? that is the question; and the church can take 
 its choice between honest men, who differ, and hypocrites, 
 who differ, but say they do not you can have your 
 choice, all of you. * 
 
 If you give to us liberty, you will have in this country 
 a splendid diversity of individuality; but if on the con- 
 trary you say men shall think so and so, you will have 
 the sameness of stupid nonsense. In my judgment, it is 
 the duty of every man to think and express his thoughts; 
 but at the same time do not make martyrs of yourselves. 
 
 Those people that are not willing you should be honest, 
 are not worth dying for; they are not worth being a mar- 
 tyr for; and if you are afraid you cannot support your 
 wife and children in this town and express your honest 
 thought, why keep it to vourself, but if there is such a 
 man here he is a living certificate of the meanness of the 
 community in which he lives. Go right along, if you are 
 afraid it will take food from the mouths of your dear 
 babes- if you are afraid you cannot clothe your wife and 
 children, go along with them to church, say amen in as 
 near the right place as you can, if you happen to be 
 awake, and I will do your talking for you. 
 
 I will say my say, and the time will come when every 
 man in the country will be astonished that there ever was 
 a time that everybody had not the right to speak his 
 honest thoughts. If there is a man here or in this town, 
 
 * ' ' These black-coats are the only persons of my acquaintance who re- 
 semble the chameleon, in being able to keep one eye directed upwards to 
 heaven, and the other downwards to the good things of this world." 
 Alex, von Humboldt. 
 
6io INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 preacher or otherwise, who is not willing that I should 
 think and speak, he is just so much nearer a barbarian 
 than I am. Civilization is liberty, slavery is barbarism; 
 civilization is intelligence,' slavery is ignorance; and if we 
 are any nearer free than were our fathers, it is because 
 we have got better heads and more brains in them that 
 is the reason. Every man who has invented anything 
 for the use and convenience of man has helped raise his 
 fellow-man, and all we have found out of the laws and 
 forces of nature so that we are finally enabled to bring 
 these forces of nature into subjection, to give us better 
 houses, better food, better clothes these are the real 
 civilizers of our race; and the men who stand up as 
 prophets and predict hell to their fellow-man, they are 
 not the civilizers of our race; the men who cut each 
 other's throats because they fell out about baptism they 
 are riot the civilizers of my race; the men who built the 
 inquisitions and put into dungeons all the grand and 
 honest men they could find they are not the civilizers of 
 my race. 
 
 The men who have corrupted the imaginations and 
 hearts of men by their infamous dogma of hell they are 
 not the civilizers of my race. The men who have been 
 predicting good for mankind, the men who have found 
 some way to get us better homes and better houses and 
 better education, the men who have allowed us to make 
 slaves of the blind forces of nature they have made this 
 world fit to live in. 
 
 I want to prove to you if I can that this is all a ques- 
 tion of intellectual development, a question of sense, and 
 the more a -man knows the more liberal he is; the less a 
 man knows the more bigoted he is. The less a man 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. 6 1 I 
 
 knows the more certain he is that he knows it, and the 
 more a man knows the better satisfied he is that he is 
 entirely ignorant. Great knowledge is philosophic, and 
 little, narrow, contemptible knowledge is bigoted and 
 hateful. I want to prove it to you . I saw a little while 
 ago models of nearly everything man has made for his 
 use nearly everything. I saw models of all the water- 
 craft; from the rude dug-out, in which paddled the naked 
 savage, with his forehead about half as high as his teeth 
 were long all the water craft from that dug-out up to a 
 man of war that carries a hundred guns and miles of can- 
 vas; from that rude dug-out to a steamship that turns its 
 brave prow from the port of New York, with three thou- 
 sand miles of foaming billows before it, not missing a 
 throb or beat of its mighty iron heart from one shore to 
 the other. I saw their ideas of weapons, from the rude 
 club, such as was siezed by that same barbarian as he 
 emerged from his den in the morning, hunting a snake 
 for his dinner; from that club to the boomerang, to the 
 dagger, to the sword, to the blunderbuss, to the old flint- 
 lock, to the cap-lock, to the needle-gun, to the cannon 
 invented by Krupp, capable of hurling a ball weighing 
 two thousand pounds through eighteen inches of solid 
 steel. 
 
 I saw their ideas of defensive armor, from the turtle- 
 shell which one of these gentlemen lashed upon his breast 
 preparatory to going to war, or the skin of a porcupine, 
 dried with the* quills on, that he pulled on his orthodox 
 head before he sallied forth. By ' ' orthodox " I mean a 
 man who has quit growing; not simply in religion, but in 
 everything; whenever a man is done, he is orthodox; 
 whenever he thinks he has found out all, he is orthodox; 
 
612 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 whenever he becomes a drag on the swift car of progress, 
 he is orthodox. I saw their defensive armor, from the 
 turtle-shell and the porcupine skin to the shirts of mail of 
 the middle ages, that defied the edge of the sword and 
 the point of the spear. I saw their ideas of agricultural 
 implements, from the crooked stick that was attached to 
 the horn of an ox by some twisted straw, to the agricult- 
 ural implements of to-day, that make it possible for a 
 man to cultivate the soil without being an ignoramus. 
 When they had none of these agricultural implements 
 when they depended upon one crop they were super- 
 stitious, for if the frosts struck one crop they thought 
 the gods were angry with them. 
 
 Now, with the implements, machinery and knowledge 
 of mechanics of to-day, people have found out that no 
 man can be good enough nor bad enough to cause a frost. 
 After having found out these things are contrary to the 
 laws of nature, they began to raise more than one kind 
 of crop. If the frost strikes one they have the other; if 
 it happins to strike all in that locality there is a surplus 
 somewhere else, and that surplus is distributed by rail- 
 ways and steamers and by the thousand ways that we 
 have to distribute these things; and as a consequence the 
 agriculturist begins to think and reason, and now for the 
 first time in the history of the world the agriculturist 
 begins to stand upon a level with the mechanic and with 
 the man who has confidence in the la^vs and facts of 
 nature. 
 
 I saw there their musical instruments, from the tom- 
 tom (that .is a hoop with two strings of rawhide drawn 
 across it) to the instruments we have that make the com- 
 mon air blossom with melody. I saw their ideas or orna- 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. 613 
 
 ments, from a string of the claws of a wild beast that 
 once ornamented the dusky bosom of some savage belle, 
 to the rubies and sapphires and diamonds with which 
 civilization to-day is familiar. I saw the books, written 
 upon the shoulder-blades of sheep, upon the bark of trees, 
 down to the illustrated volumes that are now in the 
 libraries of the world. I saw their ideas of paintings, 
 from the rude daubs of yellow mud, to the grand pictures 
 we see in the art galleries of to-day. I saw their ideas 
 of sculpture, from a monster god with several legs, a 
 good many noses, a great many eyes, and one little, con- 
 temptible, brainless head, to the sculpture that we have, 
 where the marble is clothed with such personality that it 
 seems almost impudence to touch it without an introduce 
 tion. I saw all these things, and how men had gradually 
 improved through the generations that are dead. And 
 I saw at the same time a row of men's skulls skulls 
 from the Bushmen of Australia, skulls from the center of 
 Africa, skulls from the farthest islands of the Pacific, 
 skulls from this country from the aborigines of America, 
 skulls of the Aztecs, up to the best skulls, or many of 
 the best of the last generation; and I noticed there was 
 the same difference between the skulls as between the 
 products of the skulls, the same between that skull and 
 that, as between the dugout and the man-of-war, as be- 
 tween the dugout and the steamship, as between the 
 tom-tom and an opera of Verdi, as between those ancient 
 agricultural implements and ours, as between that yellow 
 daub and that landscape, as between that stone god and 
 a statue of to-day; and ]> said to my self, " This is a 
 question of intellectual development; this is a question of 
 brain. " The man has advanced just in proportion as he 
 
614 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 has mingled his thoughts with his labor, and just in pro- 
 portion that his brain has gotten into partnership with 
 his hand. Man has advanced just as he has developed 
 intellectually, and no other way. That skull was a low 
 den in which crawled and groped the meaner and baser 
 instincts of mankind, and this was a temple in which 
 dwelt love, liberty ar*i joy. 
 
 Why is it that we have advanced in the arts? It is 
 because every incentive has been held out to the world; 
 because we want better clubs or better cannons with 
 which to kill our fellow Christians; we want better music, 
 we want better houses, and any man who will invent 
 them, and any man who will give them to us we will 
 clothe him in gold and glory; we will crown him with 
 honor,. That gentleman in his dugout not only had his 
 ideas of mechanics, but he was a politician. His idea of 
 politics was, "Might makes right;" and it will take 
 thousands of years before the world will be willing to say 
 that, "Right makes might." That was his idea of 
 politics, and he had another idea that all power came 
 from the clouds, and that every armed thief that lived 
 upon the honest labor of mankind had had poured out 
 upon his head the divine oil of authority. He didn't 
 believe the power to govern came from the people; he 
 did not believe that the great mass of people had any 
 right whatever, or that the great mass of people could be 
 allowed the liberty of thought and we have thousands 
 of such to-day. 
 
 They say thought is dangerous don't investigate; * 
 
 * "There is no method of reasoning more common, or more blamable, 
 than in philosophical disputes, to endeavor the refutation of any hypo- 
 thesis, by a pretense of its dangerous consequences to religion and moral- 
 ity DAVID HUME. 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. 615 
 
 don't inquire; just believe; shut your eyes, and then you 
 are safe. You must not hear this man or that man or 
 some other man, or our dear doctrines will be overturned, 
 and we have nobody on our side except a large majority; 
 we have nobody on our side except the wealth and re- 
 spectability of the world; we have nobody on our side 
 except the infinite God, and we are afraid that one man, 
 in one or two hours, will beat the whole party. 
 
 This man in the dugout also had his ideas of religion 
 that fellow was orthodox, and any man who differed 
 with him he called an infidel, an atheist, an outcast, and 
 warned everybody against him. He had his religion he 
 believed in hell; he was glad of it; he enjoyed it; it was 
 a great source of comfort to him to think when he didn't 
 like people that he would have the pleasure of looking 
 over and seeing them squirm upon the gridiron. When 
 any man said he didn't believe there was a hell this 
 gentleman got up in his pulpit and called him a hyena. 
 That fellow believed in a devil too; that lowest skull was 
 a devil factory he believed in him. He believed he had 
 a long tail adorned with a fiery dart; he believed he had 
 wings like a bat, and had a pleasant habit of breathing 
 sulphur; and he believed he had a cloven foot such as 
 most of your clergymen think I am blessed with myself. 
 They are shepherds of the sheep. The people are the 
 sheep that is all they are, they have to be watched and 
 guarded by these shepherds and protected from the wolf 
 who wants to reason with them. That is the doctrine. 
 
 Now, all I claim is the same right to improve on that 
 gentleman's politics, as on the dug-out, and the same 
 right to improve upon his religion as upon his plough, or 
 the musical instrument known as the tomtom that is all. 
 
616 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 Now, suppose the king and priest, if there was one, and 
 and there probably was one, as the farther you go back 
 the more ignorant you find mankind and the thicker you 
 find these gentlemen suppose the king and priest had 
 said: " That boat is the best boat that ever can be built; 
 we got the model of that from Neptune, the god of the 
 seas, and I guess the god of the water knows how to 
 build a boat, and any man that says he can improve it by 
 putting a stick in the middle with a rag on the end of it, 
 and has any talk about the wind blowing this way, and 
 that, he is-a heretic he is a blasphemer." Honor bright, 
 what, in your judgment, would have been the effect upon 
 the circumnavigation of the globe? I think we would 
 have been on the other side yet. Suppose the king and 
 priests had said: " That plow is the best that ever can 
 be invented; the model of that was given to a pious 
 farmer in a holy dream, and that twisted straw is the ne 
 plus ultra of all twisted things, and any man who says 
 he can out-twist it, we will twist him." Suppose the 
 king and priests had said: "That tomtom is the finest 
 instrument of music in the world that is the kind of 
 music found in heaven. An angel sat upon the edge of 
 a glorified cloud playing upon that tomtom and became 
 so entranced with the music that in a kind of ecstasy she 
 dropped it and that is how we got it, and any man who 
 talks about putting any improvement on that, he is not 
 fit to live." Let me ask you do you believe if that had 
 been done that the human ears ever would have been 
 enriched with the divine symphonies of Beethoven? 
 
 All I claim is the same right to improve upon this bar- 
 barian's ideas of politics and religion as upon everything 
 else, and whether it is an improvement or not, I have a 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 right to suggest it that is my doctrine. They say to 
 me, "God will punish you forever, if you do these 
 things." Very well. I will settle with Him. I had 
 rather settle with Him than any one of His agents. I dc 
 not like them very well. In theology I am a granger 1 
 do not believe in middle-men, what little business I have 
 with heaven I will attend to myself. Our fathers thought, 
 just as many now think, that you could force men to 
 think your way and if they failed to do it by reason, they 
 tried it another way. I used to read about it when I was 
 a boy it did not seem to me that these things were true; 
 it did not seem to me that there ever was such heartless 
 bigotry in the heart of man- but there was and is to-night. 
 I used to read about it I did not appreciate it. I never 
 appreciated it until I saw the arguments of those gentle- 
 men. They used to use just such arguments as that man 
 in the dug-out would have used to the next man ahead of 
 him. This low, miserable skull this next man was a 
 little higher, and this fellow behind called him a heretic, 
 and the next was still a little higher, and he was called 
 an infidel. 
 
 And, so it went on through the whole row always 
 calling the man who was ahead an infidel and a heretic. 
 No man was ever called so who was behind the army of 
 progress. It has always been the man ahead that has 
 been called the heretic. Heresy is the last and best 
 thought always. Heresy extends the hospitality of the 
 brain to a new idea; that is what the rotting says to the 
 growing; that is what the dweller in the swamp says to 
 the man on the sun-lit hill; that is what the man in the 
 darkness cries out to the grand man upon whose forehead 
 is shining the dawn of a grander day; that is what the 
 
618 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 coffin says to the cradle. Orthodoxy is a kind of shroud, 
 and heresy is a banner orthodoxy is a frog and heresy a 
 star shining forever above the cradle of truth. I do not 
 mean simply in religion, I mean in everything, and the 
 idea I wish to impress upon you is that you should keep 
 your minds open to all the influences of nature; you 
 should keep your minds open to reason. Hear what a 
 man has to say, and do not let the turtle-shell of bigotry 
 grow above your brain. Give everybody a chance and 
 an opportunity; that is all. 
 
 I saw the arguments that those gentlemen have used 
 on each other through all the ages. I saw a little bit of 
 a thumbscrew not more than so long (illustrating), and 
 attached to each end was a screw, and the inner surface 
 was trimmed with little protuberances to prevent their 
 slipping; and when some man doubted when a man had 
 an idea then those that did not have an idea put the 
 thumbscrew upon him who did. He had doubted some- 
 thing. For instance, they told him, " Christ says you 
 must love your enemies;" he says, "I do not know 
 about that;" then they said, "We will show you!" 
 " Do unto others as you would be done by," they said is 
 the doctrine. He doubted. "We will show you that it 
 is!" So they put this screw on; and in the name of uni- 
 versal love and universal forgiveness " pray for those 
 who despitefully use you " they began screwing these 
 pieces of iron into him always done in the name of 
 religion always. It never was done in the name of 
 reason, never was done in the name of science never. 
 No man was ever persecuted in defense of a truth 
 never. No man was ever persecuted except in defense 
 of a lie never. 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. 6lQ 
 
 This man had fallen out with them about something; 
 he did not understand it as they did. For instance he 
 said, "I do not believe there ever was a man whose 
 strength was in his hair." They said: "You don't? 
 We'll show you! " " I do not believe," he says, " that 
 a fish ever swallowed a man to save his life." "You 
 don't? Well, we'll show you! " And so they put this on, 
 and generally the man would recant and say, ' ' Well, I'll 
 take it back." Well I think I should. Such men are 
 not worth dying for. The idea of dying for a man that 
 would tear the flesh of another on account of an honest 
 difference of opinion such a man is not worth dying for; 
 he is not worth living for, and if I was in a position that 
 I could not send a bullet through his brain, I would 
 recant. I would say: "You write it down and I will 
 sign it I will admit that there is one God, or a million 
 suit yourself; one hell or a billion; you just write it 
 only stop this screw. You are not worth suffering for, 
 you are not worth dying for and I am never going to take 
 the part of any Lord that won't take my part you 
 just write it down and I'll sign it." 
 
 But there was now and then a man who would not do 
 that. He said, "No, I believe I am right, and I will die 
 for it," and I suppose we owe what little progress we 
 have made to a few men in all ages of the world who 
 really stood by their convictions. The men who stood 
 by the truth and the men who stood by a fact, they are 
 the men that have helped raise this world, and in every 
 age there has been some sublime and tender soul who was 
 true to his convictions, and who really lived to make men 
 better. In every age some men carried the torch of 
 progress and handed it to some other, and it has been 
 
620 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 carried through all the dark ages of barbarism, and had 
 it not been for such men we would have been naked and 
 uncivilized to-night, with pictures of wild beasts tattooed 
 on our skins, dancing around some dried snake fetish. 
 
 When a man would not recant, these men, in the 
 name of the love of the Lord, screwed them down to the 
 last thread of agony and threw them into some dungeon, 
 where, in the throbbing silence of darkness, they suffered 
 the pangs of the fabled damned; and this was done in 
 the name of civilization, love and order, and in the 
 name of the most merciful Christ. 
 
 There are no thumbscrews now; they are rusting away; 
 but every man in this town who is not willing that 
 another shall do his own thinking and will try to prevent 
 it, has in him the same hellish spirit that made and used 
 that very instrument of torture, and the only reason he 
 does not use it to-day is because he cannot. The reason 
 that I speak here to-night is because they cannot help it. 
 
 I saw at the same time a beautiful little instrument for 
 the propagation of kindness, called "The Scavenger's 
 Daughter." (The lecturer here described and illustrated 
 construction of the instrument.) The victim would be 
 thrown upon that instrument and the strain upon the 
 muscles was such that insanity would sometimes come to 
 his relief. See what we owe to the civilizing influence of 
 the gentlemen who have made a certain idea in meta- 
 physics necessary to salvation see what we owe to them. 
 
 [ saw a collar of torture which they put about the 
 neck of their victim, and inside of that there were a 
 hundred points, so that the victim could not stir without 
 the skin being punctured with these points, and after a 
 little while the throat would swell and suffocation would 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. 621 
 
 end the agony, and they would have that done in the 
 presence of his wife and weeping children. That was all 
 done so that finally everybody would love everybody else 
 as his brother. I saw a rack. Imagine a wagon with a 
 windlass on each end, and each windlass armed with 
 leather bands,' and a ratchet that prevented slipping. 
 The victim was placed. upon this. 
 
 May be he had denied something that some idiot said 
 was true; may be he had a discussion a division of opin- 
 ion with a man like John Calvin. John Calvin said 
 Christ was the Eternal Son of God and Michael Servetus 
 said that Christ was the son of the Eternal God. That 
 was the only difference of opinion. Think of it! What 
 an important thing it was! How it would have affected 
 the price of food! " Christ is the Eternal Son of God," 
 said one; " No," said the other, " Christ is the Son of 
 Eternal God" that was all, and for that difference of 
 opinion Michael Servetus was burned at a slow fire of 
 green wood, and the wind happening to blow the flames 
 from him instead of towards him, he was in the most 
 terrible agony, writhing for minutes and minutes, and 
 hours and hours, and finally he begged and implored 
 those wretches to move him so that the wind would blow 
 the flames against him and destroy him without such 
 hellish agony, but they were so filled with the doctrine 
 of "love your enemies" that they would not do it. I 
 never will, for my part, depend upon any religion that 
 has ever shed a drop of human blood. * 
 
 Upon this rack I have described, this victim was 
 
 * Speaking of the Inquisition, Prof. Draper says: " With such savage 
 alacrity did it carry out its object of protecting the interests of religion, 
 that between 1480 and 1808 it had punished 340,000 persons, and of these 
 nearly 32,000 had been burnt! " Conflict between Religion and Science. 
 
622 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 placed, and those chains were attached to his Ankles and 
 then to his waist, and clergymen good men! pious men! 
 men that were shocked at the immorality of their day! 
 They talked about playing cards and the horrible crime 
 of dancing! Oh, how such things shocked them; men 
 going to theaters and seeing a play written by the grand- 
 est genius the world ever has produced. How it shocked 
 their sublime and tender souls! But they commenced 
 turning this machine, and they kept on turning until the 
 ankles, knees, hips, elbows, shoulders and wrists were 
 all dislocated and the victim was red with the sweat of 
 agony, and they had standing by a physician to feel the 
 pulse, so that the last faint flutter of life would not leave 
 his veins. Did they wish to save his life? Yes. In 
 mercy? No! Simply that they might have the pleasure 
 of racking him once again . That is the spirit, and it is 
 a spirit born of the doctrine that there is upon the throne 
 of the universe a being who will eternally damn his chil- 
 dren, and they said: " If God is going to have the su- 
 preme happiness of burning them forever, certainly he 
 ought not to begrudge to us the joy of burning them for 
 an hour or two." That was their doctrine, and when I 
 read these things it seems to me that I have suffered 
 them myself. 
 
 When I look upon those instruments I look upon them 
 as though I had suffered all these tortures myself. It 
 seems to me as though I had stood upon the shore an 
 exile and looking with tear-filled eyes toward home and 
 native land. It seems as though my nails had been 
 plucked out and into bleeding flesh needles had been 
 thrust; as though my eyelids had been torn away and I 
 had been set out in the ardent rays of the sun; as though 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. 623 
 
 I had been set out upon the sands of the sea and drowned 
 by the inexorable tide; as though I had been in the 
 dungeon waiting for the coming footsteps of relief; as 
 though I had been upon the scaffold and seen the glitter- 
 ing axe falling upon me; and seen bending above me the 
 the white faces of hypocrite priests; as though I had been 
 taken from my wife and children to the public square, 
 where faggots had been piled around me and the flames 
 had climbed around my limbs and scorched my eyes to 
 blindness; as though my ashes had been scattered by all 
 the hands of hatred; and I feel like saying, that while I 
 live I will do what little I can to preserve and augment 
 the rights of men, women and children; while I live I 
 will do a little something so that they who come after 
 me shall have the right to think and express that thought. 
 The trouble is those who oppose us pretend they are 
 better than we are. They are more mortal, they are 
 kinder, they are more generous. I deny it. They are 
 not. And if they are the ones that are to be saved in 
 another world, and if those who simply think they are 
 honest, and express that honest thought, are to be 
 damned, there will be but little originality, to say the 
 least of it, in heaven. They say they are better than we 
 are and to show you how much better they are I have 
 got at home copies of some letters that passed between 
 gentlemen high in the church several hundred y^ars ago, 
 and the question was this: " Ought we to cut out the 
 tongues of blasphemers before we burn them? " And 
 they finally decided that they ought to do so, and I will 
 tell you the reason they gave. They said if they were 
 not cut out that while they were being burned, they might, 
 by their heresies, scandalize the gentleman who would 
 
624 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 bring the wood; they were too good to hear these things 
 and they might be injured; and the same idea appears to 
 prevail in this world now that they are too good and they 
 must not be shocked. 
 
 They say to us: " You must not shock us, and when 
 you say there is no hell we are shocked. You must not 
 say that." When I go to church and they tell me there 
 is a hell I must not get shocked; and if they tell me that 
 there is not only a hell, but that I am going to it, I must 
 not be shocked. Even if they take the next step and act 
 as though they would be glad to see me there, still I 
 must not be shocked. I will agree to keep from being 
 shocked as long as anybody in the world they can say 
 what they please; I will not get shocked, but let me say 
 it. You send missionaries to Turkey and tell them that 
 the Koran is a lie. You shock them. You tell them 
 that Mahomet was not a prophet . You shock them. It 
 is too bad to shock them. You go to India and you tell 
 them that Vishnu was nothing, Purana was nothing, that 
 Buddha was nobody, and your Brahma, he is nothing. 
 Why do you shock these people? You should not do 
 that; you ought not to hurt their feelings. I teli you no 
 man on earth has a right to be shocked at the expression 
 of an honest opinion when it is kindly done, and I don't 
 believe there is any God in the universe who has put a 
 curtain over the fact and made it a crime for the honest 
 hand of investigation to endeavor to draw that curtain. 
 
 This world has not been fit to live in fifty years. There 
 is no liberty in it very little. Why, it is only a few 
 years ago that all the Christian nations were engaged in 
 the slave trade. It was not until 1808, that England 
 abolished the slave trade, and up to that time her priests 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. 625 
 
 in her churches, and her judges on her benches, owned 
 stock in slave ships, and luxuriated on the profits 1 of 
 piracy and murder; and when a man stood up and de- 
 nounced it, they mobbed him as though he had been a 
 common burglar or a horse thief. Think of it! It was 
 not until the 28th day of August, 1833, that England 
 abolished slavery in her colonies; and it was not until the 
 first day of January, 1863, that Abraham Lincoln, by 
 direction of the entire North, wiped that infamy out of 
 this country; and I never speak of Abraham Lincoln but 
 I want to say that he was, in my judgment, in many re- 
 spects the grandest man ever president of the United 
 States. I say that upon his tomb there ought to be this 
 line and I know of no other man deserving it so well as 
 he: "Here lies one who, having been clothed with 
 almost absolute power, never abused it except on the 
 side of mercy." 
 
 Just think of it! Our churches and best people, as they 
 call themselves, defending the institution of slavery. 
 When I was a little boy I used to see steamers go down 
 the Mississippi river with hundreds of men and women 
 chained hand to hand, and even children, and men stand- 
 ing about them with whips in their hands and pistols in 
 their pockets in the name of liberty, in the name of civ- 
 ilization and in the name of religion! I used to hear 
 them preach to these slaves in the South and the only 
 text they ever took was "Servants, be obedient unto 
 your masters," That was the salutation of the most 
 merciful God to a man whose back was bleeding, that 
 was the salutation of the most merciful God to the slave- 
 mother bending over an empty cradle, to the woman 
 from whose breast a child had been stolen "Servants, 
 
626 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 be obedient unto you masters." That was what they 
 said to man running for his life and for his liberty through 
 tangled swamps and listening to the baying of blood- 
 hounds, and when he listened for them the voice came 
 from heaven : ' ' Servants, be obedient unto your masters. " 
 
 That is civilization. Think what slaves we have been! 
 Think how we have crouched and cringed before wealth 
 even! How they used to cringe in old times before a 
 man who was rich there are so many of them gone into 
 bankruptcy lately that we are losing a little of our fear. 
 
 We used to worship the golden calf, and the worst you 
 can say of us now, is, we worship the gold of the calf, 
 and even the calves are beginning to see this distinction. 
 We used to go down on our knees to every man that held 
 office; now he must fill it if he wishes any respect. We 
 care nothing for the rich, except what will they do with 
 their money? Do they benefit mankind? That is the 
 question. You say this man holds an office. How does 
 he fill it? that is the question. And there is rapidly 
 growing up in the world an aristocracy of heart and brain 
 the only aristocracy that has a right to exist. We are 
 getting free. We are thinking in every direction. We 
 are investigating with the microscope and the tele- 
 scope. We are digging into the earth and finding sou- 
 venirs of all the ages. We are finding out something 
 about the laws of health and disease. We are adding 
 years to the span of human life and we are making the 
 world fit to live in. That is what we are doing, and every 
 man that has an honest thought and expresses it, helps, 
 and every man that tries to keep honest thought from 
 being expressed is an obstruction and a hindrance. 
 
 Now if men have been slaves what shall we say of 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. 627 
 
 women? They have been the slaves of slaves. The 
 meaner a man is, the better he thinks he is than a wom- 
 an. As a rule, you take an ignorant, brutal man don't 
 talk to him about a woman governing him, he don't 
 believe it not he; and nearly every religion of this world 
 has been gallant enough to account for all the trouble and 
 misfortune we have had by the crime of woman. 
 
 Even if it is true, I do not care; I had rather live in a 
 world full of trouble with the woman I love than in 
 heaven with nobody but men. Nearly every religion 
 accounts for all the trouble we have ever had by the 
 crime of woman. I recollect one book where I read an 
 account of what is called the creation I arn not giving 
 the exact words, I will give the substance of it. The su- 
 preme being thought best to make a world and one man 
 never thought about making a woman at that time; 
 making a woman was a second thought, and I am free to 
 admit that second thoughts as a rule are best. He made 
 this world and one man, and put this man in a park, or 
 garden, or public square, or whatever you might call it, 
 to dress and keep it. The man had nothing to do. He 
 moped around there as though he was waiting for a train. 
 And the supreme being noticed that he got lonesome I 
 am glad He did! It occurred to Him that he would 
 make a companion, and having made the world and one 
 man out of nothing, and having used up all the nothing, 
 He had to take a part of the man to start the woman 
 with I am not giving the exact language, neither do I 
 say this story is true. -I do not know. I would not want 
 to deceive anybody. 
 
 So sleep fell upon this man, and they took from his 
 side a rib the French would call it a cutlet. And out 
 
628 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 of that they made a woman, and taking into considera- 
 tion the amount and quality of the raw material used, I 
 look upon it as the most successful job ever accomplished 
 in this world. I am giving just a rough outline of this 
 story. After He got the woman done she was brought 
 to the man not to see how she liked him, but to see how 
 he he liked her. He liked her and the} went to keeping 
 house. Before she was made there was really nothing 
 to do; there was no news, no politics, no religion, not 
 even civil service reform. And as the divil had not yet 
 put in an appearance, there was no chance to conciliate 
 him. They started in the housekeeping business, and 
 they were told they could do anything they liked except 
 eat an apple. Of course they ate it. I would have done 
 it myself I know. I am satisfied I would have had an. 
 apple off that tree, if I had been there, in fifteen minutes. 
 They were caught at it, and they were turned out, and 
 there was an extra police force put on to keep them from 
 coming in again. And then measles, and whooping- 
 cough, mumps, etc. , started in the race of man, roses be- 
 gan to have thorns and snakes began to have teeth, and 
 people began to fight about religion and politics, and 
 they have been fighting and scratching each other's eyes 
 out from that day to this. 
 
 I read in another book an account of the same trans- 
 action. They tell us the Supreme Brahma made up his 
 mind to make a man, a woman, and a world; and that 
 he put this man and woman in the island of Ceylon. 
 According to the description, it was the most beautiful 
 isle that ever existed; it beggared the description of a 
 Chicago land agent completely. It was delightful; the 
 branches of the trees were so arranged that when the 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. 629 
 
 wind swept through them they seemed like a thousand 
 seolian harps, and the man was named Adami, and the 
 woman's name was Heva. This book was written about 
 three or four thousand years before the other one, and 
 all the commentators in this country agree that the story 
 that was written first was copied from the one that was 
 written last. I hope you 'will not let a matter of three or 
 four thousand years interfere with your ideas on the sub- 
 ject. The Supreme Brahma said: " Let them have a 
 period of courtship, because it is my desire that true love 
 always should precede marriage " and that was so much 
 better than lugging her up to him and saying, ' ' Do you 
 like her?" that upon my word I said when I read it, " If 
 either one of these stories turn out to be true, I hope it 
 will be this one." 
 
 They had a courtship in the starlight and moonlight, 
 and perfume-laden air, with the nightingale singing his 
 song of joy, and they got in love. There was nobody 
 to bother them, no prospective fathers or mothers-in- 
 law, no gossiping neighbors, nobody to say ' * Young 
 man, how do you propose to support her" they got in 
 love and they were married, and they started keeping 
 house, and the Supreme Brahma said to them: " You 
 must not leave this island." After awhile the man got 
 uneasy wanted to go West. He went to the western 
 extremity of the island, and there the devil got up, 
 and when he looked over on the main land he saw 
 such hills and valleys and torrents, and such mountains 
 crowned with snow; such cataracts, robed in glory, that 
 he went right back to Heva. Says he: "Come over 
 here; it is a thousand times better;" says he: " let us 
 emigrate." She said, like another woman: "No, let 
 
630 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 well enough alone; we have no rent to pay, and no taxes; 
 we are doing very well now, let us stay where we are.''' 
 But he insisted, and so she went with him, and when he 
 got to this western extremity, where there was a little 
 neck of land leading to this better land, he took her on 
 his back and walked over, and the moment he got over 
 he heard a crash, and he looked back and this narrow 
 neck of land had sunk into the sea, leaving here and 
 there a rock (and those rocks are called even unto this 
 day the footsteps of Adami), and when he looked back 
 this beautiful mirage had disappeared. 
 
 Instead of verdure and flowers there was naught but 
 rocks and sand, and then he heard the voice of the Su- 
 preme Brahrna crying out cursing them both to the low- 
 est hell, and then it was that Adami said: " Curse me, 
 if you choose, but not her; it was not her fault, it was 
 mine; curse me." That is the kind of a man to start a 
 world with. And the Supreme Brahma said "I will 
 spare her, but I will not spare you." Then she spoke, 
 out of a breast so full of affection that she has left a 
 legacy of love to all her daughters: " If thou wilt not 
 spare him, spare neither me, because I love him." Then 
 the Supreme Brahma said and I have liked him ever 
 since " I will spare both, and watch over you and your 
 children forever." 
 
 Now, really this story appears to me better than the 
 other one. It is loftier; there is more in it than I can 
 admire. 
 
 In order to show you that humanity does not belong 
 to any particular nation, and that there are great and 
 tender souls everywhere, let me tell you a little more 
 that is in this book. 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. 631 
 
 " Blessed is that man, and beloved of all the gods who 
 is afraid of no man, and of whom no man is afraid." 
 Think of that kind of character! Another: "Man is 
 strength, woman is beauty; man is courage, woman is 
 love; and where the one man loves the one woman the 
 very angels leave heaven and come and sit in that house 
 and sing for joy." I think that is nearly equal to this: 
 " If you do not want your wife, give her a writing of 
 divorcement," and make the mother of your children a 
 houseless wanderer and a vagrant nearly as good as 
 that. 
 
 1 believe that marriage should be a perfect partnership; 
 that woman should have all the rights that man has, and 
 one more the right to be protected. I believe in mar- 
 riage. It took hundreds and thousands of years for 
 woman to get from a state of abject slavery up to the 
 height even of marriage. I have not the slightest respect 
 for the ideas of those short-haired women and long-haired 
 men who denounce the institution of the family, who 
 denounce the institution of marriage; but I hold in greater 
 contempt the husband who would enslave his wife. I hold 
 in greater contempt the man who is anything in his family 
 love and tenderness, and kindness. I say it took except 
 hundreds of years for woman to come from a state of 
 slavery to marriage; and ladies, the chains that are upon 
 your necks and the bracelets that are put upon your 
 arms were iron, and they have been changed by the touch 
 of the wand of civilization to shining, glittering gold. 
 Woman came from a condition of abject slavery and 
 thousands and thousands of them are in that condition 
 now. I believe marriage should be a perfect and equal 
 partnership. I do not like a man who thinks he is boss. 
 
632 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 That fellow in the dug-out was always talking about 
 being boss. I do not like a man who thinks he is the 
 head of the family. I do not like a man who thinks he 
 has got authority and that the woman belongs to him 
 that wants for his wife a slave. I would not have a 
 slave for my wife. I would not want the love of a wom- 
 an that is not great enough, grand enough, and splendid 
 enough to be free. I will never give to any woman my 
 heart upon whom I afterwards would put chains. 
 
 Do you know sometimes I think generosity is about 
 the only virtue there is. How I do hate a man that has 
 to be begged and importuned every minute for a few cents 
 by his wife. "Give me a dollar?" "What did you do 
 with that fifty cents I gave you last Christmas? " If you 
 make your wife a perpetual beggar, what kind of chil- 
 dren do you expect to raise with a beggar for their 
 mother? If you want great children, if you want to peo- 
 ple this world with great and grand men and women they 
 must be born of love and liberty. I have known men 
 that would trust a woman with their heart if you call 
 that thing which pushes their blood around a heart; and 
 with their honor if you call that fear, of getting into 
 the penitentiary, honor; I have known men that would 
 trust that heart and that honor with a woman, but not 
 their pocket-book not a dollar bill. When I see a man 
 of that kind, I think they know better than 1 do which 
 of these three articles is the most valuable. I believe if 
 you have got a dollar in the world and you have got to 
 spend it, spend it like a man; spend it like a king, like a 
 prince. If you have to spend it, spend it as though it 
 was a dried leaf, and you were the owner of unbounded 
 forests. I had rather be a beggar and spend my last 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. 633 
 
 dollar like a king than be a king and spend my money 
 like a beggar. What is it worth compared with the love 
 of a splendid woman? 
 
 People tell me that is very good doctrine for rich folks, 
 but it won't do for poor folks. I tell you that there is 
 more love in the huts and homes of the poor, than in the 
 mansions of the rich, and the meanest hut with love in it 
 is a palace fit for the gods, and a palace without that, is 
 a den only fit for wild beasts. The man who has the love 
 of one splendid woman is a rich man. Joy is wealth, and 
 love is the legal tender of the soul! Love is the only thing 
 that will pay ten per cent, to borrower and lender both; 
 and if some men were as ashamed of appearing cross in 
 public as they are of appearing tender at home, this world 
 would be infinitely better. I think you can make your 
 home a heaven if you want to you can make up your 
 minds to that. When a man comes home let him come 
 home like a ray of light in the night bursting through the 
 doors and illuminating the darkness. What right has a 
 man to assassinate joy, and murder happiness in the 
 sanctuary of love to be a cross man, a peevish man is 
 that the way he courted? Was there always something 
 ailing him? Was he too nervous to hear her speak? When 
 I see a man of that kind I am always sorry that doctors 
 know so much about preserving life as they do. 
 
 It is not necessary to be rich, nor powerful, nor great 
 to be a success; and neither is it necessary to have your 
 name between the putrid lips of rumor to be great. We 
 have had a false standard of success. In the years when 
 I was a little boy we read in our books that no fellow 
 was a success that did not make a fortune or get a big 
 office, and he generally was a man that slept about three 
 
634 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 hours a night. They never put down in the books the 
 names of those gentlemen that succeeded in life that 
 slept all they wanted to; and we all thought that we 
 could not sleep to exceed three or four hours if we ever 
 expected to be anything in this world. We have had a 
 wrong standard. The happy man is the successful man; 
 and the man who makes somebody else happy, is a happy 
 man. The man that has gained the loye of one good, 
 splendid, pure woman, his life has been a success, no 
 matter if he dies in the ditch; and if he gets to be a 
 crowned monarch of the world, and never had the love 
 of one splendid heart, his life has been an ashen vapor. 
 A little while ago I stood by the tomb of the first 
 Napoleon, a magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost 
 for a dead deity, and here was a great circle, and in the 
 bottom there, in a sarcophagus, rested at last the ashes 
 of that restless man. I looked at that tomb, and I 
 thought about the career of the greatest soldier of the 
 modern world. As I looked in imagination I could see 
 him walking up and down the banks of the Seine con- 
 templating suicide. I could see him at Toulon; I could 
 see him at Paris, putting down the mob; I could see him 
 at the head of the army of Italy; I could see him cross- 
 ing the bridge of Lodi, W 7 ith the tri-color in his hand; I 
 saw him in Egypt, fighting battles under the shadow of 
 the Pyramids; I saw him returning; I saw him conquer 
 the Alps, and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles 
 of Italy; I saw him at Marengo, I saw him at Austerlitz; 
 I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and 
 the blast smote his legions, when death rode the icy 
 winds of winter. I saw him at Leipsic; hurled back upon 
 Paris, banished; and I saw him escape from Elba and 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. 635 
 
 retake an empire by the force of his genius. I saw him 
 at the field of Waterloo, where fate and chance com- 
 bined to wreck the fortune of their former king. 1 saw 
 him at St. Helena, with his hands behind. his back, gaz- 
 ing out upon the sad and solemn sea, and I thought of 
 all the widows he had made, of all the orphans, of all 
 the tears that had been shed for his glory; and I thought 
 of the woman, the only woman who ever loved him, 
 pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition 
 and I said to myself, as I gazed, " I would rather have 
 been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes, and 
 lived in a little hut with a vine running over the door 
 and the purple grapes growing red in the armorous kisses 
 of the autumn sun I would rather have been that poor 
 French peasant, to sit in my door, with my wife knitting 
 by my side and rny children upon my knees with their 
 arms around my neck I would rather have lived and 
 died unnoticed and unknown except by those who loved 
 me, and gone down to the voiceless silence of the dream- 
 less dust I would rather have been that French peasant 
 than to have been that imperial impersonation of force 
 arid murder who covered Europe with blood and tears." 
 I tell you I had rather make somebody happy, I would 
 rather have the love of somebody; I would rather go to 
 the forest, far away, and build me a little cabin build it 
 myself and daub it with mud, and live there with my wife 
 and children; I had rather go there and live by myself 
 our little family and have a little path that led down to 
 the spring, where the water bubbled out day and night 
 like a little poem from the heart of the earth; a little hut 
 wirh some hollyhocks at the corner, with their bannered 
 bosoms open to the sun, and with the thrush in the air, 
 
636 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 like a song of joy in the morning; I would rather live 
 there and have some lattice work across the window, so 
 that the sunlight would fall checkered on the baby in the 
 cradle; I would rather live there and have my soul erect 
 and free, than to live in a palace of gold and wear the 
 crown of imperial power and know that my soul was 
 slimy with hypocrisy. It is not necessary to be rich and 
 great and powerful in order to be happy. If you will 
 treat your wife like a spendid flower, she will fill your life 
 with a perfume and with joy. 
 
 I believe in the democracy of the fireside, I believe in 
 the republicism of home, in the equality of man and 
 woman, in the equality of husband and wife, and for this 
 I am denounced by the sentinels upon the walls of Zion. 
 
 They say there must be a head to the family. I say 
 no equal rights for man and wife, and where there is 
 really love there is liberty, and where the idea of author- 
 ity comes in you will find that love has spread its pinions 
 and flown forever. It is a splendid thing for me to think 
 that when a woman really loves a man he never grows 
 old in her eyes; she always sees the gallant gentleman 
 that won her hand and heart; and when a man really and 
 truly loves a woman she does not grow old to him; 
 through the wrinkles of years he sees the face he loved 
 and won. That is all there is in this world all the rest 
 amounts to nothing it is a tale told by an idiot signify- 
 ing nothing. You take from the family love, and nothing 
 is left. There must be equality; there must be no master; 
 there must be no servant. There must be equality and 
 kindness. The man should be infinitely tender towards 
 the woman and why? because she cannot go at hard 
 work, she cannot make her own living. She has 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. 637 
 
 squandered her wealth of beauty and youth upon him. 
 Now, if women have been slaves, what do you say 
 about children? Children have been the slaves of the 
 slaves. I know children that turn pale with fright when 
 they hear their mother's voice; children of property; chil- 
 dren of crime, children of sub-cellars; children of the 
 narrow streets, the flotsam and jetsam upon the wild, 
 rude sea of life my heart goes out to them one and all; 
 I say they have all the rights we have and one more 
 the right to be protected. I believe in governing chil- 
 dren by kindness, by love, by tenderness. If a child 
 commits a fault take it in your arms, let your heart beat 
 against its heart; don't go and talk to it about hell and the 
 bankruptcy of the universe. If your child tells a lie 
 what of it? Be honest with the child, tell him you have 
 told hundreds of them yourself. Then your child will not 
 be afraid to tell you when it commits a fault; it will not 
 regard you as old perfection, until it gets a few years 
 older, and finds you are an old hypocrite and you can- 
 not put a thick enough veil upon you but what the eyes 
 of childhood will peep through it; they will see; they will 
 find out; and when your child tells a lie, examine your- 
 self, and in all probability you will find you have been a 
 tyrant. A tyrant father will have liars for his children. 
 A liar is born of tyranny on the one hand and fear on 
 the other. Truth comes from the lips of courage. It is 
 born in confidence and honor. If you want a child to 
 tell you the truth you want to be a faithful man yourself. 
 You go at your little child, five or six years old, with a 
 stick in your hand what is he to do? Tell the truth? Then 
 he will get whipped. What is he to do? I thank Mother 
 Nature for putting ingenuity in the mind of a little child 
 so that when it is attacked by a brutal parent it throws 
 
638 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 up a little breastwork in the shape of a lie. That being 
 done by nations it is called strategy, and many a general 
 wears his honors for having practiced it; and will you 
 deny it to little children to protect themselves from brutal 
 parents. Supposing a man as much larger than we are, 
 larger than child would come at us with a liberty-pole in 
 his hand and would shout in tones of thunder, "Who 
 broke that plate? " Every one of us including myself 
 would just stand right up and swear either that we 
 never saw that plate, or that it was cracked when we got 
 it. Give a child a chance; there is no other way to have 
 children tell the truth tell the truth to them keep 
 your contracts with your children the same as you would 
 to your banker. 
 
 I was up at Grand Rapids, Michigan, the other day. 
 There was a gentleman there, and his wife, who had 
 promised to fake their little boy for a ride every night for 
 ten days, or every day for ten days, but they did not do it. 
 They slipped out to the barn and they went without him. 
 The day before I was there they played the same game 
 on him again. He is a nice little boy, an American boy, 
 a boy with brains, one of those boys that don't take the 
 hatchet-story as a fact; he had his own ideas. They 
 fooled him again, and they came around the corner as 
 big as life, man and wife. The little fellow was stand- 
 ing on the door step with his nurse, and he looked at 
 them, and he made this remark: "There go the two 
 damndest liars in Grand Rapids." I merely tell you this 
 story to show you that children have level heads; they 
 understand this business. 
 
 Teach your children to tell you the truth-- tell them 
 the truth. If there is one here that ever intends to whip 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. 639 
 
 his child I have a favor to ask. Have your photograph 
 taken when you are in the act, with your red and vulgar 
 face, your brow corrugated, pretending you would rather 
 be whipped yourself. Have the child's photograph taken 
 too, with his eyes streaming with tears, and his chin 
 dimpled with fear, as a little sheet of water struck by a 
 sudden cold wind; and if your child should die I cannot 
 think of a sweeter way to spend an afternoon than to go 
 to the graveyard in the autumn, when the maples are 
 clad in pink and gold, when the little scarlet runners 
 come like poems out of the breast of the earth go there 
 and sit down and look at that photograph and think of 
 the flesh, now dust, and how you caused it to writhe in 
 pain and agony. 
 
 I will tell you what I am doing; I am doing what little 
 I can to save the flesh ot children. You have no right 
 to whip them. It is not the way; and yet some Chris- 
 tians drive their children from their doors if they do 
 wrong, especially if it is a sweet, tender girl I believe 
 there is no instance on record of any veal being given for 
 the return of a girl some Christians drive them from 
 their doors and then go down upon their knees and ask 
 God to take care of their children! I will never ask God 
 to take care of my children unless I am doing my level 
 best in that same direction. Some Christians act as 
 though they thought when the Lord said, "Suffer little 
 children to come unto me " that he had a raw-hide under 
 His mantle they act as if they thought so. That is all 
 wrong. I tell you my children this: Go where you may, 
 commit what crime you may, fall to what depths of de- 
 gradation you may, I can never shut my arms, my heart 
 or my door to you. As long as I live you shall have one 
 
640 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 sincere friend; do not be afraid to tell anything wrong 
 you have done; ten to one if I have not done the same 
 thing. I am not perfection, and if it is necessary to sin 
 in order to have sympathy, I- am glad I have committed 
 sin enough to have sympathy. The sternness of perfec- 
 tion I do not want. I am going to live so that my chil- 
 dren can come to my grave and truthfully say, " He who 
 sleeps here never gave us one moment of pain." Whether 
 you call that religion or infidelity, suit yourselves; that is 
 the way I intend to do it. 
 
 When I was a little fellow most everybody thought 
 that some days were too sacred for the young ones to 
 enjoy themselves in. That was the general idea. Sun- 
 day used to commence Saturday night at sundown, under 
 ihe old text. " The evening and the morning were the 
 first day." They commenced then, I think, to get a good 
 ready. When the sun went down Saturday night, dark- 
 ness ten thousand times deeper than ordinary night fell 
 upon the house. The boy that looked the sickest was 
 regarded as the most pious. You could not crack 
 hickory nuts that night, and if you were caught chewing 
 gum it was another evidence of the total depravity of the 
 human .heart. It was a very solemn evening. We 
 would sometimes sing "Another Day has Passed." 
 Everybody looked as though they had the dyspepsia 
 you know lots of people think they are pious, just because 
 they are bilious, as Mr. Hood says. It was a solemn 
 night, and the rext morning the solemnity had increased. 
 Then we went to church, and the minister was in a pulpit 
 about twenty feet high. If it was in the winter there was 
 no fire; it was not thought proper to be comfortable while 
 you were thanking the Lord. The minister commenced 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. 64! 
 
 at firstly and ran up to about twenty-fourthly, and then 
 he divided it up again; and then he made some conclud- 
 ing remarks, and then he said lastly, and when he said 
 lastly he was about half through. Then we had what 
 we called the catechism the chief end of man. I think 
 that has a tendency to make a boy kind of bubble up 
 cheerfully. 
 
 We sat along on a bench with our feet about eight 
 inches from the floor. The minister said, "Boys, do 
 you know what becomes of the wicked? " We all 
 answered as cheerfully as grasshoppers sing in Minnesota, 
 "Yes, sir." " Do you know, boys, that you all ought to 
 go to hell?" "Yes, sir." As a final test: "Boys, 
 would you be willing to go to hell if it was God's will? " 
 And every little liar said, "Yes, sir." The dear old 
 minister used to try to impress upon our minds about how 
 long we would stay there after we got there, and he used 
 to say in an awful tone of voice do you know I think 
 that is what gives them the bronchitis that tone you 
 never heard of an auctioneer having it " Suppose that 
 once in a billion of years a bird were to come from some 
 far, distant clime and carry off in its bill a grain of sand, 
 when the time came when the last animal matter of 
 which this mundane sphere is composed would be carried 
 away, said he "boys, by that time in hell it would not 
 be sun up." We had this sermon in the morning and the 
 same one in the afternoon, only he commenced at the 
 other end. Then we started home full of doctrine we 
 went sadly and solemly back. If it was in the summer and 
 the weather was good and we had been good boys, they 
 used to take us down to the graveyard, and to cheer us 
 up we had a little conversation about coffins, and shrouds, 
 
642 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 and worms, and bones, and dust, and I must admit that 
 it did cheer me up when I looked at those sunken graves* 
 those stones, those names half effaced with the decay of 
 years. I felt cheered, for I said, "'This thing can't last 
 always." Then we had to read a good deal. We were 
 not allowed to read joke books or anything of that kind. 
 We read Baxter's "Call to the Unconverted;" Fox's 
 "Book of Martyrs;" Milton's "History of the 
 Waldenses," and "Jenkins on the Atonement." I gen- 
 erally read Jenkins; and I have often thought that the 
 atonement ought to be pretty broad in its provisions to 
 cover the case of a man that would write a book like that 
 for a boy. 
 
 Then we used to go and see how the sun was getting 
 on when the sun was down the thing was over. I would 
 sit three or four hours reading Jenkins, and then go out 
 and the sun would not have gone down perceptibly. I 
 used to think it stuck there out of simple, pure cussed- 
 ness. But it went down at last, it had to; that was a 
 part of the plan, and as the last rim of light would sink 
 below the horizon, off would go our hats and we would 
 give three cheers for liberty once again. 
 
 I do not believe in making Sunday hateful for children". 
 I believe in allowing them to be happy, and no day can 
 be so sacred but that the laugh of a child will make it 
 holier still. There is no God in the heavens that is 
 pleased at the sadness of childhood. You cannot make 
 me believe that. You fill their poor, little, sweet hearts 
 with the fearful doctrine of hell. A little child goes out 
 into the garden; there is a tree covered with a glory of 
 blossoms and the child leans against it, and there is a 
 little bird on the bough singing and swinging, and the 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. 643 
 
 waves of melody run out of its tiny throat, thinking about 
 four little speckled eggs in the nest, warmed by the 
 breast of its mate, and the air is filled with perfume, and 
 that little child leans against that tree and thinks about 
 hell and the worm that never dies; think of filling the 
 mind of a child with that infamous dogma! 
 
 Where was that doctrine of hell born? Where did it 
 come from? It came from that gentleman in the dug-out; 
 it was a souvenir from the lower animal. I honestly be- 
 lieve that the doctrine of hell was born in the glittering 
 eyes of snakes that run in frightful coils watching for 
 their prey. I believe it was born in the yelping and 
 howling and growling and snarling of wild beasts. I 
 believe it was born in the grin of hyenas and in the mali- 
 cious chatter of depraved apes. I depise it, I defy it and 
 hate it; and when the great ship freighted with the world 
 goes down in the night of death, chaos and disaster, I 
 will not be guilty of the ineffable meanness of pushing 
 from my breast my wife and children and padding off in 
 some orthodox canoe. I will go down with those I love 
 and with those who love me. I will go down with the 
 ship and with my race. I will go where there is sym- 
 pathy. I will go with those I love. Nothing can make 
 me believe that there is any being that is going to burn 
 and torment and damn his children forever. No, sir! 
 You will never make me believe you can divide the world 
 up into saints and sinners, and that the saints are all 
 going to heaven and the others to hell. I don't believe 
 that you can draw the line. 
 
 You are sometimes in the presence of a great disaster; 
 there is a fire; at the fourth story window you see the 
 white face of a woman with a child in her arms, and 
 
644 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 humanity calls out for somebody to go to the rescue 
 through that smoke and flame, may be death. They 
 don't call for a Baptist, nor a Presbyterian, nor a 
 Methodist, but humanity calls for a man. And all at 
 once, out steps somebody that nobody ever did think was 
 much, not a very good man, and yet he springs up the 
 ladder and is lost in the smoke, a:nd a moment afterward 
 he emerges, and the cruel serpents of fire climb and hiss 
 around his brave form, but he goes on and you see that 
 woman and child in his arms, and you see them come 
 down and they are handed to the bystanders, and he has 
 fainted, may be, and the crowd stand hushed, as they 
 always do, in the presence of a grand action, and a 
 moment after the air is rent with a cheer. Tell me that 
 that man is going to hell, who is willing to lose his life 
 merely to keep a woman and child from the torment of 
 a moment's flame tell me that he is going to hell; I tell 
 you that it is a falsehood, and if anybody says so he is 
 mistaken. 
 
 I have seen upon the battlefield a boy sixteen years of 
 age struck by the fragment of a shell and life oozing 
 slowly from the ragged lips of his death-wound, and I 
 have heard him and seen him die with a curse upon his 
 lips, and he had the face of his mother in his heart. Do 
 you tell me that that boy left that field where he died 
 that the flag of his country might^wave forever in the air 
 do you tell me that he went from that field, where he 
 lost his life in defense of the liberties of men, to an eternal 
 hell? I tell you it is infamous! and such a doctrine as 
 that would tarnish the reputation of a hyena and smirch 
 the fair fame of an anaconda. 
 
 Let us see whether we are to believe it or not. We 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. 645 
 
 had a war a little while ago and there was a draft made, 
 and there was many a good Christian hired another fel- 
 low to take his place, hired one that was wicked, hired 
 a sinner to go to hell in his place for five hundred dollars! 
 While if he was killed he would go to heaven. Think of 
 that. Think of a man willing to do that for five hundred 
 dollars! I tell you when you come right down to it they 
 have got too much heart to believe it; they say they do, 
 but they do not appreciate it. They do not believe it. 
 They would go crazy if they did. They would go- insane. 
 If a woman believed it, looking upon her little dimpled 
 darling in the cradle, and said, "Nineteen chances in 
 twenty I am raising fuel for hell," she would go crazy. 
 They don't believe it, and can't believe it. The old doc- 
 trine was that the angels in heaven would become happier 
 as they looked upon those in hell. That is not the doc- 
 trine now; we have civilized it. That is not the doctrine 
 what is the doctrine now? The doctrine is that those 
 in heaven can look upon the agonies of those in hell, 
 whether it is a fire or whatever it is, without having the 
 happiness of those in heaven decreased that is the doc- 
 trine. 
 
 That is preached to-day in every orthodox pulpit in 
 Harrisburg. Let me put one case and I will be through 
 with this branch of the subject. A husband and wife 
 love each other. The husband is a good fellow and the 
 wife a splendid woman. They live and love each other 
 and all at once he is taken sick, and they watch day after 
 day and night after night around his bedside until their 
 property is wasted and finally she has to go to work, and 
 she works through eyes blinded with tears, and the senti- 
 nel of love watches at the bedside of her prince, and at 
 
646 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 the least breath or the least motion she is awake; and 
 she attends him night after night and day after day for 
 years, and finally he dies, and she has him in her arms 
 and covers his wasted face with the tears of agony and 
 love. He is a believer and she is not. He dies, and she 
 buries him and puts flowers above his grave, and she 
 goes there in the twilight of evening and she takes her 
 children, and tells her little boys and girls through her 
 tears how brave and how true and how tender their 
 father was, and finally she dies and she goes to hell, be- 
 cause she was not a believer; and he goes to the battle- 
 ments of heaven and looks over and sees the woman who 
 loved him with all the wealth of her love, and whose 
 tears made his dead face holy and sacred, and he looks 
 upon her in the agonies of hell without having his happi- 
 ness diminished in the least. 
 
 With all due respect to everybody, I say, damn any 
 such doctrine as that. It is infamous! It never ought 
 to be preached; it never ought to be believed. We ought 
 to be true to our hearts, and the best revelation of the 
 infinite is the human heart. 
 
 Now, I come back to where I started from. They 
 used to think that a certain day was too good for a child 
 to be happy in, so they filled the imagination of this 
 child with these horrors of hell. I said, and I say again, 
 no day can be so sacred but that the laugh of a child will 
 make the holiest day more sacred still. Strike with hand 
 of fire, oh, weird musician, thy harp, strung with Apollo's 
 golden hair; fill the vast cathederal aisles with symphonies 
 sweet and dim, deft toucher of the organ keys; blow 
 bugler, blow, until thy silver notes do touch the skies, 
 with moonlit waves, and charm the lovers wandering on 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. 647 
 
 the vine-clad hills; but know, your sweetest strains are 
 discords all, compared with childhood's happy laugh, the 
 laugh that fills the eyes with light and every heart with 
 joy; oh, rippling river of life, thou art the blessed bound- 
 ary-line between the beasts and man, and every way- 
 ward wave of thine doth drown some fiend of care; oh, 
 laughter, divine daughter of joy, make dimples enough 
 in the cheeks of the world to catch and hold and glorify 
 all the tears of grief. 
 
 I am opposed to any religion that makes them melon- 
 choly, that makes children sad, and that fills the human 
 heart with shadow. 
 
 Give a child a chance. When I was a boy we always 
 went to bed when we were not sleepy, and we always got 
 up when we were sleepy. Let a child commence at 
 which end of the day thy please, that is their business; 
 they know more about it than all the doctors in the world. 
 The voice of nature when a man is free, is the voice of 
 right, but when his passions have been damned up by 
 custom, the moment that is withdrawn, he rushes to 
 some excess. Let him be free from the first. Let your 
 children grow in the free air and they will fill your house 
 with perfume. Do not create a child to be a post set in 
 an orthodox row; raise investigators and thinkers, not 
 disciples and followers; cultivate reason, not faith; culti- 
 vate investigation, not superstition; and if you have any 
 doubt yourself about a thing being so, tell them about it; 
 don't tell them the world was made in six days if you 
 think six days means six good whiles, tell them six good 
 whiles. If you have any doubts about anybody being in 
 a furnace and not being burnt, or even getting uncom- 
 fortably warm, tell them so be honest about it. If you 
 
648 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 look upon the jaw-bone of a donkey as not a good 
 weapon, say so. Give a child a chance. If you think a 
 man never went to sea in a fish, tell them so, it won't 
 make them any worse. Be honest that is all; don't 
 cram their heads with things that will take them years 
 and years to unlearn; tell them facts it is just as easy. 
 It is as easy to find out botany, and astronomy, and 
 geology, and history it is as easy to find out all these 
 things as to cram their minds with things you know 
 nothing about, * and where a child knows what the 
 name of a flower is when it sees it, the name of a bird 
 and all those things, the world becomes interesting every- 
 where, and they do not pass by the flowers they are not 
 deaf to all the songs of birds, simply because they are 
 walking along thinking about hell. 
 
 I tell you, this is a pretty good world if we only love 
 somebody in it, if we only make somebody happy, if we 
 are only honor-bright in it, if we have no fear. That is 
 my doctrine. I like to hear children at the table telling 
 what big things they have seen during the day; I like to 
 hear their merry voices mingling with the clatter of knives 
 and forks. I had rather hear that than any opera that 
 was ever put on the stage. I hate this idea of authority. 
 I hate dignity. I never saw a dignified man that was not 
 after all an old idiot. Dignity is a mask; a dignified man 
 is afraid that you will know he does not know everything. 
 A man of sense and argument is always willing to admit 
 what he don't know why? because there is so much 
 that he does know; and that is the first step towards 
 
 * " We know of no difference between matter and spirit, because we 
 know nothing with certainty about either. Why trouble ourselves about 
 matters of which, however important they may be we do know nothing 
 and can know nothing? " HUXLEY. 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. 649 
 
 learning anything willingness to admit what you don't 
 know and when you don't understand a thing, ask no 
 matter how small and silly it may look to other people 
 ask, and after that you know. A man never is in a 
 state of mind that he can learn until he gets that dignified 
 nonsense out of him, and so, I say let us treat our chil- 
 dren with perfect kindness and tenderness. 
 
 Now, then, I believe in absolute intellectual liberty; 
 that a man has a right to think, and think wrong, pro- 
 vided he does the best he can to think right that is all. 
 I have no right to say that Mr. Smith shall not think; 
 Mr. Smith has no right to say I shall not think; I have 
 no right to go and pull a clergyman out of his pulpit and 
 say: "You shall not preach that doctrine," but I have 
 just as much right as he has to say my say. I have no 
 right to lie about a clergyman, and with great modesty I 
 claim and with some timidity that he has no right to 
 slander me that is all. 
 
 I claim that every man and wife are equal, except that 
 she has a right to be protected; that there is nothing like 
 the democracy of the home and the republicism of the 
 fire-side, and that a man should study to make his wife's 
 life one perpetual poem of joy; that there should be 
 nothing but kindness and goodness; and then I say that 
 children should be governed by love, by kindness, by 
 tenderness, and by the sympathy of love, kindness and 
 tenderness. That is the religion I have got, and it is 
 good enough for me whether it suits anybody else in the 
 world or not. I think it is altogether more important to 
 believe in my wife than it is to believe in the master; I 
 think it is altogether more important to love my children 
 than the twelve apostles that is my doctrine. I may be 
 
650 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 wrong, but that is it. I think more of the living than I 
 do of the dead. This world is for the living. The grave 
 is not a throne, and a corpse is not a king. The living 
 have a right to control this world. I think a good deal 
 more of to-day than I do of yesterday, and I think more 
 of to-morrow than I do of this day; because it is nearly 
 gone that is the way I feel, and this my creed. The 
 time to be happy is now; the way to be happy is to make 
 somebody else happy; and the place to be happy is here. 
 I never will consent to drink skim milk here with the 
 promise of cream somewhere else. 
 
 Now, my friends, I have some excuses to offer for the 
 race to which I belong. In the first place, this world is 
 not very well adapted to raising good people; there is but 
 one-quarter of it land to start with; it is three times as 
 well adapted to fish-culture as it is to man, and of that 
 one-quarter there is but a small belt where they raise 
 men of genius. There is one-strip from which all the 
 men and women of genius come. When you go too far 
 north you find no brain; when you go too far south you 
 find no genius, arid there never has been a high degree of 
 civilization except where there is winter. I say that win- 
 ter is the father and mother of the fireside, the family of 
 nations; and around that fireside blossom the fruits of our 
 race. In a country where they don't need any bed-clothes 
 except the clouds, revolution is the normal condition- 
 not much civilization there. When in the winter I goby 
 a house where the curtain is a little bit drawn, and I look 
 in there and see children poking the fire and wishing they 
 had as many dollars or knives or something else as there 
 are sparks; when I see the old man smoking and the 
 smoke curling above his head like incense from the altar 
 of domestic peace, the other children reading or doing 
 something, and the old lady with her needle and shears 
 I never pass such a scene that I do not feel a little 
 ache of joy in rny heart. 
 
 Awhile ago they were talking about annexing San 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. 651 
 
 Domingo. They said it was the finest soil in the world, 
 and so on. Says I, "It don't raise the right kind of folks; 
 you take five thousand of the best people in the world 
 and let them settle there and you will see the second 
 generation barefooted, with the hair sticking out of the 
 top of their sombreros; you will see them riding bare- 
 backed, with a rooster under each arm, going to a cock- 
 fight on Sunday. That is one excuse I have. 
 
 Another is, I think we came from the lower animals. 
 I am not dead sure of it. On that question I stand about 
 eight to seven. If there is nothing of the snake, or 
 hyena, or jackal in man, why would he cut his brother's 
 throat for a difference of belief? Why would he build 
 dungeons and burn the flesh of his brother man with red- 
 hot irons? I think we came from the lower animals. 
 When I first heard that doctrine I did not like it. I felt 
 sorry for our English friends, who would have to trace 
 their pedigree back to the DuKe of Ourangoutang, or the 
 Earl of Chimpanzee. But I have read so much about 
 rudimentary bones and rudimentary muscles that I began 
 to doubt about it. Says I: "What do you mean by 
 rudimentary muscles?" They say: " A muscle that has 
 gone into bankruptcy "Was it a large muscle?" 
 "Yes." " What did our forefathers use it for?|" They 
 say: "To flap their ears with." After I found that out 
 I was astonished to find that they had become rudi- 
 mentary; I know so many people for whom it would be 
 handy to-day, so many people where that would have 
 been on an exact level with their intellectual develop- 
 ment . So after while I began to like it, and says I to 
 myself: " You have got to come to it." I thought after 
 all I had rather belong to a race of people that came 
 from skullless vertebrae in the dim Laurentian period, 
 that wiggled without knowing they were wiggling, that 
 began to develop and came up by a gradual development 
 until they struck this gentleman in the dug-out; coming 
 up slowly up up up until, for instance, they pro- 
 
652 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 duced such a man as Shakespeare he who harvested all 
 the fields of dramatic thought, and after whom all others 
 have been only gleaners of straw, he who found the hu- 
 man intellect dwelling in a hut, touched it with the wand 
 of his genius and it became a palace producing him and 
 and hundreds of others I might mention with the angels 
 of progress leaning over the far horizon beckoning this 
 race of work and thought I had rather belong to a race 
 commencing at the skullless vertebrae producing the 
 gentleman in the dug-out and so on up, than to have de- 
 scended from a perfect pair upon which the Lord has 
 lost money from that day to this . I had rather belong 
 to a race that is going up than to one that is going down. 
 I would rather belong to one that commenced at the 
 skullless vertebrae and started for perfection, than to be- 
 long to one .that started from perfection and started for 
 the skullless vertebrae. 
 
 These are the excuses I have for my race* and taking 
 everything into consideration, I think we have done ex- 
 tremely well. 
 
 Let us have more liberty and free thought. Free 
 thought will give us truth. It is too early in the history 
 of the world to write a creed. Our fathers were intellect- 
 "ual slaves; our fathers were intellectual serfs. There 
 never has been a free generation on the globe. Every 
 creed you have got bears the mark of whip, and chain, 
 and fagot. There has been no creed written by a free 
 brain. Wait until we have had two or three generations 
 of liberty and it will then be time enough to seize the swift 
 horse of progress by the bridle and say thus far and no 
 farther; and in the meantime let us be kind to each other; 
 let us be decent towards each other. We are all travelers 
 on the great plain we call life and there is nobody quite sure, 
 what road to take not just dead sure, you known. There 
 are lots of guide-boards on the plain and you find thousands 
 of people swearingto-day that theirguide-board isthe only 
 board that shows the right direction. I go and talk to them 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. 653 
 
 and they say: < < You go that way, or you will be damned. " 
 I go to another and they say: " You go this way, or you 
 will be damned." I find them all fighting and quarreling 
 and beating each other, #nd then I say: " Let us cut 
 down all these guide-boards." "What," they say, 
 "leave us without any guide-boards? " I say:" Yes. Let 
 every man take the road he thinks is right; and let every- 
 body else wish him a happy journey; let us part friends." 
 
 I say to you to-night, my friends, that I have no 
 malice upon this subject not a particle; I simply wish 
 to express my thoughts. The world has grown better 
 just in proportion as it is happier; the world has grown 
 better just in proportion as it has lost superstition; the 
 world has grown better just in the proportion that the 
 sacerdotal class has lost influence just exactly; the 
 the world has grown better just in proportion that secular 
 ideas have taken possession of the world. The world has 
 grown better just in proportion that it has ceased talking 
 about the visions of the clouds, and talked about the 
 realities of the earth. The world has grown better just 
 in the proportion that it has grown free, and I want to do 
 what little I can in my feeble way to add another flame 
 to the torch of progress. I do not know, of course, 
 what will come, but if I have said anything to-night that 
 will make a husband love his wife better, I am satisfied; 
 if I have said anything that will make a wife love her 
 husband better, I am satisfied; if I have said anything that 
 wil) add one more ray of joy to life, I am satisfied; 
 if I have said anything that will save the tender flesh of 
 a child from a blow, I am satisfied; if I have said any- 
 thing that will make us more willing to extend to others 
 the right we claim for ourselves, I am satisfied. 
 
 I do not know what inventions are in the brain of the 
 future; I do not know what garments of glory may be 
 woven for the world in the loom of the years to be; we 
 are just on the edge of the great ocean of discovery. I 
 do not know what is to be discovered; I do not know 
 
654 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 what science will do for us. I do know that science did 
 just take a handful of sand and make the telescope, and 
 with it read all the starry leaves of heaven; I know that 
 science took the thunderbolts from the hands of Jupiter, 
 and now the electric spark, freighted with thought and 
 love, flashes under waves of the sea, I know that science 
 stole a tear from the cheek of unpaid labor, converted it 
 into steam, and created a giant that turns with tireless 
 arms the' countless wheels of toil; I know that science 
 broke the chains from human limbs and gave us instead 
 the forces of nature for our slaves; I know that we have 
 made the attraction of gravitation work for us; we have 
 made the lightnings our messengers; we have taken ad- 
 vantage of fire and flames and wind and sea; these slaves 
 have no backs to be whipped; they have no hearts to be 
 lacerated; they have no children to be stolen, no cradles 
 to be violated. I know that science has given us better 
 houses; I know it has given us better pictures and better 
 books; I know it has given us better wives and better 
 husbands, and more beautiful children, I know it has 
 enriched a thousand-fold our lives; and for that reason I 
 am in favor of intellectual liberty. 
 
 I know not, I say, what discoveries may lead the world 
 to glory; but I do know that from the infinite sea of the 
 future never a greater or grander blessing will strike this 
 bank and shoal of time than liberty for man, woman and 
 child. 
 
 Ladies and gentlemen, I have delivered this lecture a 
 great many times; clergymen have attended, and editors 
 of religious newspapers, and they have gone away and 
 written in their papers and declared in their pulpits that 
 in this lecture I advocated universal adultery; they have 
 gone away and said it was obscene and disgusting. Be- 
 tween me and my clerical maligners, between me and 
 my religious slanderers, I leave you, ladies and gentle- 
 men, to judge. 
 
LNGERSOLL'S LECTURE 
 
 ON 
 
 HUMAN RIGHTS. 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I suppose that man, from 
 the most grotesque savage up to Heckle, has had a phi- 
 losophy by which he endeavored to account for all the 
 phenomena of nature he may have observed. From 
 that mankind may have got their ideas of right and 
 wrong. Now, where there are no rights there can be po 
 duties. Let us always remember that only as a man be- 
 comes free can he by any possibility become good or 
 great. As I said, every savage has had his philosophy, and 
 by it accounted for everything he observed. He had an 
 idea of rain and rainbow, and he had an idea of a con- 
 trolling power. One said there is a being who presides 
 over our world, and who will destroy us unless we do 
 right. Others had many of these beings, but they were 
 invariably like themselves. The most fruitful imagination 
 cannot make more than a man, though it may make in- 
 finite powers and attributes out of the powers and attri- 
 
656 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 butes of man. You can't build a God unless you start 
 with a human being. The savage said, when there was 
 a storm, " Somebody is angry." When lightning leaped 
 from the lurid cloud, he thought, "What have I been 
 doing?" and when he couldn't think of any wrong he had 
 been doing, he tried to think of some wrong his neighbor 
 had been doing. 
 
 I may as well state here that I believe man has come 
 up from the lowest orders of creation, and may have not 
 come up very far; still, I believe we are doing very well, 
 considering. 
 
 But, speaking of man's early philosophy, his morality 
 was founded first on self-defense. When gathered to- 
 gether in tribes, he held that this infinite being would 
 hold the tribe responsible for the actions of any individual 
 who had angered him. They imagined this being got 
 angry. Just imagine the serenity of an infinite being 
 being disturbed, and a God breaking into a passion be- 
 cause some poor wretch had neglected to bring two tur- 
 tle doves to a priest ! 
 
 Then they sought out this poor offending individual, to 
 punish him and appease the wroth of this being. And 
 here commenced religious persecution. 
 
 Now, I do not say there is no God, but what I do say 
 is that I do not know. The only difference between me 
 and the theologian is that I am honest. There may or 
 there may not be an infinite being, but I do not know it, 
 and until I do I cannot conceive of any obedience I owe 
 to any unknown being. 
 
 As soon as men began to imagine they would be held 
 responsible for the act of any other person, came the 
 necessity for some one to teach them how to keep from 
 
HUMAN RIGHTS. 657 
 
 offending the being. Some called him medicine man, 
 some called him priest; now, we call him theologian. 
 These men set out to teach men how to keep from of- 
 fending this being, and they laid down certain laws to 
 regulate the conduct of men. First of all it was neces- 
 sary to believe in this power. To disbelieve in him was 
 the worst offense of all. To have some human being, 
 dressed in the skin of a wild beast, deny the existence of 
 this infinite being, was more than the infinite being could 
 stand. The first thing, therefore, was to believe in this 
 power, the next to support this gentleman standing be- 
 tween you and the supreme wrath. These gentlemen 
 were the lobbyists with the power, and sometimes suc- 
 ceeded in getting the veto used in favor of their clients. 
 
 For ages, as mankind slowly came through the savage 
 state, the world was filled with infinite fear. They ac- 
 counted for everything bad that happened as the wrath 
 of this supreme being. But they went from savagery to 
 barbarism a step in improvement and then began to 
 build temples to, and make images of, this being. Then 
 man began to believe he could influence this being by 
 prayer, by getting on his knees to the image he had made. 
 
 Nothing, I suppose astonishes a missionary more than 
 to see a savage in Central Africa on his knees before a 
 stone praying for luck in hunting or in fighting. And 
 yet it strikes me we have our army chaplains before a 
 battle praying for the success of our side. They don't 
 pray for assistance if our cause is just, but they pray, 
 " Lord help us. ! " I can't see the difference between the 
 two. 
 
 But there is this said in favor of prayer that, whether 
 successful or not, it is a sort of intellectual exercise. 
 
658 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 Like a man trying to lift himself, he may not succeed, 
 but he gets a good deal of exercise. 
 
 But as man proceeds, he begins to help himself and to 
 take advantage of mechanical powers to assist him, and 
 he begins to see he can help himself a little, and exactly 
 in the proportion he helps himself he comes to rely less 
 on the power of priest or prayer to help him. Just to 
 the extent we are helpless, to that extent do we rely upon 
 the unknown. 
 
 As religion developed itself, keeping pace with the be- 
 lief in theology, came the belief in demonoiogy. They 
 gave one being all the credit of doing all the good things, 
 and must give some one credit for the bad things, and so 
 they created a devil. At one time it was as disreputable 
 to deny the existence of a devilas to deny the existence 
 of a God; to deny the existence of a hell, with its fire 
 and brimstone, as to deny the existence of a heaven with 
 its harp and love. 
 
 With the development of religion came the idea that 
 no man should be allowed to bring the wrath of God on 
 a nation by his transgressions, and this idea permeates 
 the Christian world to-day. Now what does this prove ? 
 Simply that our religion is founded on fear, and when 
 you are afraid you cannot think. Fear drops on its 
 knees and believes. It is only courage that can think. 
 
 It was the idea that man's actions could do something, 
 outside of any effect his mechanical works might have, 
 to change the order of nature; that he might commit 
 some offense to bring on an earthquake, but he can't do 
 it. You can't be bad enough to cause an earthquake; 
 neither can you be good enough to stop one. Out of that 
 wretched doctrine and infamous mistake that man's be- 
 
HUMAN RIGHTS. 659 
 
 lief could have 1 any effect upon nature grew all these in- 
 quisitions, racks and collars of torture, and all the blood 
 that was ever shed by religious persecution. 
 
 In Europe the country was divided between kings and 
 priests. The king held that he got the power from the 
 unknown; so did the priests. They could not say that 
 they got it from the people; the people would deny it; 
 the unknown could not deny it. And thus the altar and 
 throne stand side by side. And republicanism was a 
 thing unknown. 
 
 It has been said that the pilgrim fathers came to thi s 
 country to establish religious liberty. They did no such 
 thing. They were not in favor of it. They came with 
 the Testament in their hands, and with it they could 
 have no idea of religious liberty. When they had estab- 
 lished thirteen colonies here, and had struggled for and 
 obtained their independence, they established federal 
 government, but did they seek after religious liberty? 
 No ! When they formed a federal government each 
 church and each colony was jealous of the other. They 
 said to the general government, ' ' You can't have any 
 religion in the constitution," but each state could make 
 its own religion, and they made them. 
 
 Here the speaker read copious extracts from the stat- 
 utes of the different states in reference to the qualifica- 
 tions for the exercise of citizenship the religious belief 
 necessary; and, on concluding, asked, "Had they (the 
 members who drew up these state constitutions). any idea 
 of religious liberty ? " 
 
 Continuing, he said: Now, my friends, there's a party 
 started in this country with the object of giving every 
 man, woman and child the rights they are entitled to. 
 
66o INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 Now every one of us has the same rights. I have the 
 right to labor and to have the products of my labor. I 
 have the right to think, and furthermore, to express my 
 thoughts, because expression is the reward of my intel- 
 lectual labor. And yet in the United States there are 
 states where men of my ideas would not be allowed to 
 testify in a court of justice. Is that right ? There are 
 states in this country where, if the law had been en- 
 forced, I would have been sent to the penitentiary for 
 lecturing. All such laws are enacted by barbarians, and 
 our country will not be free until they are wiped from the 
 statute books of every state. 
 
 Does an infinite being need to be protected by a State 
 Legislature ? If the bible is inspired, does the author of 
 it need the support of the law to command respect ? We 
 don't need any law to make mankind respect Shakes- 
 peare. We come to the altar of that great man and 
 cover it with our gratitude without a statute . Think of 
 a law to govern tastes ! Think of a law to govern mind, 
 or any question whatever ! Think of the way in which 
 they have supported the bible ! They've terrorized the 
 old with laws, and captured the dear, little innocent 
 children and poisoned their minds with their false stories 
 until, when they have reached the age of manhood, they 
 have been afraid to think for themselves. Let us see 
 what the laws are now by which they guard their bible 
 and their God. 
 
 [Here the speaker read extracts from the statutes of 
 several states in reference to blasphemy and profanation 
 of the Sabbath, commenting on each as he ran them 
 through.] Pursuing the thread of his discourse, he said: 
 Every American should see to it that all these laws are 
 done away with once and forever. 
 
HUMAN RIGHTS. 66 1 
 
 There has been a reaction of late years. This country 
 has begun to be prosperous. We don't think much of re- 
 ligion; 'tis only when hard times come we turn our at- 
 tention toward it. There are people in this country who 
 say we are getting too irreligious, too scientific. Now, 
 is it not a fact that we are happier to-day than at any 
 period in our history ? You live in a great country, 
 though perhaps you do not know it. But live in any 
 other country for a while, and you'll find it out. See, 
 then, what we've got by looking a little to the affairs of 
 the world ! 
 
 The bible can't stand to-day without the support of the 
 civil power. No religion ever flourished except by the 
 support of the sword, and no religion like this could have 
 been established except by brute force. 
 
 At one time we thought a great deal of clergymen, 
 but now we have got to thinking they ain't of as much 
 importance as a man that has invented something. The 
 church seeing this has made up its mind that it is neces- 
 sary to do something, and so got up a plan to be ac- 
 knowledged by law. Here's what they wish to do: [Here 
 the speaker read some extracts from the constitution of 
 the National Reform Association.] Continuing he said: 
 
 Our fathers, in 1776, building better than they knew, 
 retired the gods from politics. I do not believe Jesus 
 Christ is the ruler of nations. If he is the ruler of one 
 he is the ruler of all. Why does he not then rule one as 
 well as another ? If you give him credit for the good 
 things of one you must denounce him for the tyranny and 
 despotism of others. The revealed word of God is not 
 the standing of civil justice in this country ! The bible 
 is not the standard of right and wrong or of decency in 
 this country. 
 
662 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 You can't put God in the constitution, because if you 
 do there would be no room for the folks. Whatever you 
 put in the constitution you must enforce by the sword, 
 and you can't go to war with any man for not believing 
 in your God. God has no business there, and any man 
 that is in favor of putting him there is an enemy to the 
 interests of American institutions. 
 
 Now for the purpose of preventing the name of God 
 being put in the constitution, there's another little party 
 has been started and these are its doctrines: We want an 
 absolute divorce between church and state. We demand 
 that church property should not be exempt from taxation. 
 If you are going to exempt anything, exempt the home- 
 steads of the poor. Don't exempt a rich corporation, 
 and make men pay taxes to support a religion in which 
 they do not believe. But they say churches do good. I 
 don't know whether they do or not. Do you see such a 
 wonderful difference between a member ot a church and 
 the man who does not believe in it ? Do church mem- 
 bers pay their debts any better than any others ? Do 
 they treat their families any better ? Did you ever hear 
 of any man coming into a town broke and inquire where 
 the deacon of a Presbyterian church lived ? Has not the 
 church opposed every science from the first ray of light 
 until now ? Didn't they damn into eternal flames 
 the man who discovered the world was round ? 
 Didn't they damn into eternal flames the man 
 who discovered the movement of the earth in its 
 orbit ? Didn't they persecute the astronomers ? Didn't 
 they even try to put down life insurance by saying it was 
 sinful to bet on the time God has given you to live ? 
 Science built the Academy, superstition the Inquisition. 
 Science constructed the telescope, religion the rack; 
 science made us happy here, -and says if there's another 
 
HUMAN RIGHTS. 663 
 
 life we'll all stand an equal chance there; religion made 
 us miserable here, and says a large majority will be eter- 
 nally miserable there. Should we, therefore, exempt it 
 from taxation for any good it has done ? 
 
 The next thing we ask is a perfect divorce between 
 church and school. We say that every school should be 
 secular, because its just to everybody. If I was an 
 Israelite I wouldn't want to be taxed to have my children 
 taught that his ancestors had murdered a supreme being. 
 Let us teach, not the doctrines of the past, but the dis- 
 coveries of the present; not the five points of Calvinism, 
 but geology and geography. Education is the lever to 
 raise mankind, and superstition is the enemy of intelli- 
 gence. 
 
 We demand, next, that woman shall be put upon an 
 equality with man. Why not ? Why shouldn't men be 
 decent enough in the management of the politics of the 
 country for women to mingle with them ? It is an out- 
 rage that anyone should live in this country for sixty or 
 seventy years and be forced to obey the laws without 
 having any voice in making them. Let us give woman 
 the opportunity to care for herself, since men are not de- 
 cent enough to seek to care for her. The time will come 
 when we'll treat a woman that works and takes care of 
 two or three children as well as a woman dressed in dia- 
 monds who does nothing. The time will come when 
 we'll not tell our domestic we expect to meet her in 
 heaven, and yet not be willing to have her speak to us in 
 the drawing room. 
 
 Ignorance is a poor pedestal to set virtue upon and 
 mock-modesty should not have the right to prevent peo- 
 ple from knowing themselves. Every child has a right 
 
664 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 to be well-born, and ignorance has no right to people the 
 world with scrofula and consumption. When we come 
 to the conclusion that God is not taking care of us and 
 that we have to take care of ourselves, then we'll begin 
 to have something in the world worth living for. 
 
 I would wish there was seated upon the throne of the 
 universe one who would see to it that justice did always 
 prevail. I do not propose to give up the little world I 
 live in for the unknown. 
 
 I would wish that the friends who bid us "good night" 
 in this world might meet us with "good morning" there. 
 Just as long as we love one another we'll hope for another 
 world; just as long as love kisses the lips of death will 
 we believe and hope for a future reunion. I wonld not 
 take one hope away from the human heart or one joy 
 from the human soul, but I hold in contempt the gentle- 
 men who keep heaven on sale; I look with contempt on 
 him who keeps it on draught; I look with pitying con- 
 tempt on him who endeavors to prohibit honest thought 
 by promising a reward in another world. If there is an- 
 other world we'll find when we come there that no one has 
 done enough good to be eternally rewarded, no one has 
 done enough harm to meet with an unending, eternal 
 pain and agony. We'll find that there is no being that 
 ever hindered a man from exercising his reason. Now, 
 whije we are here, no matter what happens to us here- 
 after, let us cultivate strength of heart and brain to stand 
 the inevitable. No creed can help you there . When 
 the heart is touched with agony nothing but time can 
 heal it. 
 
 I want, if I can, to do a little to increase the rights of 
 men, to put every human being on an equality, to sweep 
 

 HUMAN RIGHTS. 665 
 
 away the clouds of superstition, to make people think 
 more of what happens to-day than what somebody said 
 happened 3,000 years ago. This is all I want: To do 
 what little I can to clutch one-seventh of our time from 
 superstition, to give our Sundays to rest and recreation. 
 I want a day of enjoyment, a day to read old books, to 
 meet old friends, and get acquainted with one's wife and 
 children. I want a day to gather strength to meet the 
 toils of the next. I want to get that day away from the 
 church, away from superstition and the contemplation of 
 hell, to be the best and sweetest and brightest of all the 
 days in the week. The best way to make a day sacred 
 is to fill it up with useful labor. That day is best on 
 which most good is done for the human race. I hope to 
 see the time when we'll have a day for the opera, the 
 play good plays for they do good. You never saw the 
 villain foiled in a play where the audience did not ap- 
 plaud. You never saw them applaud when the rascal 
 was successful in his villainy. If you could go to a theater 
 and see put upon the stage the scenes of the old testa- 
 ment, with its butcheries and rapes and deeds of vio- 
 lence, you would detest it all the days of your life. I'd 
 like to have every horror of the old testament set on this 
 stage, to have somebody represent the being as he is rep- 
 resented there, giving his brutal orders, and let the or- 
 thodox see their God as he really is. 
 
 I want to have us all do what little we can to secular- 
 ize this government take it from the control of savagery 
 and give it to science, take it from the government of the 
 past and give it to the enlightened present, and in this 
 government let us uphold every man and woman in their 
 rights, that everyone, after he or she comes to the age 
 
666 
 
 INGERSOLLS LECTURES. 
 
 of discretion^ may have a voice in the affairs of the nation. 
 Do this, and we'll grow in grandeur and splendor every 
 day, and the time will come when every man and every 
 woman shall have the same rights as every other man 
 and every other woman has. I believe we are growing 
 better. I don't believe the wail of want shall be heard 
 forever; that the prison and the gallows will always curse 
 the ground. The time will come when liberty and law 
 and love, like the rings of Saturn, will surround the 
 world; when the world will cease making these mistakes; 
 when every man will be judged according to his worth 
 and intelligence. I want to do all I can to hasten that 
 day. 
 
INGERSOLL'S LECTURE 
 
 -ON 
 
 TALMAGIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 (SECOND LECTURE.) 
 
 Col. Ingersoll began, 4< Only a few years ago the pul- 
 pit was almost supreme. The palace was almost in the 
 shadow of the cathedral, and the power behind every 
 throne was a priest. Man was held in physical slavery 
 by kings, and in a mental prison by the church. He was 
 allowed to hold no opinions as to where he came from, 
 nor as to where he was going. It was sufficient for him 
 to do the labor and believe the kings would do the gov- 
 erning and the priests the thinking and, my God, what 
 thinking ! If the world had obeyed the priests we would 
 all be idiots to-night. The eagle of intellect would have 
 given way to the blind bat of faith. They were the rack, 
 the faggot, the thumbscrew in this world, and hell in the 
 next. Only a few years ago no man could express an 
 honest thought unless he agreed with the church. The 
 
 667 
 
668 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 church has been a perpetual beggar. It has never plowed, 
 it never sowed, it never spun, yet Solomon in all his 
 glory was not so arrayed. . Thanks to modern thought, 
 the brain of the nineteenth century, to Voltaire, Paine, 
 Hume, to all the free men, that beggar the church is 
 no longer upon horseback; and it fills me with joy to 
 state that even its walking is not now good. Only a little 
 while ago a priest was thought more than human. No- 
 body dared contradict the minister. Now there are other 
 learned professions. There are doctors, lawyers, writ- 
 ers, books, newspapers, and the priest has hundreds of 
 rivals. 
 
 The priest grew jealous, hateful; he was always thank- 
 ful for an epidemic or pestilence, so that people would 
 turn to him in despair. In our country all the men of 
 intellect were in the pulpit once. Now there are so many 
 avenues to distinction the men of brain, heart and red 
 blood have left the pulpit and gone to useful things. I do 
 not say all. There are still some men of mind in the pulpit, 
 but they are nearer infidels than any others. Where do 
 we get our ministers ? A young man, without constitu- 
 tion enough to be wicked, without health enough to enjoy 
 the things of this world, naturally fixes his gaze on high. 
 He is educated, sent to a university where he is taught 
 that it is criminal to think. Stuffed with a creed, he 
 comes out a shepherd. Most of them are intellectual 
 shreds and patches, mental ravelings, selvage. Every 
 pulpit is a pillory in which stands a convict; every mem- 
 ber of the church stands over him with a club, called a 
 creed. He is an intellectual slave, and dare not preach 
 his honest thought. There are thousands of good men 
 in the pulpit, honest men. I am simply describing the 
 
TALMAGIAN THEOLOGY. 669 
 
 average shepherd; they tell me "they've been called," 
 that Almighty God selected them. He looked all over 
 the world and said: ' Now, there's a man I want ! ' And 
 what selections ! Shakespeare was not called. Yet he 
 has done more for this world than all the ministers who 
 have ever lived in it. Beethoven ! He was not called. 
 Raphael was not called. He was all an accident. All 
 the inventors, discoverers, poets God never called one 
 of them; he turned his attention to popes, cardinals, 
 priests, exhorters; and what selections he has made ! 
 It's astonishing. 
 
 In the United States a great many ministers have been 
 good enough to take me for a text. Among others the 
 Rev. Mr. Talmage, of Brooklyn. I have nothing to say 
 about his reputation. It has nothing to do with the 
 question. Some ministers think he has more gesticulation 
 than grace. Some call him a pious pantaloon, a Chris- 
 tian clown; but such remarks, I think, are born of envy. 
 He is the only Presbyterian minister in the United States 
 who can draw an audience. He stands at the head of 
 the denomination, and I answer him . He's a strange 
 man. I believe he's orthodox, or intellectual pride would 
 prevent his saying these things. He believes in a literal 
 resurrection of the dead; that we shall see countless 
 bones flying through the air. He has some charges 
 against me, and he has denied some of my statements. 
 He has produced what he calls arguments, and I am go- 
 ing to answer some of the charges. Next Sunday after- 
 noon, at 2 o'clock; in this place, I shall have a matinee, 
 and answer his arguments. 
 
 He says I am the champion blasphemer. What is blas- 
 phemy ? To contradict a priest ? to have a mind of your 
 
670 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 own ? Whoever takes a step in advance is a blasphemer. 
 Blasphemy is what a last year's leaf says to a this year's 
 bud. To deny that Mohammed is the prophet of God is 
 not blasphemy in New York. It is in Constantinople. 
 It is a question, then, largely of Geography. It depends 
 on where you are. The missionary who laughs at a mod- 
 ern God is a blasphemer. In a Catholic country whoever 
 says Mary is not the mother of God is a blasphemer. In 
 a Protestant country to say she is the mother of God is 
 blasphemy. Everything has been blasphemy. My doctrine 
 is this: He is a blasphemer who refuses to tell his hon- 
 est thought; who is not true to himself; who enslaves his 
 fellow man ; who charges that God was once in favor of 
 slavery. If there is any God, that man is a blasphemer. 
 They're afraid we'll injure God. How ? Is infinite good- 
 ness and mercy to become livid with wrath because a 
 finite being expresses an opinion ? I cannot help the 
 infinite. That man only is the good man who helps his 
 fellow man. I know men who would do anything for 
 God, who doesn't need it, but nothing for men, who do 
 need it. Why should God be so particular about my be- 
 lieving his book ? It's no more his work than the stars 
 of gravitation. Yet I may declare that the earth is flat, 
 and he'll not damn me for that. But if I make a mistake 
 about that book I'm gone. I can blaspheme the multi- 
 plication table and deny the power of the wedge in 
 fact, the less I know the better my chance will be. I 
 say that book is not inspired, and there is no infinitely 
 good God who will damn one human soul. At the judg- 
 ment, if I am mistaken I own up I am here, I do not 
 know where I came from, nor where I am going I'll be 
 honest about it. I am on a ship and not on speaking 
 
TALMAGIAN THEOLOGY. 671 
 
 terms with the captain, but I propose to have a happy 
 voyage, and the best way is to do what vou can to make 
 your fellow passengers happy. If we run into a good 
 port, I'll be as happy an angel as you'll meet that day. 
 
 Blasphemy is the cry of a defeated priest the black 
 flag of theology it shows where argument stops and 
 slander and persecution begin. I am told by Mr. Tal- 
 mage that whoever contradicts this word is a fool, a 
 howling wolf, one of the assassins of God. I presume 
 the gentleman is honest. Take Mr. Talmage, now, he 
 is a good man. Mr. Humboldt, he was another good 
 man. What Humboldt knew and what Talmage didn't 
 know would make a library. 
 
 The next charge is that I have said the universe was 
 made of nothing, according to the bible. False in one 
 thing, false in all, he says. Think of that rule. Let us 
 apply that to him. If the world was created, what was 
 it make of ? and who made that ? If the Lord created it, 
 what did He make it of ? Nothing. That's all He had. 
 No sides, no top, nothing. Yet God had lived there for- 
 ever. What did He think about ? What did He do ? 
 Nothing. Nothing had ever happened. All at once He 
 made something. What did He make it of ? Mr. Tal- 
 mage explains. He says if I knew anything I would 
 know that God made this world out of His omnipotence. 
 He might just as well made it out of His memory. What 
 is omnipotence ? Is it a raw material ? The weakest 
 man in the world can lift as much nothing as God. Yet 
 He made this world out of His omnipotence. It is so 
 stated by a doctor of divinity, and I should think such 
 divinity would need a doctor ! I don't believe this. I 
 believe this universe has existed throughout all eternity 
 
672 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 everything. All that is, is God. I do not give to that 
 universe a personality that wants man to get his knees 
 into dust and his fingers in holy water; that wants some- 
 body to ring a bell or eat a wafer. I am a part of this 
 universe, and I believe all there is, is all the God there 
 is. I may be mistaken; I don't know. I just give my 
 best opinion. If there's any heaven, I'll give it there. 
 But there'll be no discussion in heaven. Hell is the only 
 place where mental improvement will be possible. 
 
 I have said, it is charged, that the bible says the world 
 was made in six days. He says I don't understand Hebrew. 
 The bible says the world was made in six days. God 
 didn't work nights evening and morning were the first 
 day. God rested on the seventh day, and sanctified it. 
 That, they say, didn't mean days; it meant good 
 whiles. He made the world in six good whiles. 
 Adam was made, I think along about Saturday. If the 
 account is- correct, it's only 6,000 years since man made 
 his appearance. We know that to be false. A few 
 years ago a gentleman who was going to California in 
 the cars met a minister. They came to the place called 
 the Sink of the Humboldt, the most desolate place in the 
 world. Just imagine perdition with the fire out. The 
 traveler asked the minister whether God made the earth 
 in six days, and the minister said he did. Then don't 
 you think, said he, He could have put in another day's 
 work to great advantage right here ? I am charged, too, 
 with saying that the sun was not made till the fourth 
 day, whereas, according to the bible, vegetation began 
 on the third day, before there was any light. But Mr. 
 Talmage says there was light without the sun. They 
 got light, he says, from the crystallization of rocks. A 
 nice thing to raise a crop of corn by. There may have 
 
TALMAGIAN THEOLOGY. 673 
 
 been volcanoes, he says. How'd you like to farm it, 
 and depend on volcanic glare to raise a crop ? That's 
 what they call religious science. God won't damn a man 
 for things like that. What else ? The aurora borealis ! A 
 great cucumber country ! It's strange He never thought 
 of gldw worms ! Imagine it ! a Presbyterian divine 
 gravely saying vegetation could grow by the light of the 
 crystallization of rocks by the light of volcanoes in 
 other worlds, probably now extinct. 
 
 He says of me, too in his pulpit, that I was in favor of 
 the circulation of immoral literature. Let me tell you 
 the truth. Several gentlemen, so-called, were trying to 
 exclude from the mails, books called infidel. I said the 
 law should be modified. It is impossible for anybody to 
 reach the depth of one who will print or circulate obscene 
 books. One of my objections to the bible is that it con- 
 tains obscene stories. Any book, couched in decent lan- 
 guage, should have the liberty of the United States mails. 
 Where books are immoral and obscene, I say, burn them, 
 and have always said it. Mr. Ta-lmage said what he knew 
 to be untrue. He said it out of hatred, and because he 
 cannot answer the arguments I have urged. I believe in 
 pure books and pure literature. But when a God writes 
 there is no excuse for Him. In Shakespeare we say ob- 
 scene things are impure we do not say they are inspired. 
 
 That I have falsified the records of the bible showing 
 the period of Jewish slavery, is another of the 
 charges against me . That slavery extended over 
 a period of 215 years; and he proceeded to sub- 
 stantiate this statement by going through a long and 
 somewhat complicated geneological table. If I made 
 any misstatement I was mislead by the new testament. 
 
674 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 Mr. Talmage may settle with St. Paul. If you can de- 
 pend on what my friend Paul says, the Jews, in 215 
 years, increased from seventy persons till they had 600,- 
 ooo men of war. I know it isn't so, and so does any 
 man who knows anything. For such an increase as this 
 each woman must have borne somewhat over fifty-seven 
 children, and every child lived. 
 
 The next charge is that I have laughed at holy things. 
 Holy things ! The priest always says: ' Now don't laugh; 
 look solemn; this is no laughing matter.' There's nothing 
 a priest hates like mirthfulness. He despises a smile. I 
 read in the bible that God gave a recipe to Aaron for 
 making hair-oil and said if anybody made any like it, kill 
 him. Well, I don't believe it. The penalty for infringing 
 on that patent was death. Do you believe an infinite 
 God gave a recipe for hair-oil ? Is it possible for absurdity 
 to go beyond that ? That's what they call a holy thing. 
 And water for baptism ! Do you believe God will look 
 for this water-mark on the soul ? 
 
 The next charge is that I misquote the scriptures. 
 That's because I don't know Hebrew. Why didn't He 
 write to me in English ? If He wishes to hold a gentle- 
 man responsible, why doesn't He address him in his na- 
 tive tongue ? Why write His word in such a way that 
 hundreds of thousands make their living explaining it ? 
 If I'd only under stood Hebrew I would have known God 
 didn't make Eve out of a rib. He made her out of 
 Adam's side. How did He get it out ? Well, I suppose 
 He cut it out with a kind of a splinter of His omnipotence! 
 Then our mother was made from a rib. When you con- 
 sider the material used it was the most successful job 
 ever done. There's even a serpent in the bible that knows 
 
TALMAGIAN THEOLOGY. 6/5 
 
 a language. It won't do. Sin, how did it come into the 
 world ? Where did the serpent come from ? He was 
 wicked. Adam's sin did not make him bad. Then there 
 was sin in the world before Adam. There's no sense in 
 it not a particle. Then Talmage touches me upon the 
 flood. His flood didn't come to America, because America 
 was not discovered then. He says it was a partial flood. 
 Then why did they have to take any birds in the ark ? 
 How did Noah get the animals in the ark ? Talmage says 
 it was through the instinct to get out of the rain. Ac- 
 cording to the bible they went in before the rain began. 
 Dr. Scott says the angels helped carry them in. Imagine 
 an angel with an animal under each wing. It must have 
 rained 800 feet a day for forty days. Why does Talmage 
 try to explain a miracle ? The beauty of a miracle is it 
 cannot be explained. The moment the church begins to 
 explain the church is gone. All it's got to do is swear it 
 is so. The ark landed on Ararat, which is 17,000 feet 
 high. There was only one window, twenty-two inches 
 square. Talmage says the window ran clear around the 
 ark. The bible doesn't say so. That's Brooklyn; that's 
 no bible. 
 
 If the bible account is true the ark must have struck 
 bottom on the top of a mountain. Would any but a God 
 of mercy and kindness people a world, and then drown 
 them all? A God cruel enough to drown His own children 
 ought not to have the impudence to tell me how to bring 
 up mine. Why did He save eight of the same kind of 
 people to take a fresh start ? Why didn't He make a 
 fresh lot, kill His snake, and give His children a fair 
 show ? It won't do. 
 
676 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES, 
 
 Talmage says the bible does not favor polygamy and 
 slavery. There was room enough on the table of stone 
 for saying man should only, have one wife and no slaves. 
 If not, God might have written it on the other side. 
 David and Solomon were pursued of God, but they had 
 a pretty good time of it. Most anybody would be will- 
 ing to be pursued that way. There is not a word in the 
 old testament against slavery or polygamy. Frederick 
 Douglas, a slave in Maryland, is the greatest man that 
 state ever produced. He was enslaved by Christians. 
 Why did God pay so much attention to blasphemers, 
 and so little to slaveholders and robbers ? I am opposed 
 to any God that was ever in favor of slavery. The bible 
 upholds polygamy, and that's the reason I don't uphold 
 the bible. The most glorious temple ever erected is the 
 home that's my church. I've misquoted the story of 
 Jonah, Talmage says. When somebody had been guilty 
 of blasphemy the winds rose; they tried to get Jonah 
 ashore, but couldn't do it. The sea waxed. He was 
 swallowed by a whale . The people of Minerva wrapped 
 all their cattle up in sack-cloth, and if anything would 
 have pleased God I should think that would. Jonah sat 
 under a gourd, and God made a worm out of some om- 
 nipotence he had left over, and set it work on the ground. 
 Talmage doesn't think Jonah was in the whale's belly- 
 he said in his mouth. Well, judging from the doctor's 
 photograph, that explanation would be quite natural to 
 him. He says he might have been in the whale's stom- 
 ach, and avoided the action of the gastric juice by walk- 
 ing up and down. Imagine Jonah, sitting on aback tooth, 
 leaning against the uppper jaw, longingly looking through 
 the open mouth for signs of land ! But that's scripture 
 
TALMAGIAN THEOLOGY. 677 
 
 and you've got to believe it or be damned. Let me say, 
 his brother preachers will not thank Talmage for his ex- 
 planations. I don't believe it, and if I am to be damned 
 for it, I'll accept it cheerfully. 
 
 They say I was defeated for Governor of Illinois be- 
 cause I was an infidel, and that I am an infidel because 
 I was defeated. That's logic. Now I'll tell you. They 
 asked me whether I was an infidel, and I said I was ! I 
 was defeated. I preserved my manhood and lost an of- 
 fice. If everybody were as frank as I was, some men 
 now in office would be private citizens. I would rather 
 be what I am than hold any office in the world and be a 
 slimy hypocrite. 
 
 Next they say. I slandered my parents because I do 
 not believe what they believed. My father at one time 
 believed the bible to be the inspired word of God. He 
 was an honorable man, and told me to read the bible for 
 myself and be honest. He lived long enough to believe 
 that the old testament was not the word of God. He 
 had not in his life as much happiness as I have in one 
 year. I hope my children will fe**onor me by being 
 nearer right than I am. If I have made a mistake, I 
 want my children to correct it. My mother died when 
 I was 2 years old. Were she living to-night, or if she 
 does live, she would say, be absolutely true to yourself 
 and preserve your manhood. If Talmage had been born 
 in Constantinople he would have been a dervish. He is 
 what he is because he can't help it. His head is just that 
 shape. I am taking away the hope and consolation of 
 the world, he says. His consolation is that ninety-nine 
 out of every hundred are going to hell. His church was 
 founded by John Calvin, a murderer. Better have no 
 
6;8 
 
 INGERSOLLS LECTURES' 
 
 heaven than a hell. I would rather God would commit 
 suicide this minute than that a single soul should go to 
 hell. I want no Presbyterian consolation, I want no 
 fore-ordination, no consolation, no damnation." 
 
 Col. Ingersoll concluded with a few remarks about the 
 bible women, saying that women to-day are as true to 
 the gallows as Mary Magdalene was to the cross. Where- 
 ever there are women there are heroines. Shakespeare's 
 women are vastly superior to the bible women. I am 
 accused of putting out the light-houses on the shores of 
 the other world. The Christians are trimming invisible 
 wicks and pouring in allegorical oil. The Christian is 
 willing wife, children and parents shall burn if only he 
 can sing and have a harp. Mr. Talmage can see count- 
 less millions burn in hell without decreasing the length 
 of his orthodox smile. 
 
INGERSOLL'S LECTURE 
 
 ON 
 
 TALMAGIAN THEOLOGY. 
 
 (THIRD LECTURE.) 
 
 We mast judge people somewhat by their creeds. 
 Mr. Talmage is a Calvinist, and he therefore regards 
 every human being who has been born only once as 
 totally depraved. He thinks that God never made a sin- 
 gle creature that didn't deserve to be damned the min- 
 ute He finished him. So every one who opposes Mr. 
 Talmage is infamous. The generosity of an agnostic is 
 meanness, his honesty is larceny and his love is hate. 
 Talmage is a consistent follower of Calvin and Knox, 
 and a consistent worshiper of the Jehovah of the ancient 
 Jews. I oppose not him, but his creed, because it tends 
 to crush out the natural tendencies in men to joyousness 
 and goodness. There is something good in every human 
 being, and there is something bad. There are no perfect 
 saints and no totally bad persons. There is the 
 
 679 
 
68o INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 seed of goodness in every human heart and the capacity 
 for improvement in every human soul. Isn't it possible 
 for a man who acts like Christ to be saved, whatever be 
 his belief ? Cannot a soul be infinitely generous ? And 
 can any God damn such a soul ? If Mr. Talmage's creed 
 be true, nearly all the great and glorious men of the past 
 are burning to-day. If it be true, the greatest man 
 England has produced in 100 years is in hell. The 
 v/orld is poorer since I spoke here last, for Darwin 'has 
 passed' aw^iy. He was a true child of nature one who 
 knew more ail/out his mother than any other child she 
 had. Yet he was not a Calvmist. He did not get his 
 inspiration from any book, but from every star in the 
 heavens, from the insect iri the sunbeam, from the flow- 
 ers in the meadows, and from the everlasting rocks. 
 
 If the doctrine of the Calvinists is true, what right had 
 any one to ask an unbeliever to fight for his country in 
 the civil war ? What right has a believer to buy an un- 
 believing substitute, when some day he will look over 
 the edge of heaven, and pointing downward, would say 
 to a friend, "that is my substitute blistering there " ? 
 
 Mr. Talmage says that my mind is poisoned, and that 
 the reason why all infidels' minds are poisoned is that 
 they don't believe the Jew bible. Let us see whether it 
 is worth believing. I deny that an infinitely merciful 
 God would protect slavery or would uphold polygamy, 
 which pollutes the sweetest words in language. I will 
 not believe that God told men to exterminate their fel- 
 low-men, to plunge the sword into women's breasts and 
 into the hearts of tender babes. I am opposed to the Jew 
 bible because it is bad. I don't deny that there are many 
 good passages in it, nor that among all the thorns there 
 
TALMAGIAN THEOLOGY. 68 I 
 
 are some roses. I admit that many Christians are doing 
 all they can to idealize the frightful things in the old 
 testament. It is the protest of human nature. Now, 
 they tell me that this book is inspired. Let us see what 
 inspired means. If it means anything, it is that the 
 thoughts of God, through the instrumentality of men, 
 constitute this Jew bible, and that these thoughts were 
 written. Now just suppose that some voice whispered 
 in your ear, how would you know it was God's ? How 
 did these gentlemen of old know it was God who was 
 talking to them ? If anyone now told you that God 
 whispered in his ear, you wouldn't believe him. Why ? 
 Because you know him. Why are we asked to believe 
 those ancient gentlemen ? Because we don't know them. 
 Another reason, according to Mr. Talmage, why the Jew 
 bible is inspired, is that prophecies in it have been ful- 
 filled. How do we know that the prophecies were not 
 fulfilled before they were written ? They are so vague 
 that you can't tell what was prophesied. If you will read 
 the Jew bible carefully, you will see that there was not 
 a line, not a word, prophesying the coming of Christ. 
 Catholics were right in saying that if the Jew bible was 
 to be kept in awe it must be kept from the people. 
 Protestants are wrong in letting the people read it. 
 
 Another argument of Mr. Talmage for the inspiration 
 of the bible is that the Jews have been kept as a wan- 
 dering, persecuted race to fulfill the prophecies of the 
 old testament, I don't believe an infinitely merciful God 
 world persecute a race for thousands of years to use them 
 as vitnesse . Christian hate has not allowed the Jews 
 to .earn a t "i 7 n /ITT to practice a profession, and now, 
 by a kind < / poetic justice, the Jews control the money 
 
682 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 of the world. Emperors go to their bankers with hats 
 in hand and beg them to discount their notes. This is 
 because God has cursed, the Jews. Only a little while 
 ago Christians have robbed Hebrews, stripped them 
 naked, turned them into the streets, and pointed to them 
 as a fulfillment of divine prophecy. If you want to know 
 the difference between some Jews and some Christians 
 compare the address of Felix Adler with the sermon of 
 the Rev. Dr. Talmage. Mr. Talmage thinks that the 
 light of every burning Jewish home in Russia throws 
 light upon the gospel. Every wound in a Jewish breast 
 is to him a mouth to proclaim the divine inspiration of 
 the bible. Every Jewish maiden violated is another ful- 
 fillment of God's holy word. What do these horrid per- 
 secutions prove, except the barbarity of Christians ? 
 Next it is said that martyrs prove the truth of the bible. 
 Mr. Talmage affirms that no man ever died cheerfully 
 for a lie. Why, men have gone cheerfully to their death 
 for believing that a wafer was God's flesh. Thousands 
 have died for their belief in Mohammed. Men have died 
 because they believed in immersion. Either Mr. Talmage 
 is a Catholic, a Mohammedan, a Baptist, or else he be- 
 lieves that these thousands died for lies. Every religion 
 has had its martyrs, and every religion cannot be true. 
 Then it is said that miracles prove the inspiration of the 
 bible. But it is impossible by the human senses to es- 
 tablish a violation of nature's laws. When the Hebrews 
 threw down sticks before Pharoah, and they became 
 snakes, did he believe ? No; because he was there. 
 After the Jews had been lead through the desert and had 
 been fed with bread rained from heaven, had been 
 clothed in indestructible pantaloons, and had quenched 
 
TALMAGIAN THEOLOGY. 683 
 
 their thirst with water that followed them over moun- 
 tains and through sands; when they saw Jehovah wrapped 
 in the smoke of Sinai they still had more faith in a calf 
 that they could make than anything Jehovah could give 
 them. It was so with the miracles of Christ. Not twenty 
 people were convered by one of them. In fact, human 
 testimony cannot substantiate a miracle. Take the 
 miracle about the bears which ate the children who 
 laughed at the bald-headed old prophet. What do you 
 suppose Mr. Talmage would say that meant ? Why, first, 
 that children ought to respect preachers, and second, 
 that God is kind to animals. Nearly every miracle in the 
 old testament is wrought in the interest of slavery, polyg- 
 amy, creed or lust. I wish by denying them to rescue 
 the reputation of Jehovah from the assaults of the bible. 
 Who are the witnesses to the truth of the narratives 
 of the Jews' bible ? Eusebius was one. He lived in the 
 reign of Constantine, and said that the tracks of Pha- 
 roah's chariots could be seen perfectly preserved in the 
 sands of the Red sea. He was the man who forged the 
 passage in Josephus which speaks about the coming of 
 Christ. Good witness, isn't he. Another one was Poly- 
 carp. We don't know much about him. He suffered 
 martydom in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, and when the 
 fire wouldn't burn and he looked like gold through it, a 
 heathen was so mad about it that he ran his sword 
 through Polycarp. The blood gushed out and quenched 
 the fire, while the martyrs soul flew up to heaven in the 
 form of a dove. And that's all we know about Polycarp 
 To know how much reliance should be placed upon the 
 judgment of such trustworthy witnesses, we should look 
 at what some of their beliefs were. They thought that 
 
684 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 the world was flat; that the phoenix story was true; that 
 the stars had souls and sinned; and one said there were 
 four gospels because there, were four winds and four cor- 
 ners of the earth. He might have added that it was also 
 because a donkey has four legs. 
 
 So far as the argument drawn from the sufferings of the 
 martyrs is concerned, the speaker said that thousands 
 upon thousands of men had died as cheerfully in defense 
 of the koran as Christians had died in defense of the 
 bible. Their heroic suffering simply proved that they 
 were sinners in their beliefs, not that those beliefs were 
 true. This argument, as advanced by Mr. Talmage, 
 proves too much. Every religion on the face of the globe 
 has had its martyrs, but all religions cannot be true. Men 
 do die cheerfully for falsehoods when they believe them 
 to be true. The question of miracles was discussed at 
 some length, and Col. Ingersoll declared it was impossi- 
 ble to establish by any human evidence that a miracle 
 had ever been performed. Pharoah was not convinced 
 by the alleged miracle performed by Aaron, of turning a 
 stick into a serpent. Why ? Because he was there, and 
 no such miracle was ever done. No twenty people were 
 convinced by the reported miracles of Christ, and yet 
 people of the nineteenth century were coolly asked to be 
 convinced on hearsay by miracles which those who are 
 supposed to have seen them refuse to credit. It won't 
 do. The laws of nature never have been interrupted, 
 and they never will be. All the books in the universe 
 will never convince a thinking man that miracles have 
 been performed." The lecture was sprinkled throughou 
 with the satirical wit for which Col. Ingersoll is famous, 
 and concluded by the enumeration of a long list of " un- 
 scientific " facts and events recorded in the bible, 
 
INGEKSOLL'S LECTURE 
 
 ON 
 
 RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE. 
 
 "How anybody ever came to the conclusion that there 
 was any God who demanded that you should feel sor- 
 rowful and miserable and bleak one-seventh of the time 
 is beyond my comprehension. Neither can I conceive 
 how they can say that one-seventh of time is holy. That 
 day is the most sacred day on which the most good has 
 been done for mankind. Now, there was a time among 
 the Jews, when, if a man violated the Sabbath, they 
 would kill him. They said God told them to do it. I 
 think they were mistaken. If not, if any God did tell 
 them to kill him, then I think he was mistaken. I hope 
 the time will come when every man can spend the Sab- 
 bath just as he pleases, provided he does not interfere 
 with the happiness of others. I would fight just as 
 earnestly that the Christian may go to church as that 
 the infidel may have the right to spend the Sabbath as 
 he wishes. Are the people who go to church the only 
 
 685 
 
686 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 good people ? Are there not a great many bad people 
 who go to church ? Not a bank in Pittsburg will lend a 
 dollar to the man who belongs to the church, without 
 security, quicker than to the man who don't go to church. 
 Now, I believe that all laws upon the statute-book should 
 be enforced. I do not blame anybody in this town. I 
 am perfectly willing that every preacher in this to.wn 
 should preach. They are employed to preach, and to 
 preach a certain doctrine, and if they don't preach that 
 doctrine they will be turned out. I have no objection to 
 that. But I want the same privilege to express my 
 views, and what is the difference whether the man pays 
 the day he goes in, or pays for it the week before by 
 subscription. 
 
 What would the church people think if the theatrical 
 people should attempt to suppress the churches ? What 
 harm would it do to have an opera here to-night? It would 
 elevate us more than to hear ten thousand sermons on 
 the world that never dies. There is more practical wis- 
 dom in one of the plays of Shakespeare than in all the 
 sacred books ever written. What wrong would there be 
 to see one of those grand plays on Sunday ? There was 
 a time when the church would not allow you to cook on 
 Sunday. You had to eat your victuals cold. There was 
 a time they thought the more miserable you feel the bet- 
 ter God feels. There are sixty odd thousand preachers 
 in the United States. Some people regard them as a 
 necessary evil; some as an unnecessary evil. There are 
 sixty odd thousand churches in the United States; and 
 it does seem to me that with all the wealth on their side; 
 with all the good people on their side; with Providences 
 
RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE. 68/ 
 
 on their side; with all these advantages they ought to let 
 us at least have the right to speak our thoughts. 
 
 The history of the world shows me that the right has 
 not always prevailed. When you see innocent men 
 chained to the stake and the flames licking their flesh, 
 it is natural to ask, why does God permit this ? If you 
 see a man in prison with the chains eating into his flesh 
 simply for loving God, you've got to ask why does not a 
 just God interfere ? You've got to meet this; it won't do 
 to say that it will all come out for the best. That may 
 do very well for God, but it's awful hard on the man. 
 Where was the God that permitted slavery for two hun- 
 dred years in these United States ? The history of the 
 world shows that when a mean thing was done, man did 
 it; when a good thing was done, man did it. 
 
 But there was a time when there was a drought, and 
 this tribe of savages with their false notions of religion 
 says somebody has been wicked. Somebody has been 
 lecturing on Sunday. Then the tribe hunted out the 
 wicked man. They said you've got to stop. We cannot 
 allow you to continue your wickedness, which brings 
 punishment upon the whole of us. What is the reason 
 they allow me to speak to-night. Because the Christians 
 are not as firm in their belief now as they were a thou- 
 sand years ago. The lukewarmness and hypocricy of 
 Christians now permit me to speak to-night. If they 
 felt as they did a thousand years ago they would kill 
 me. So religious persecution was born of the instinct 
 of self-defense. 
 
 Is there any duty we owe to God ? Can we help him ? 
 Can we add to his glory or happiness ? They tell me 
 this God is infinitely wise, I cannot add to his wisdom; 
 
688 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 infinitely happy I cannot add to his happiness. What 
 can I do ? Maybe he wants me to make prayers that 
 won't be answered. I cannot see any relation that can 
 exist between the finite and the infinite. I acknowledge 
 that I am under obligations to my fellow man. We owe 
 duties to our fellow man. And what ? Simply to make 
 them happy. 
 
 The only good, is happiness; and the only evil, is 
 misery, or unhappiness. Only those things are right 
 that tend to increase the happiness of man; only those 
 things are wrong which tend to increase the misery of 
 man. That is the basis of right and wrong. There 
 never would have been the idea of wrong except that 
 man can inflict sufferings upon others. Utility, then, is the 
 basis of the idea of right and wrong. 
 
 The church tells us that this world is a school to pre- 
 pare us for another, that it is a place to build up char- 
 acter. Well, if that is the only way character can be 
 developed it is bad for children who die before they get 
 any character. What would you think of a school-mas- 
 ter who would kill half his pupils the first day ? 
 
 Now, I read the bible, and I find that God so loved 
 this world that He made up His mind to damn the most 
 of us. I have read this book, and what shall I say of it ? 
 I believe it is generally better to be honest. Now, I 
 don't believe the bible. Had I not better say so ? They 
 say that if you do you will regret it when you come to 
 die. If that be true, I know a great many religious peo- 
 ple who will have no cause to regret it they don't tell 
 their honest convictions about the bible. There are two 
 great arguments of the church the great man argument 
 and the death-bed. They say the religion of your fath- 
 
RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE. 689 
 
 ers is good enough. Why should your father object to 
 your inventing a better plow than he had. They say to 
 me, do you know more than all the theologians dead ? 
 Being a perfectly modest man I say I think I do. Now 
 we have come to the conclusion that every man has a 
 right to think. Would God give a bird wings and make 
 it a crime to fly ? Would he give me brains and make 
 it a crime to think ? Any God that would damn one of 
 his children for the expression of his honest thought 
 wouldn't make a decent thief. When I read a book and 
 don't believe it, I ought to say so. I will do so and take 
 the consequence like a man. 
 
 And so I object to paying for the support of another 
 man's belief. I am in favor of the taxation of all church 
 property. If that property belongs to God, He is able 
 to pay the tax. If we exempt anything, let us exempt 
 the home of the widow and orphan. 
 
 A voice here interrupted the speaker. 
 
 Col. Ingersoll What did the gentleman say ? 
 
 A voice O, he's drunk. 
 
 Col. Ingersoll I didn't think any Christian ought to 
 get drunk and come here to disturb us. 
 
 The speaker resumed: 
 
 The church has to-day $600,000,000 or $700,000,000 
 of property in this country. It must cost $2,000,000 a 
 week, that is to say $500 a minute, to run these churches. 
 You give me this money and if I don't do more good 
 with it than four times as many churches I'll resign. Let 
 them make the churches attractive and they'll get more 
 hearers. They will have less empty pews if they have 
 less empty heads in the pulpit. The time will come 
 when the preacher will become a teacher. 
 
690 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 Admitting that the bible is the book of God, is that 
 His only good job ? Will not a man be damned as quick 
 for denying the equator as denying the bible ? Will he 
 not be damned as quick for denying geology as for deny- 
 ing the scheme of salvation ? When the bible was first 
 written it was not believed. Had they known as much 
 about science as we know now that bible would not have 
 been written. 
 
 Col . Ingersoll next gave his views of the Puritans, de- 
 clared they left Holland to escape persecution and came 
 came here to persecute others. He referred to the per- 
 secutions heaped upon those of other religious belief by 
 the Puritans, paid the Catholics the compliment to say 
 that Maryland, which they ruled, was the first colony to 
 enact a law tolerating religious views not held by them- 
 selves, and went on to explain that God was never men- 
 tioned in the constitution of the United States because 
 each colony had a different religious belief, and each sect 
 preferred to have God not mentioned at all than to hav- 
 ing another religious belief than their own recognized. 
 "In 1876," said the speaker, kt our forefathers retired 
 God from politics. They said all power comes from the 
 people. They kept God out of the constitution, and al- 
 lowed each state to settle the question for itself." 
 
 The present laws of different states were next reviewed, 
 so far as they relate to the prevention of infidels giving 
 testimony and to religious intolerance in any way, and 
 these features were all branded and discussed as a gigan- 
 tic evil. 
 
 The lecture was attentively listened to by the immense 
 audience from beginning to the end, and the speaker's 
 most blasphemous flights were the most loudly ap- 
 plauded. 
 
INGERSOLL'S LECTURE 
 
 ON 
 
 HEREAFTER. 
 
 MY FRIENDS: I tell you to-night, as I have probably 
 told many of you dozens of times, that the orthodox 
 doctrine of eternal punishment in the hereafter is an in- 
 famous one! I have no respect for the man who preaches 
 it, or pretends to you he believes it. Neither have I any 
 respect for the man who will pollute the imagination of 
 innocent childhood with that infamous lie ! And I have 
 no respect for the man who will deliberately add to the 
 sorrows of this world with this terrible dogma; no re- 
 spect for the man who endeavors to put that infinite 
 cloud and shadow over the heart of humanity. I will be 
 frank with you and say, I hate the doctrine; I despise it; 
 I defy it; I loathe it and what man of sense does not ? 
 The idea of a hell was born of revenge and brutality on 
 the one side, and arrant cowardice on the other. In my 
 judgment the American people are too brave, too gener- 
 ous, too magnanimous, too humane to believe in that 
 outrageous doctrine of eternal damnation. 
 
 691 
 
692 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 For a great many years the learned intellects of Chris- 
 tendom have been examining into the religions of other 
 countries and other ages, jn the world the religions of 
 the myriads who have passed away. They examined 
 into the religions of Egypt, the religion of Greece, that 
 of Rome and the Scandinavian countries. In the pres- 
 ence of the ruins of those religions, the learned men of 
 Christendom insisted that those religions were baseless, 
 false and fraudulent. But the}' have all passed away. 
 
 Now, while this examination was being made, the 
 Christianity of our day applauded, and when the learned 
 men got through with the religion of other countries, 
 they turned their attention to our religion, and by the 
 same methods, by the same mode of reasoning and the 
 same arrangements that they used with the old religions 
 they were overturning the religion of our day. How is 
 that ? Because every religion in this world is the work 
 of man. Every book that was ever written was written 
 by man. Man existed before books. If otherwise, we 
 might reasonably admit that there was such a thing as a 
 sacred bible. 
 
 I wish to call your attention to another thing. Man 
 never had an original idea, and he never will have one, 
 except it be supplied to him by his surroundings. Nature 
 gave man every idea that he ever had in the world; and 
 nature will continue to give man his ideas so long as he 
 exists. No man can conceive of anything, the hint of 
 which he has not received from the surroundings. And 
 there is nothing on this earth, coming from any other 
 sphere whatever. 
 
 As I ha?ve before said, man has produced every religion 
 in the world. Why is this ? Because each generation 
 
HEREAFTER. 693 
 
 sends forth the knowledge and belief of the people at the 
 time it was made, and in no book is there any knowledge 
 formed, except just at the time it was written. Barbar- 
 ians have produced barbarian religions, and always will 
 produce them. They have produced, and always will 
 produce, ideas and belief in harmony with their sur- 
 roundings, and all the religions of the past were produced 
 by barbarians. We are making religions every day; that 
 is to say, we are constantly changing them, adapting 
 them to our purposes, and the religion of to-day is not 
 the religion of a few months or a year ago. Well, what 
 changes these religions ? Science does it, education does 
 it; the growing heart of man does it. Some men have 
 nothing else to do but produce religions; science is con- 
 stantly changing them. If we are cursed with such bar- 
 barian religions to-day for our religions are really bar- 
 barous what will they be an hundred or a thousand 
 years hence ? 
 
 But, friends, we are making inroads upon orthodoxy 
 that orthodox Christians are painfully aware of, and 
 what think you will be left of their fearful doctrines fifty 
 or a hundred years from to-night ? What will become 
 of their endless hell their doctrine of the future anguish 
 of the soul; their doctrine of the eternal burning and 
 never-ending gnashing of teeth. Man will discard the 
 idea of such a future because there is now a growing 
 belief in the justice of a Supreme Being. 
 
 Do you not know that every religion in the world has 
 declared every other religion a fraud ? Yes, we all know 
 it. That is the time all religions tell the truth each of 
 the other. 
 
 Now, do you want to know why this is: Suppose Mr. 
 
694 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 Johnson should tell Mr. Jones that he saw a corpse rise 
 from the grave, and that when he first saw it, it was 
 covered with loathsome worms, and that while he was 
 looking at it, it suddenly was re-clothed in healthy, 
 beautiful flesh. And then, suppose Jones should say to 
 Johnson, "Well, now, I saw that same thing myself. 1 
 was in a graveyard once, and I saw a dead man rise and 
 walk away as if nothing had ever happened to him ! " 
 Johnson opens wide his eyes and says to Jones, ''Jones, 
 you are a confounded liar ! " And Jones says to John- 
 son, "You are an unmitigated liar!" "No, I'm not; 
 you lie yourself." " No ! I say you lie ! " Each knew 
 the other lied, because each man knew he lied himself. 
 Thus when a man says: " I was upon Mount Sinai for 
 the benefit of my health, and there I met God, who said 
 to me, ' Stand aside, you, and let me drown these peo- 
 ple;'" and the other man says to him, "I was upon a 
 mountain, and there I met the Supreme Brahma." 
 And Moses steps in and says, "That is not true !" and 
 contends that the other man never did see Brahrna, and 
 the other man swears that Moses never saw God; and 
 each man utters a deliberate falsehood, and immediately 
 after speaks truth. 
 
 Therefore, each religion has charged every other re- 
 ligion with having been an unmitigated fraud. Still, if 
 any man had ever seen a miracle himself, he would be pre- 
 pared to believe that another man had seen the same or 
 a similar thing. Whenever a man claims to have been 
 cognizant of, or to have seen a miracle, he either utters 
 a falsehood, or he is an idiot. Truth relies upon the 
 unerring course of the laws of nature, and upon reason. 
 
 Observe, we have a religion that is, many people 
 
HEREAFTER. 695 
 
 have. I make no pretensions to having a religion myself 
 possibly you do not. I believe in living for this beau- 
 tiful world in living for the present, to-day; living for 
 this very hour, and while I do live to make everybody 
 happy that I can. I cannot afford to squander my short 
 life and what little talent I am blessed with in studying 
 up and projecting schemes to avoid that seething lake of 
 fire and brimstone. Let the future take care of itself, 
 and when I am required to pass over "on the other side, " 
 I am ready and willing to stand my chances with you 
 howling Christians. 
 
 We have in this country a religion which men have 
 preached for about eighteen hundred years, and men 
 have grown wicked just in proportion as their belief in 
 that religion has grown strong; and just in proportion as 
 they have ceased to believe in it, men have become just, 
 humane and charitable. And if they believed in it to- 
 night as they believed, for instance, at the time of the 
 immaculate Puritan fathers, I would not be permitted to 
 talk here in the city of New York. It is from the coldness 
 and infidelity of the churches that I get my right to 
 preach; and I thank them for it, and I say it to their 
 credit. 
 
 As I have said, we have a. religion. What is it ? In 
 the first place, they say this vast universe was created 
 by a God. I don't know, and you don't know, whether 
 it was or not. Also, if it had not been for the first sin 
 of Adam, they say there would never have been any 
 Devil, in this world, and if there had been no Devil, 
 there would have been no sin, and if no sin, no death. 
 As for myself I am glad there is death in the world, for 
 that gives me a chance . Somebody has to die to give 
 
696 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 me room, and when my turn comes I am willing to let 
 some one else take my place. Butthere if is a Being 
 who gave me this life, I thank Him from the bottom of 
 my heart because this life has been a joy and a pleasure 
 to me. Further, because of this first sin of Adam, they 
 say, all men are consigned to eternal perdition ! But, in 
 order to save man from that frightful hell of the here- 
 after, Christ came to this world and took upon himself 
 flesh, and in order that we might know the road to eter- 
 nal salvation, He gave us a book called the bible, and 
 wherever that bible has been read men have immediately 
 commenced throttling each other; and wherever that 
 bible has been circulated they have invented inquisitions 
 and instruments of torture, and commenced hating each 
 other with all their hearts. Then we are told that this 
 bible is the foundation of civilization, but I say it is the 
 foundation of hell and damnation ! and we never shall 
 get rid of that dogma until we get rid of the idea that the 
 book is inspired. Now, what does the bible teach? I 
 am not going to ask this preacher or that preacher what 
 the bible teaches; but the question is, " Ought a man be 
 sent to an eternal hell for not believing this bible to be 
 the work of a merciful God ?" A very few people read 
 it now; perhaps they should read it, and perhaps not; if 
 I wanted to believe it, I should never read a word of it 
 never look upon its pages, I would let it lie on its 
 shelf, until it rotted ! Still, perhaps, we ought to read 
 it in order to see what is read in schools that our children 
 might become charitable and good; to be read to our 
 children that they may get ideas of mercy, charity 
 humanity and justice ! Oh, yes ! Now read: 
 
HEREAFTER. 697 
 
 "I will make mine arrows drunk with blood and my 
 sword shall devour flesh." Deut. xxxii. 42. 
 
 Very good for a merciful God ! 
 
 " That thy foot may be dipped in the blood of thine 
 enemies, and the tongue of the dogs in the same. "- 
 Psalms Ixviii. 24. 
 
 Merciful Being ! I will quote several more choice bits 
 from this inspired book, although I have several times 
 made use of them. 
 
 But the Lord thy God shall deliver them unto thee, 
 and shall destroy them with a mighty destruction, until 
 they be destroyed. 
 
 And he shall deliver their kings into thine hand, and 
 thou shalt destroy their name from under heaven; there 
 shall no man be able to stand before thee, until thou 
 have destroyed them Deut. vii. 23, 24. 
 
 And Joshua did unto them as the Lord bade him; he 
 houghed their horses, and burnt their chariots with fire. 
 
 And Joshua at that time turned back, and took Hazor, 
 and smote the king thereof with the sword; for Hazor be- 
 foretime was the head of all those kingdoms. 
 
 And all the cities of those kings, and all the kings of 
 them, did Joshua take, and smote them with the edge of 
 the sword, and he utterly destroyed them, as Moses, the 
 servant of the Lord, commanded. 
 
 And they smote all the souls that were therein with 
 the edge of the sword, utterly destroying them; there 
 was not any left to breathe; and he burnt Hazor with 
 fire. 
 
 (Do not forget that these things were done by the 
 command of God !) 
 
 But as for the cities that stood still in their strength, 
 
698 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 Israel burnt none of them, save Hazor only; that did 
 Joshua burn. 
 
 And all the spoil of those cities, and the cattle, the 
 children of Israel took for a prey unto themselves; but 
 every man they smote with the edge of the sword, until 
 they had destroyed them, neither left they any to breathe. 
 
 (As the moral and just God had commanded them.) 
 
 As the Lord commanded Moses His servant, so did 
 Moses command Joshua, and so did Joshua; he left noth- 
 ing undone of all that the Lord had commanded Joshua. 
 
 So Joshua took all that land, the hills, and all the 
 south country, and all the land of Goshen, and the val- 
 ley, and the plain and mountain of Israel, and the valley 
 of the same; 
 
 Even from the Mount Halak, that goeth up to Seir, 
 even unto Baalgad in the valley of Lebanon under Mount 
 Hermon; and all their kings he took, and smote them, 
 and slew them. 
 
 Joshua made war a. long time on all those kings. 
 
 There was not a city that made peace with the children 
 of Israel, save the Hivites, the inhabitants of Gibeon; 
 all the others they took in battle. 
 
 So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that 
 the Lord said unto Moses; and Joshua gave it for an in- 
 heritance unto Israel, according to their divisions by their 
 tribes. And the land rested from war. Josh, xi 7-23. 
 
 When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, 
 then proclaim peace unto it. 
 
 And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, a-nd 
 open unto thee, then it shall be that all the people that is 
 found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they 
 shall serve thee. 
 
HEREAFTER. 699 
 
 And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make 
 war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it. 
 
 And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into 
 thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the 
 edge of the sword. 
 
 But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and 
 all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt 
 thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of 
 thine enemies, which the Lord thy God hath given thee . 
 
 Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very 
 far off from thee, which are not of the cities of those 
 nations. 
 
 But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy 
 God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save 
 alive nothing that breatheth. 
 
 But thou shalt utterly destroy them. 
 
 (Neither the old man nor the woman, nor the beautiful 
 maiden, nor the sweet dimpled babe, smiling upon the 
 lap of its mother.) 
 
 And He said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of 
 Israel (a merciful God, indeed), put every man his sword 
 by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate through- 
 out the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every 
 man his neighbor. Ex. xxxii. 29. 
 
 (Now recollect, these instructions were given to an 
 army of invasion, and the people who were slayed were 
 guilty of the crime of fighting for their homes and their 
 firesides. Oh, most merciful God ! The old testament 
 is full of curses, vengeance, jealousy and hatred, and of 
 barbarity and brutality. Now, do you for one moment 
 believe that these words were written by the most mer- 
 ciful God ? Don't pluck from the heart the sweet flower 
 
700 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 of piety and crush it by superstition. Do not believe that 
 God ever ordered the murder of innocent women and 
 helpless babes. Do not let this superstition turn your 
 - heart into stone. When anything is said to have been 
 written by the most merciful God, and the thing is not 
 merciful, then I deny it, and say He never wrote it. I 
 will live by the standard of reason, and if thinking in ac- 
 cordance with reason takes me to perdition, then I will 
 go to hell with my reason, rather than to heaven with- 
 out it.) 
 
 Now, does this bible teach political freedom; or does 
 it teach political tyranny ? Does it teach a man to resist 
 oppression ? Does it teach a man to tear from the throne 
 of tyranny the crowned thing and robber called king. 
 Let us see. 
 
 Let every soul be subject to the higher powers; For 
 there is no power but God; the powers that be are or- 
 dained of God. Rom. xiii. I. 
 
 Therefore/^ must needs be subject not only for wrath, 
 but also for conscience sake. Rom. viii. 4, 4. 
 
 (I deny this wretched doctrine. Wherever the sword of 
 rebellion is drawn to protect the rights of man, I am a 
 rebel. Wherever the sword of rebellion is drawn to give 
 men liberty, to clothe him in all his just rights, I am on 
 the side of that rebellion.) 
 
 Does the bible give woman her rights ? Does it treat 
 woman as she ought to be treated, or is it barbarian ? 
 We will see: 
 
 Let woman learn in silence with all subjection i 
 Tim. ii. 1 1. 
 
 (If a woman should know anything let her ask her 
 
HEREAFTER. 7<DI 
 
 husband. Imagine the ignorance of a lady who had only 
 that source of information:) 
 
 But suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp author- 
 ity over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was 
 first formed, then Eve. (Indeed !) 
 
 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being 
 decived, was in the transgression. (Poor woman !) 
 
 Here is something from the old testament: 
 
 When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, 
 and the Lord thy God hath delivered them into thine 
 hands, and thou hast taken them captives; 
 
 And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and 
 hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldst have her to be 
 thy wife; 
 
 Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house; and 
 she shall shave her head, and pare her nails. Deut. xxi. 
 
 10, II, 12. 
 
 (That is self-defence, I suppose !) 
 
 I need not go further in bible quotations to show that 
 woman, throughout the old testament, is a degraded be- 
 ing, having no rights which her husband, father, brother, 
 or uncle is bound to respect. Still, that is bible doctrine, 
 and that bible is the word of a just and omniscient God ! 
 
 Does the bible teach the existence of devils ? Of course 
 it does. Yes, it teaches not only the existence of a good 
 being, but a bad being. This good being has to have a 
 home; that home was heaven. This bad being had to 
 have a home; and that home was hell. This hell is sup- 
 posed to be nearer to earth than I would care to have it, 
 and to be peopled with spirits, spooks, hobgoblins, and 
 all the fiery shapes with which the imagination of ignor- 
 ance and fear could people that horrible place; and the 
 
7O2 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 bible teaches the existence of hell and this big devil and 
 all these little devils. The bible teaches the doctrine of 
 witchcraft and makes us believe that there are sorcerers 
 and witches, and that the dead could be raised by the 
 power of sorcery. Does anybody believe it now ? 
 
 Then said Saul unto his servants, seek me a woman 
 that hath a familiar spirit, that I may go to her and in- 
 quire of her. And his servants said to him, Behold, 
 there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at En-dor. 
 
 In another place he declares that witchcraft is an 
 abomination unto the Lord. He wants no rivals in this 
 business. Now what does the new testament teach: 
 
 Then was Jesus lead up of the Spirit into the wilder- 
 ness to be tempted of the devil. 
 
 And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, 
 he was afterward a-hungered. 
 
 And when the tempter came to him, he said if thou 
 be the Son of God, command these stones to be made 
 bread. 
 
 But He answered and said, it is written, man shall 
 not live by bread alone, but by every word that pro- 
 ceedeth out of the mouth of God. 
 
 Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city and 
 setteth him on 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 concerning thee; and in their hands they shall 
 bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against 
 a stone. 
 
 Jesus said' unto him, it is written again, Thou shalt 
 not tempt the Lord, thy God, and Him only shalt thou 
 serve. Matt. iv. 1-7. 
 
HEREAFTER. 703 
 
 (Is it possible that anyone can believe that the devil 
 absolutely took God Almighty, and put him upon the 
 pinnacle of the temple, and endeavored to persuade him 
 to jump down ? Is it possible ?) 
 
 Again, the devil taketh him into an exceedingly high 
 mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the 
 world, and the glory of them; 
 
 And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, 
 if thou wilt fall down and worship me. 
 
 Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan, for 
 it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and 
 him only shalt thou serve. Matthew iv. 8-1 1. 
 
 (Now the devil must have known at that time that He 
 was God, and God at that time must have known that 
 the other was the devil, who had the impudence to prom- 
 ise God a world in which he did not have a tax-title to 
 an inch of land.) 
 
 Now, what of the Sabbath the Lord's day ? Why is 
 Sunday the Lord's day ? If Sunday alone is the Lord's 
 day, whose day is Monday, Tuesday, Friday, etc. ? No 
 matter ! The idea, that God hates to hear your children 
 laugh on Sunday ! On Sunday let your children play 
 games. I see a poor man who hasn't money enough to 
 go to a big church, and he has too much independence 
 to go to the little church which the big church built for 
 charity. If he enters the portals of the big church with 
 poor clothes on, the usher approaches him with a severe 
 face, and ' ' Brother, I'm sorry, but only high-toned ser- 
 vants of the living God congregate in this church for 
 worship, and with that seedy suit on we cannot admit 
 you. All the seats in this magnificent edifice are owned 
 and represented by solid ' men, by men of capital. We 
 
704 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 pay our pastor $5,000 a year the annual eight weeks 
 vacation thrown in and it would not be profitable for 
 us to seriously encourage the attendance of so insignifi- 
 cant a person as yourself. Just around the corner there 
 is a little cheap church with a little cheap pastor, where 
 they can dish up hell to you in an approved style in a 
 style more suitable to your needs and condition; and the 
 dish will not be as expensive to you, either ! " 
 
 If I had chanced to be that poor man in the seedy 
 garments, and had been endeavoring to serve my Maker 
 for even half a century, I would have felt like muttering 
 audibly, ' ' You go to hell ! " (I am not much given to 
 profanity, but when I am sorely aggravated and vexed 
 in spirit, I declare to you that it is such a relief to me, 
 such a solace to my troubled soul, and gives me such 
 heavenly peace, to now and then allow a word or phrase 
 to escape my lips which can serve me no other earthly 
 purpose, seemingly, than to render emphatic my other- 
 wise mildly expressed ideas. I make this confession 
 parenthetically, and in a whisper, my friends, trusting 
 you will not allow it to go further.) 
 
 Now, I tell you, if you don't want to go to church, go 
 to the woods and take your wife and children and a lunch 
 with you, and sit down upon the old log and let the chil- 
 dren gather flowers, and hear the leaves whispering poems 
 like memories of long ago ! and when the sun is about 
 going down kissing the summits of the distant hills, go 
 home with your hearts filled with throbs of joy and glad- 
 ness, and the cheeks of your little ones covered with the 
 rose-blushes of health ! There is more recreation and 
 solid enjoyment in that than putting on your Sunday 
 clothes and going to a canal-boat with a steeple on top 
 
HEREAFTER. 705 
 
 of it and listening to a man tell you that your chances 
 are about ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety- 
 nine to one for being eternally damned ! 
 
 Oh, strike with a hand of fire, weird musician, thy 
 harp, strung with Appollo's golden hair ! Fill the vast 
 cathedral aisles with symphonies sweet and dim, deft 
 toucher of the organ's keys ! Blow, bugler, blow, until 
 thy silver notes do touch and kiss the moonlit waves, 
 and charm the lovers wandering mid the vine-clad hills ! 
 but know your sweetest strains are but discord 
 compared with childhood's happy laugh the laugh that 
 fills the eyes with light and every heart with joy! O, rip- 
 pling river of laughter; thou art the blessed boundary 
 line between beasts and men, and every wayward wave 
 of thine doth drown some fretful fiend of care. O, 
 Laughter, rose-lipped daughter of joy, there are dimples 
 enough in thy cheek to catch and hold and glorify all the 
 tears of grief ! 
 
 Do not make slaves of your children on Sunday. 
 Don't place them in long, straight rows, like fence-posts, 
 and " Sh ! children, it's Sunday ! " when by chance you 
 hear a sound or rustle. Let winsome Johnny have light 
 and air, and let him grow beautiful; let him laugh until 
 his little sides ache, if he feels like it; let him pinch the 
 cat's tail until the house is in an uproar with his yells 
 let him do anything that will make him happy. When 
 I was a little boy, children went to bed when they were 
 not sleepy, and always got up when they were? I would 
 like to see that changed we may see it some day. It 
 is really easier to wake a child with a kiss than a blow; 
 with kind words than with harshness and a curse. An- 
 other thing: let the children eat what they want to. 
 
706 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 Let them commence at whichever end of the dinner they 
 please. They know what they want much better than 
 you do. Nature knows perfectly well what she is about, 
 and if you go a-fooling with her you may get into trouble. 
 
 The crime charged to me is this: I insist that the bible 
 \snot the word of God; that we should not whip our chil- 
 dren; that we should treat our wives as loving equals; 
 that God never upheld polygamy and slavery; deny that 
 God ever commanded his generals to slaughter innocent 
 babes and tear and rip open women with the sword of 
 war; that God ever turned Lot's wife into a pillar of 
 salt (although she might have deserved that fate); that 
 God ever made a woman out of a man's, or any other 
 animal's rib 1 And I emphatically deny that God ever 
 signed or sealed a commission appointing his satanic ma- 
 jesty governor-general over an extensive territory popular- 
 ly styled hell, with absolute power to torture, burn, maim, 
 boil, or roast at his pleasure the victims of his master's 
 displeasure ! I deny these things, and for that I am 
 assailed by the clergy throughout the United States. 
 
 Now, you have read the bible romance of the fall of 
 Adam ? Yes, well, you know that nearly or quite all 
 the religions of this world account for the existence of 
 evil by such a story as that ! Adam, the miserable cow- 
 ard, informed God that his wife was at the bottom of the 
 whole business I "She did tempt me and I did eat!" 
 And then commenced a row, and we have been engaged 
 in it ever since ! You know what happened to Adam 
 and his wife for her transgressions ? 
 
 In another account of what is said to have been the 
 same transaction which is the most sensible account of 
 the two the Supreme Brahma concluded, as he had a 
 
HEREAFTER. 707 
 
 little leisure, that he would make a world, and a man and 
 woman. He made the world, the man, and then the 
 woman, and then placed the pair on the Island of Cey- 
 lon. (Bear in mind, there were no ribs used in this af- 
 fair.) This island is said to be the most beautiful that 
 the mind of man can conceive of. Such birds you never 
 saw, such songs you never heard ! and then such flowers, 
 such verdure ! The branches of the trees were so ar- 
 ranged that when the winds swept through, there floated 
 out from every tree melodious strains of music from a 
 thousand JEolian harps ! After Brahma put them there, 
 he said: " Let them have a period of courtship, for it is 
 my desire and will that true love should forever precede 
 marriage." And with the nightingale singing, and the 
 stars twinkling, and the little brooklets murmuring, and 
 the flowers blooming, and the gentle breezes fanning 
 their brows, they courted, and loved ! What a sweet 
 courtship. Then Brahma married the happy pair, and 
 remarked: "Remain here; you can be happy on this 
 island, and it is my will that you never leave it." Well, 
 after a little while the man became uneasy, and said to 
 the wife of his youth, " I believe I'll look about a little." 
 He determined to seek greener pastures. He proceeded 
 to the western extremity of the island, and discovered a 
 little narrow neck of land connecting the island with the 
 mainland, and the devil they had a genuine devil in 
 those days, too, it seems, who is always "playing the 
 devil " with us produced a mirage, and over on the 
 mainland were such hills and vales, such dells and dales, 
 such lofty mountains crowned with perpetual snow, such 
 cataracts clad in bows of glory, that he rushed breath- 
 lessly back to his wife, exclaiming: "O, Heva ! the 
 
708 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 country over there is a thousand times better and lovelier 
 than this; let us migrate." She, woman-like, said: 
 " Adami, we must let well. enough alone; we have all we 
 want; let us stay here." But he said: " No, we will go." 
 She followed him, and when they came to this narrow 
 neck of land, he took her upon his back and carried her 
 across. But at the instant he put her down there was a 
 crash, and looking back they discovered that this narrow 
 neck of land had fallen into the sea. The mirage had 
 disappeared, and there was nothing but rocks and sand, 
 and the Supreme Brahma cursed them to the lowest hell. 
 Then Adami spoke and it showed him to be every inch 
 a man "Curse me, but curse not her; it was not her 
 fault, it was mine." (Our Adam says, with a pusillani- 
 mous whine, ' Curse her, for it is her fault: she tempted 
 me and I did eat ! " The world, to-day, is teeming with 
 just such cowards!) Then said Brahma, "I will save 
 her, but not thee." And then spoke his wife, out of the 
 fullness of the love of a heart in which there was enough 
 to make all her daughters rich in holy affection, "It 
 thou wilt not spare him, spare neither me; I do not wish 
 to live without him. I love him." Then magnanimously 
 said the Supreme Brahma, "I will spare you both, and 
 watch over you and your children forever 1 " 
 
 Now, tell me truly, which is the grander story ? The 
 book containing this story is full of good things; and yet 
 Christians style as heathens those who have adopted this 
 book as their guide, and spend thousands of dollars an- 
 nually in sending missionaries to convert them ! 
 
 It has been too often conceded that because the new 
 testament contains, in many passages, a lofty and terse 
 expression of love as the highest duty of man, Christianity 
 
HEREAFTER. 709 
 
 must have a tendency to ennoble his nature. But Chris- 
 tianity is like sweetened whisky and water it perverts 
 and destroys that which it should nourish and strengthen. 
 
 Christianity makes an often fatal attack on a man's 
 morality if he happens to be blessed with any by sub- 
 stituting for the sentiments of love and duty to our 
 neighbors, a sense of obligation of blind obedience to an 
 infinite, mysterious, revengeful, tyrannical God ! The 
 real principle of Christian morality, is servile obedience 
 to a dangerous Power ! Dispute the assertions of even 
 your priest as to the requirements, dislikes, desires and 
 wishes of the Almighty, and you might as well count 
 yourself as lost, sulphurically lost ! If you are one of 
 God's chosen, or in other words, have been saved, and 
 are even so fortunate as to attain to the glories and joys 
 of the gold-paved streets of heaven, you are expected, in 
 looking over the bannisters of heaven down into the 
 abyss of eternal torture, to view with complacency the 
 agonized features of your mother, sister, brother, or in- 
 fant child who are writhing in hell and laugh at their 
 calamity ! You are not allowed to carry them a drop of 
 water to cool their parched tongue ! And if you are a 
 Christian, you at this moment believe you will enjoy the 
 situation ! 
 
 If a man in a quarrel cuts down his neighbor in his 
 sins, the poor, miserable, victim goes directly to hell ! 
 The murderer may reasonably count on a lease of a few 
 weeks of life, interviews his pastor, confesses the crime, 
 repents, accepts the grace of God, is forgiven, and then 
 smoothly and gently slides from the rudely-constructed 
 scaffold into a haven of joy and bliss, there to sing the 
 praises of the Lamb of God forever and forever ! Poor, 
 unfortunate victim ! Happy murderer ! 
 
7io INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 Ah, what a beautiful religion humanitarianism and 
 charity * might become ! To do so sweet a thing as to 
 
 * The following incident, showing Col. Ingersoll's disposition to prac- 
 tice what he preaches whenever the opportunity presents itself, we have 
 never before seen in print. One day, during the winter of 1863-4, when 
 the colonel had a law office in Peoria, ID. and before the close 
 of the late war of the rebellion a thinly clad, middle-aged, lady- 
 like woman came into his office and asked assistance, "My good woman, 
 why do you ask it?" "Sir, my husband is a private in the -th Illinois 
 infantry, and stationed somewhere in Virginia, but I do not know where 
 as I have not heard from him for nearly six months, although previous to 
 that time I seldom failed to get a letter from him as often as once a 
 week, and whenever he received his pay the most of his money came to 
 me. To tell the truth. I do not know whether he is living or not. But 
 one thing I do know, I do not hear from him. I have seven children to 
 provide for, but no money in the house, not a particle of bread in the 
 pantry, nor a lump of coal in the shed, and the landlord threatening to 
 turn us out in the storm. This city pledged itself to give wives a certain 
 sum monthly, providing they consented to their husband's responding to 
 the call of the President for troops, but, disregarding these pledges, we 
 and our children are left to starve and freeze, and to be turned out of 
 our houses and homes by relentless landlords. Now, sir, can you tell me 
 what I am to do? 
 
 The colonel drew his bandanna from his great coat pocket, lightly 
 touched his eyes with it, and rising to his feet, pointed to a chair "Sit 
 down, madame, and remain till I return. I will be back in a few min- 
 utes." He picked up a half-sheet of legal-cap and a pencil, and departed 
 for the law and other offices of the building of which there were several. 
 Entering the first that appeared, "Good morninb, Smith, give me half-a- 
 dollar." "Well, now, colonel, you are" "Never mind if I am I must 
 have it!" It came. He entered another. "Hello! colonel, what's new? 1 ' 
 "I want a half-dollar from you!" "What for?" "None of your busi- 
 ness I want the money." He got it. He entered a third. "Hello, Bob! 
 Anything new on eter " "Never mind, I must have fifty cents!" "But ' 
 "But nothing, Jones, give me what I ask for." Of course he got what he 
 asked for. So on through fourteen offices, from which he obtained $7. 
 Returning to his office, he put his hand in his own pocket and drew forth 
 a $5 note, and handed the woman $12. "Take this, my good woman, 
 and make it go as far as you can. If you obtain relief from no other 
 source, call on me again and I will do the best I can for you!" And still 
 Col. Ingersoll is styled by hell-fire advocates an infidel, atheist, dog! 
 
HEREAFTER. J\ I 
 
 love our neighbors as we love ourselves; to strive to at- 
 tain to as perfect a spirit as a Golden Rule would bring 
 us into; to make virtue lovely by living it, grandly and 
 nobly and patiently the outgrowth of a brotherhood not 
 possible in this world where men are living away from 
 themselves, and trampling justice and mercy and forgive- 
 ness under their feet ! 
 
 Speaking of the different religions, of course they are 
 represented by the different churches; and the best hold 
 of the churches, and the surest way of giving totally de- 
 praved humanity a realizing sense of their utterly lost 
 condition, is to talk and preach hell with all its horrible, 
 terrible comcomitants. True, the different priests advo- 
 cate the doctrine, only when they see that it is the only 
 thing to rouse the sinners from their lethargy; for where 
 is the man who will not accept the grace of Jesus Christ, 
 if he becomes convinced that his late in the hereafter is 
 a terrible one ! The ministers of the different churches 
 know full well which side of their bread is buttered. A 
 priest is a divinity among his people a man around 
 whom his parishioners throw a glamour of sanctity, and 
 one who can do no wrong; albeit, his chief and growing 
 characteristics are tyranny, arrogancy, self-conceit, de- 
 ception, bigotry and superstition ! Tyrannical do I call 
 them ? Most assuredly ! Suppose, for example, the 
 Methodist, or Presbyterian church had the power to de- 
 cide whether you, or I, or any other man, should be a 
 Methodist or Presbyterian, and we should decline to fol- 
 low the path pointed out to us, or either of us, what I 
 solemly and candidly ask you, would be the result ? Our 
 fate would be more terrible than their endless hell ! The 
 inquisition would rise again in all its horrid blackness! 
 
712 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 Instruments of torture would darken our vision on every 
 hand 1 But, thank God not that terrible being whom 
 Christians would have us believe is our Maker this is a 
 free land free as the air we breathe; and you and I can 
 partake of the orthodox waters of life freely, or we can 
 let them alone ! When I see a man perched upon a 
 pedestal called a ' ' pulpit " a man who is one of nature's 
 noblemen, physically, and fully able to breast the storms 
 of life and earn his honest living telling his hearers with 
 perspiring brow and all his might and main of the terrors 
 of the seething cauldron of hell, and how certain it is 
 that they are to be unceremoniously dumped therein to 
 be boiled through all ages, yet never boiled done un- 
 less they seek salvation when I look upon that man, 
 honor bright, I pity him, for I cannot help comparing 
 him with the lower animals ! Then there is a reaction, 
 and I feel an utter contempt for him, for he may know, 
 when he declares hell is a reality, that he is lying ! 
 
 Now, of the deception of the preacher. At the close 
 of a sermon in an orthodox church, Rev. Mr. Solemn- 
 face steps to the side of Bro. Everbright, who has been 
 absent from the brimstone-mill for several months: 
 
 "Ah, Bro. Everbright, how do you do? Long time 
 since I have seen you; how's your family ? Quite well ? 
 Is it well with thee to-day ? Rather lukewarm, eh ? 
 Sorry, sorry. Well, brother, can you do something for 
 us financially, to-day? Our people think my pulpit is too 
 common, and say a couple hundred will put it in good 
 shape, and make it desirable and attractive. Can you 
 contribute a few dollars to the fund ? " 
 
 "Well, Bro. Solemnface, for four long months I have 
 been ill; not a day's work have I done, and not a cent 
 
HEREAFTER. 713 
 
 of money have I that I can call my own. Next year I 
 trust I can do something for the cause of my Maker." 
 
 " Ah-h- h-h-h-h ! " and Bro. S.'s face assumes a terri- 
 ble look of disappointment, and he is gone in a moment. 
 
 Out upon such a fraud ! The pulpits of the land are 
 full of them. The world is cursed with them ! They 
 possess all the elements of vagabonds, dead-beats, falsi- 
 fiers, beggars, vultures, hyenas and jackals ! 
 
 In past ages the cross has been in partnership with the 
 sword, and the religion of Christ was established by 
 murderers, tyrants and hypocrites. I want you to know 
 that the church carried the black flag, and I ask you 
 what must have been the civilizing influence of such a 
 religion ? 
 
 Of all the selfish things in this world, it is one man 
 wanting to get to heaven, caring nothing what becomes 
 of the rest of mankind, saying: " If I can only get my 
 little soul in ! " I have always noticed that the people 
 who have the smallest souls make the most fuss about 
 getting them saved. Here is what we are taught by the 
 church of to-day. We are taught by them that fathers 
 and mothers can all be happy in heaven, no matter who 
 may be in hell; that the husband could be happy there, 
 with the wife that would have died for him at any mo- 
 ment of his life, in hell. But they say, ' ' Hell, we don't 
 believe in fire. I don't think you understand me. What 
 we believe in now is remorse." What will you have re- 
 morse for ? For the mean things you have done when 
 you are in hell ? Will you have any remorse for the 
 mean things you have done when you are in heaven ? Or 
 will you be so good then that you won't care how you 
 used to be ? I tell you to-day, that no matter in what 
 
714 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 heaven you may be, no matter in~what star you are 
 spending the summer, if you meet another man whom 
 you have wronged, you "will drop a little behind in the 
 tune. And, no matter in what part of hell you are, you 
 will meet some one who has suffered, whose nakedness 
 you have clothed, and the fire will cool up a little. Ac- 
 cording to this Christian doctrine, you won't care how 
 mean you were once. Is it a compliment to an infinite 
 God to say that every being He ever made deserved to 
 be damned the minute He had got him done, and that 
 He will damn everybody He has not had a chance to 
 make over ? Is it possible that somebody else can be 
 good for me, and that this doctrine of the atonement is 
 the only anchor for the human soul ? 
 
 We sit by the fireside and see the flames and sparks 
 fly up the chimney everybody happy, and the cold wind 
 and sleet beating on the window, and out on the door- 
 step a mother with a child on her breast freezing. How 
 happy it makes a fire, that beautiful contrast. And we 
 say God is good, and there we sit, and there she sits and 
 moans, not one night, but forever. Or we are sitting at 
 the table with our wives and children, everybody eating, 
 happy and delighted, and Famine comes and pushes out 
 its shriveled palms, and, with hungry eyes, implores us 
 for a crust; how that would increase the appetite ! And 
 that is the Christian heaven. Don't you see that these 
 infamous doctrines petrify the human heart ? And I 
 would have every one who hears me swear that he will 
 never contribute another dollar to build another church, 
 in which is taught such infamous lies. Let every man 
 
HEREAFTER. 
 
 715 
 
 try to make every day a joy, and God cannot afford to 
 damn such a man. Consequently humanity is the only 
 real religion. 
 
 "Man's inhumanity to man 
 Makes countless millions mourn." 
 
INGEKSOLL'S LECTURE 
 
 ON THE 
 
 REVIEW OF HIS REVIEWERS. 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: "What have I said?" 
 " What has been my offense? I have been spoken of as 
 if I were a wolf endeavoring to devour the entire fold of 
 sheep in the absence of the shepherd." I believe in the 
 trinity of observation, reason and science; the trinity of 
 man, woman and child; the trinity of love, joy and hope; 
 and thought that every man has a right to think for him- 
 self, and no other man has the right to debar him of this 
 privilege by torture, by social ostracism, or any of the 
 numerous other expedients resorted to by the enemies of 
 advancement. I ask: " Does God wish the lip-worship 
 of a slave? a sneak? of the man that dares not reason? 
 If I were the infinite God, I would rather have the wor- 
 ship of one good man of brains than a world of such 
 men. I am told that I am in danger of everlasting fire, 
 and that I shall burn forever in hell. I tell you, my 
 friends, if I were going to hell to night I would take an 
 
 716 
 
REVIEW OF HIS REVIEWERS. 
 
 overcoat with me. Do not tell me that the eternal fu- 
 ture of a man may depend upon his belief. I deny it. 
 That a man should be punished for having come to an 
 honest conclusion, the honest production of his brain; 
 that an honest conclusion should be deemed a crime and 
 so declared, it is an infamous, monstrous assertion, and 
 I would rather go to hell than to keep the company of a 
 God who would damn his child for an honest belief. 
 
 " Next, I ' preached ' that a woman was the equal of 
 man, entitled to everything that he is entitled to, to be 
 his partner, and to be cherisned and respected because 
 she is the weaker, to be treated as a splendid flower. I 
 said that man should not be cross to her, but fill the 
 house that she is in with such joy that it would burst out 
 at the window. I have said that matrimony is the holiest 
 of sacraments, and I have said that the bible took wom- 
 an up thousands of years ago and handed her down to 
 man as a slave, and I have said that the bible is a bar- 
 barous book for teaching that she is a slave, and I repeat 
 it, and will prove later what I have said. I have pleaded 
 for the right of man, of wife, and of the little child; I 
 have said we can govern children by love and affection;! 
 have asked for tender treatment for the child of crime; I 
 have asked mothers to cease beating their children and 
 take them to their hearts; and for this I am denounced by 
 the religious press and men in the pulpits as a demon and 
 a monster of heresy, who should be driven out from 
 among you as an unclean thing. 
 
 " But I should not complain. Only a few years ago I 
 should have been compelled to look at my denouncers 
 through flame and smoke; but they dare not treat me so 
 now or they would. One hundred years ago I should 
 
718 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 have been burned for claiming the right of reason; fifty 
 years ago I should have been imprisoned and my wife 
 and children would have, been torn away from me, and 
 twenty-five years ago I could not have made a living in 
 the United States in my profession the law. But I live 
 now and can see through it all, and all is light. I 
 delivered another lecture, on "Ghosts," in which I 
 sought to show that man had been controlled in the past 
 by phantoms created by his own imagination; in which 
 the pencil of fear had drawn pictures for him on the can- 
 vass of superstition, and that men had groveled in the 
 dirt before their own superstitious creations. I endeavored 
 to show that man had received nothing from these ghosts 
 but hatred, blood, ignorance and unhappiness, and that 
 they had filled our world with woe and tears. This is 
 what I endeavored to show no more. Now, every one 
 has as much right to differ with me as I with them, but 
 it does not make the slightest difference for the purpose 
 of argument whether I am a good man or a bad, whether 
 I am ugly or handsome although I would not object to 
 resting my case on that issue; the only thing to be con- 
 sidered and discussed is, is what I have said true, or is it 
 untrue? 
 
 4 'Now, I said that the bible came from the ghosts, 
 and that they gave us the doctrine of immortality of the 
 soul, which I deny. Now, the immortality of the soul, 
 if there is such a thing, is a fact, and therefore no book 
 could make it. If I am immortal, I am; if not, no book 
 can make me so. The doctrine of immortality is based 
 in the hope of the human heart, and is not derived from 
 any book or a creed. It has its origin in the ebb and 
 flow of the human affections, and will continue as long as 
 
REVIEW OF HIS REVIEWERS. 719 
 
 affection, and is the rainbow in the sky of hope. It does 
 not depend on a book, on ghosts, superstition of any 
 kind; it is a flower of the human heart. I did say that 
 these ghosts, or the book, taught that human slavery was 
 right, that most monstrous of all crimes, that makes 
 miserable the victim and debases the master, for a slave 
 can have all the virtues while the master can not. I did 
 say that it rivited the chains upon the oppressed, and 
 that it counseled the robbing of that most precious of all 
 boons Liberty. I add that the book upheld all this, 
 that it sustained and sanctified the institution of human 
 slavery. I did also assert that this same book, which my 
 critics claim was inspired by God, inculcated the doctrine 
 of witchcraft, for which people, through its teaching were 
 hanged and burned for bringing disease upon the regal 
 persons of kings, and for souring beer. I did say that 
 this book upheld that most of all infamies, polygamy, 
 and that it did not teach political liberty or religious 
 toleration, but political slavery and the most wretched 
 intolerance. I did try to prove that these ghosts knew 
 less than nothing about medicine, politics, legislation, 
 astronomy, geology and astrology, but I am also aware 
 that in saying these things I have done what my censors 
 think I ought not to have done. But the victor ought 
 not to feel malice, and I shall have none. As soon as I 
 had said all these things, some gentlemen felt called upon 
 to answer them, which they had a right to do. Now, I 
 like fairness, am enamored with it, probably because I 
 get so little of it. I can say a great many mean things, 
 for I have read all the religious papers, and I ought to be 
 able to account for every motive in a mean manner after 
 that, but I will not. 
 
720 INGERSOLLS LECTURES. 
 
 " The first gentleman whom I shall call your attention 
 to is the Rev. Dr. Woodbridge. It seems that when 
 I delivered my lectures the conclusion had come to that 
 ' that man does not believe in anything but matter and 
 force that man does not believe in spirit. ' Why not? 
 If by spirit you mean that which thinks, I am one of 
 them myself. If you mean by spirit that which hopes 
 and reasons and loves and aspires, why, then, I am a be- 
 liever in spirits; but whatever spirit there is in this uni- 
 verse I will take my oath is a natural product and not 
 superimposed upon this -world. All I will say is that 
 whatever is, is natural, and there is as much goodness in 
 my judgment, as much spirit here in this world as in any 
 other, and you are just as near the heart of the universe 
 here as you ever can be. But, they say, " there is 
 matter and force, and there is force and there is spirit. " 
 Well, what of it? There is no matter without force. 
 What would keep it together unless there was force? Can 
 you imagine matter without force? Honor bright, can 
 you conceive of force without matter? And what is 
 spirit? They say spirit is the first thing that ever was. 
 It seems to me sometimes as though spirit was the 
 blossom and fruit of all, and not the commencement. 
 But they say spirit was first. What would that spirit do? 
 No force no matter a spirit living in an infinite vacu- 
 um without side, edge or bottom. This spirit created 
 the world; and if this spirit did, there must have been a 
 time when it commenced to create, and back of that an 
 eternity spent in absolute idleness. Can a spirit exist 
 without matter or without force? I honestly say I do not 
 know what matter is, what force is, what spirit is; but if 
 you mean by matter anything that I can touch, or by 
 
REVIEW OF HIS REVIEWERS. 
 
 force anything that we can overcome then I believe in 
 them. If you mean by spirit anything that can think and 
 love, I believe in spirits. 
 
 "The next critic who assailed me was the Rev. Mr. 
 Kalloch. I am not going to show you what I can withstand, 
 lam not going to say a word about the reputation of this 
 man, although he took some liberties with mine. This 
 gentleman says negation is a poor thing to die by. I would 
 just as lief die by that as the opposite. He spoke of the 
 last hours of Paine and Voltaire and the terrors of their 
 death-beds; but the question arises, is there a word of 
 truth in all he said? I have observed that the murderer 
 dies with courage and firmness in many instances, but 
 that does not make me think that it sanctified his crime; 
 in fact, it makes no impression upon me one way or the 
 other. When a man through old age or infirmity ap- 
 proaches death the intellectual faculties are dimmed, his 
 his senses become less and less, and as he loses these he 
 goes back to his old superstition. Old age brings back 
 the memories of childhood. And the great bard gave 
 even in the corrupt and besotted Falstaff who prattled 
 of babbling brooks and green fields an instance of the 
 retracing steps taken by the memory at the last gasp. It 
 has been said that the bible was sanctified by our mothers. 
 Every superstition in the world, from the beginning of 
 all time, has had such a sanctification. The Turk dying 
 on the Russian battle-field pressing the Koran to his 
 bosom, breathes his last thinking of the loving adjura- 
 tion of his mother to guard it. Every superstition has 
 been rendered sacred by the love of a mother. I know 
 what it has cost the noble and the brave to throw to the 
 winds these superstitions. Since the death of Voltaire, 
 
722 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 who was innocent of all else than a desire to shake off 
 the superstitions of the past, the curse of Rome has pur- 
 sued him, and ignorant protestants have echoed that 
 curse. I like Voltaire. Whenever I think of him it is 
 as a plumed knight coming from the fray with victory 
 shining upon his brow. He was once in the Bastile, and 
 while there he changed his name from Francis Marie 
 Aloysius to Voltaire; and when the Bastile was torn down 
 " Voltaire " was the battle cry of those who did it. He 
 did more to bring about religious toleration than any man 
 in the galaxy of those who strove for the privilege of free 
 thought. He was always on the side of justice. He was 
 full of faults and had many virtues. His doctrines have 
 never brought unhappiness to any country. He died as 
 serenely as anyone could. Speaking to his servant, he 
 said, " Farewell my faithful friend." Could he have 
 done a more noble act than to recognize him who had 
 served him faithfully as a man? What more could he 
 wished? And now let me say here, I will give a $ 1,000 
 in gold to any clergyman who can substantiate that the 
 death of Voltaire was not as peaceful as the dawn. And 
 of Thomas Paine, whom they assert died in fear and 
 agony, frightened by the clanking chains of devils, in fact, 
 frightened to death by God I will give $1,000 likewise 
 to anyone who can substantiate this absurd story a 
 story without a word of truth in it. And let me ask, who 
 dies in the most fear, the man who, like the saint, ex- 
 claims: "My God, my God! why hast thou forsaken 
 me?" or Voltaire, who peacefully and quietly bade his 
 servant farewell? The question is not who died right, 
 but who lived right. I look upon death as the most un- 
 important moment of life, and believe that not half the 
 
REVIEW OF HIS REVIEWERS. 723 
 
 responsibility is attached to dying that is to living pro- 
 perly. This Rev. Mr. Kalloch is a baptist. He has a 
 right to be a baptist. The first baptist, though was a 
 heretic; but it is among the wonders that when a heretic 
 gets fifteen or twenty to join him he suddenly begins to 
 be orthodox. Roger Williams was a baptist, but how he, 
 or anyone not destitude of good sense, could be one, 
 passes my comprehension. Let me illustrate: 
 
 "Suppose it was the Day of Judgment to-night and 
 we were all assembled, as the ghosts, say we will be, to 
 be judged, and God should ask a man: 
 
 " 'Have you been a good man? ' 
 
 " 'Yes.' 
 
 " ' Have you loved your wife and children? ' 
 
 " 'Yes.' 
 
 " ' Have you taken good care of them and made them 
 happy? ' 
 
 " 'Yes.' 
 
 " ' Have you tried to do right by your neighbors? ' 
 
 " 'Yes.' 
 
 " 'Paid all your debts?' 
 
 " 'Yes.' 
 
 41 And then cap the climax by asking: 
 
 " 'Were you ever baptized?' 
 
 " Could a solitary being hear that question without 
 laughing? I think not. I once happened to be in the 
 company of six or seven baptist elders (I never have 
 been able to understand since how I got into such bad 
 company), and they wanted to know what I thought of 
 baptism. I answered that I had not given the matter 
 any attention, in fact I had no special opinion upon the 
 subject. But they pressed me and finally I told them that 
 
724 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 I thought, with soap baptism was a good thing. 
 ' ' The Rev. Mr. Guard has attacked me, and has de- 
 scribed me, among other things, as a dog barking at a 
 train. Of course he was the train. He said, first, the 
 bible is not an immoral book, because I swore upon it 
 when I joined the Free and Accepted Masons. That 
 settles the question. Secondly, he says that Solomon 
 had softening of the brain and fatty degeneration of the 
 heart; thirdly, that the Hebrews had the right to slay all 
 the inhabitants of Canaan according to the doctrine of 
 the survival of the fittest. He says that the destruction 
 of these Canaanites, the ripping open by the bloody 
 sword of women with child was an act of sublime mercy. 
 Think of that! He says that the Canaanites should have 
 been driven from their homes, and not only driven, but 
 that the men who simply were guilty of the crime of fight- 
 ing for their native land the old men with gray hairs; the 
 old mothers, the young mothers, the little dimpled, prat- 
 tling child that it was an act of sublime mercy to plunge 
 the sword of religious persecution into old and young. 
 If that is mercy, let us have injustice. If there is that 
 kind of a God I am sorry that I exist. Fourthly, Mr. 
 Guard said God has the right to do as he pleases with 
 the beings he has created; and, fifthly, that God, by 
 choosing the Jews and governing them personally, spoiled 
 them to that degree that they crucified Him the first op- 
 portunity they had. That shows what a good adminis- 
 tration will do. Sixthly, He says polygamy is not a bad 
 thing when compared with the picture of Antony and 
 Cleopatra, now on exhibition in this city. I will just say 
 one word about art. I think this is one of the most 
 beautiful words in our language, and do you know, it 
 
REVIEW OF HIS REVIEWERS. 72$ 
 
 never seemed to me necessary for art to go into partner- 
 ship with a rag? I like the paintings of Angelo, of 
 Raphael I like those splendid souls that are put upon 
 canvas all there is of human beauty. There are brave 
 souls in every land who worship nature grand and nude, 
 and who, with swift, indignant hand, tear off the fig 
 leaves of the prude. Seventhly, it may be said that the 
 bible sanctions slavery, but that it is not an immoral 
 book if it does. Mr. Guard playfully says that he is a 
 puppy nine days old; that he was only eight days old 
 when I came here. I'm inclined to think he has over- 
 stated his age. I account for his argument precisely as 
 he did for the sin of Solomon, softening of the brain, or 
 fatty degeneration of the heart. It does seem to me that 
 if I were a good Christian and knew that another man 
 was going down to the bottomless pit to be miserable and 
 in agony forever I would try to stop him, and instead of 
 filling my mouth with epithet and invective, and drawing 
 the lips of malice back from the teeth of hatred, my eyes 
 would be filled with tears, and I would do what I could 
 to reclaim him and take him up in the arms of my affec- 
 tion. 
 
 " The next gentleman is the Rev. Mr. Robinson, who 
 delivered a sermon entitled ' Ghost against God, or 
 Ingersoll against Honesty.' Of course he was honesty. 
 He apologized for attending an infidel lecture upon the 
 ground that he hated to contribute to the support of a 
 materialistic showman. I am willing to trade fagots for 
 epithets, and the rack for anything that may be said in 
 his sermon. I am willing to trade the instrument of tor- 
 ture with which they could pull the nails from my fingers 
 for anything which the ingenuity of orthodoxy can invent. 
 
726 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 When I saw that report although I do not know that I 
 ought to tell it I felt bad. I knew that man's conscience 
 must be rankling like a snake in his bosom, that he had 
 contributed a dollar to the support of a man as bad as I. 
 I wrote him a letter, in which I said: "The Rev. 
 Samuel Robinson, My Dear Sir : In order to relieve 
 your conscience of the stigma of having contributed to 
 the support of an unbeliever in Ghosts, I herewith 
 enclose the dollar you paid to attend my lecture." I 
 then gave him a little good advice to be charitable, and 
 regretted exceedingly that any man could listen to me for 
 an hour and a half and not go away satisfied that other 
 men had the same right to think that he had. 
 
 The speaker went on to answer the argument of Mr. 
 Robinson with regard to persecution, contending that 
 protestants had been guilty of it no less than catholics; 
 and showing that the first people to pass an act of toler- 
 ation in the new world were the catholics in Maryland. 
 The reverend gentleman has stated also that infidelity 
 has done nothing for the world in the development of art 
 and science. Has he ever heard of Darwin, of Tyndall, 
 of Huxley, of John W. Draper, of Auguste Comte, of 
 Descartes, Laplace, Spinoza, or any man who has taken 
 a step in advance of his time? Orthodoxy never 
 advances, when it does advance, it ceases to be orthodoxy. 
 
 A reply to certain strictures in the Occident led the 
 lecturer up to another ministerial critic, namely, the Rev. 
 W. E. Ijams. 
 
 " I want to say that, so far as I can see, in his argu- 
 ment this gentleman has treated me in a kind and con- 
 siderate spirit. He makes to or three mistakes, but I 
 suppose they are the fault of the report from which he 
 
REVIEW OF HIS REVIEWERS. 727 
 
 quoted. I am made to say in his sermon that there is no 
 sacred place in the universe. What I did say was: 
 " There is no sacred place in all the universe of thought; 
 there 'is nothing too holy to be investigated, nothing too 
 sacred to be understood, and I said that the fields of 
 thought were fenceless, that they should be without a 
 wall. " I say so to-night. He further said that I said 
 that a man had not only the right to do right, but to do 
 wrong. What I did say, was: " Liberty is the right to 
 do right, and the right to think right, and the right to 
 think wrong," not the right to do wrong. That is all I 
 have to say in regard to that gentleman, except that, so 
 far as I could see, he was perfectly fair, and treated me 
 as though I was a human being as well as he." 
 
 The speaker sarcastically referred to the slurs thrown 
 upon him by his reviewers, who have claimed that his 
 theories have no foundation, his arguments no reason, 
 and that his utterances are vapid, blasphemous, and un- 
 worthy a reply. He said that their statements and their 
 actions were sadly at variance, for, while declaring him 
 a senseless idiot, they spent hours in striving to prove 
 themselves not idiots; in other words, in one breath they 
 declare that his views were absolutely without point, and 
 needed no explaining away; while in direct rebuttal of 
 this declaration, they devoted time and labor in attempts 
 to disprove the very things they called self-evident 
 absurdities. 
 
 Turning from this subject, Mr. Ingersoll read numer- 
 ous extracts from the bible, with interpolated comments. 
 He claimed that the bible authorized slavery, and that 
 many devoted believers in that book had turned the cross 
 of Christ into a whipping post. He did not wish it under- 
 
728 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 
 
 stood that he could find no good in believers in creeds; 
 far from it, for some of his dearest friends were most 
 orthodox in their religious, ideas, and there had been 
 hundreds of thousands of good men among both clergy 
 and laymen. History has shown no people more nobly 
 self-sacrificing than the Jesuit Fathers who first visited 
 this country to proselyte among the Indians. But these 
 men and their like were better than their creeds; better 
 than the book in which their faith was centered. The 
 bible tells us distinctly that the world was made in six 
 days not periods, but actual, bona fide days a state- 
 ment which it iterates and re-iterates. It also tells us 
 that God lengthened the day for the benefit of a gentle- 
 man named Joshua, in other words, that he stopped the 
 rotary motion of the earth. Motion is changed into heat 
 by stoppage, and the world turns with such velocity that 
 its sudden stoppage would create a heat of intensity be- 
 yond the wildest flight of our imagination, and yet this 
 impossible feat was performed that Joshua might have 
 longer time to expend in slaying a handful of Amorites. 
 The bible also upholds the doctrines of witchcraft and 
 spiritualism, for Saul visited the witch of Endor, and she, 
 after preparing the cabinet, trotted out the spirit of 
 Samuel, said spirit kindly joining in conversation with 
 Saul, without requiring the aid of a trance medium. The 
 speaker then quoted at length from Leviticus concerning 
 wizards and evil spirits, described the temptation of 
 Christ by Satan, and the driving of devils from man into 
 swine. He sneered at the rights of children as biblically 
 described, citing the law which sentenced them to be 
 stoned to death for disobedience to parents, the almost 
 sacrifice of Isaac by his father, and the actual murder of 
 
REVIEW OF HIS REVIEWERS. 729 
 
 Jephthah's daughter, asking if a God who could demand 
 such worship was worthy the love of man. He next re- 
 ferred to the conversation between God and Satan con- 
 cerning the man Job, and of the reward given to the 
 latter for his long continued patience. His three daughters 
 and his seven sons had been taken from him merely to 
 test his patience, and the merciful God gave him in ex- 
 change three other daughters and seven sons, but they 
 were not the children whom he had loved and lost. The 
 bible represents woman as vastly inferior to man, while 
 he believed, with Robbie Burns, that God made man 
 with a prentice-hand, and woman after He had learned 
 the trade. Polygamy, also, was a doctrine supported by 
 this pure and pious work; a doctrine so foul that language 
 is not strong enough to express its infamy. The bible 
 taught, as a religious creed, that if your wife, your sister, 
 your brother, your dearest friend, tempted you to change 
 from the religion of your fathers, your duty to God 
 demanded that you should at once strike a blow at the 
 life of your tempter. Let us suppose, then, that in truth 
 God went to Palestine and selected the scanty tribes of 
 Israel as his chosen people, and supposing that he after- 
 ward came to Jerusalem in the shape of a man and 
 taught a different doctrine from the one prescribed by 
 their book and their clergy, and that the chosen people, 
 in obedience to the education he had prepared for them, 
 struck at the life of him who tempted them. Were they 
 to be cursed by God and man because the former had 
 reaped the harvest of his own sowing? 
 
INGERSOLL'S LECTURE 
 
 ON 
 
 "HOW THE GODS GROW." 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMENN: Priests have invented a 
 crime called blasphemy. That crime is the breastwork 
 behind which ignorance, superstition and hypocrisy have 
 crouched for thousands of years, and shot their poisoned 
 arrows at the pioneers of human thought. Priests tell us 
 that there is a God somewhere in heaven who objects to 
 a human being thinking and expressing his thought. 
 Priests tell us that there is a God somewhere who takes 
 care of the people of this world; a God somewhere who 
 watches over the widow and the orphan; a God some- 
 where who releases the slave; a God somewhere who visits 
 the innocent man in prison ; the same God that has allowed 
 men for thousands of years to burn to ashes human beings 
 simply for loving that God. We have been taught that 
 it is dangerous to reason upon these subjects extremely 
 dangerous and that of all crimes in the world, the 
 greatest is to deny the existence of that God. 
 
 Redden your hands in innocent blood; steal the bread 
 
 730 
 
HOW THE GODS GROW. 731 
 
 of the orphan, deceive, ruin and desert the beautiful girl 
 who has loved and trusted you, and for all this you may 
 be forgiven; for all this you can have the clear writ of 
 that bankrupt court of the gospel. But deny the exist- 
 ence of one of these gods, and the tearful face of mercy 
 becomes lurid with eternal hate; the gates of heaven are 
 shut against you, and you, with an infinite curse ringing 
 in your ears, commence your wanderings as an immortal 
 vagrant, as a deathless convict, as an eternal outcast. 
 And we have been taught that the infinite has become 
 enraged at the finite simply when the finite said: " I don't 
 know!" Why, imagine it. Suppose Mr. Smith should 
 hear a couple of small bugs in his front yard discussing 
 the question as to the existence of Smith; and suppose 
 one little red bug swore on the honor of a bug that, in his 
 judgment, no such man as Smith lived. What would 
 you think of Mr. Smith if he fell into a rage, and brought 
 his heel down on this little atheist bug and said: " I will 
 teach you that Smith is a diabolical fact! " And yet if 
 there is an infinite God, there is infinitely a greater dif- 
 ference between that God and a human being than be- 
 tween Shakespeare and the smallest bug that ever 
 crawled. It cannot be; there is something wrong in this 
 thing somewhere. 
 
 I am told, also, that this being watches over us, takes 
 care of us. And the other day I read a sermon (you will 
 hardly believe it, but I did); I had nothing else to to. I 
 had read everything in that paper, including the adver- 
 tisements; so I read the sermon. It was a sermon by 
 Rev. Mr. Moody on prayer, in which he took the ground 
 that our prayer should be " Thy will be done; " and he 
 seemed to believe that if we prayed that prayer often 
 
732 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 enough we could induce God to have his own way. He 
 gives an instance of a woman in Illinois who had a sick 
 child, and she prayed that God would not take from her 
 arms that babe. She did not pray ''Thy will be done," 
 but she prayed, according to Mr. Moody, almost a prayer 
 of rebellion, and said: "I cannot give up my babe/ 
 God heard her prayer, and the child got well; and Mr. 
 Moody says it was an idiot when it got well. For fifteen 
 years that woman watched over and took care of that 
 idiotic child; and Mr. Moody says how much better 
 would it have been if she had allowed God to have had 
 his own way. Think of a God who would punish a 
 mother for speaking to Him from an agonizing heart and 
 saying, ' ' I cannot give up my babe, " and making the 
 child an idiot. What would the devil have done under 
 the same circumstances? That is the God we are ex- 
 pected to worship. I range myself with the opposition. 
 The next day I read another sermon preached by the 
 Rev. De Witt Talmage, a man of not much fancy, but ofl 
 great judgment. He preached a sermon on dreams, and 
 went on to say that God often visited us in dreams, and 
 that He often convinces men of His existence in that 
 way. So far as I am concerned I had rather see some- 
 thing in the light. And, according to that sermon, there 
 was a poor woman in England, a pauper who had the 
 rheumatism, and there was another pauper who had not 
 the rheumatism; and the pauper who had not the rheuma- 
 tism used to take food to the pauper that had. After a 
 while the pauper without rheumatism died, and then the 
 pauper with the rheumatism began to think in her own 
 mind, who will bring me food? That night God appeared 
 to her in a dream. He did not cure her rheumatism 
 
HOW THE GODS GROW. 733 
 
 though. He appeared to her in a dream, ana ne took 
 her out of the house and pointed on the right hand to an 
 immense mountain of bread, and on the left hand to an 
 immense mountain of butter. And when I read that I 
 said to myself, my Lord, what a place that would be to 
 start a political party. And he said to her: ''These 
 belong to your father; do you think that he will allow one 
 of his children to starve?" What a place would Ireland 
 be with that mountain of bread and butter! Until I read 
 these two sermons I hardly believed that in this day and 
 generation anybody believed that God would make a child 
 an idiot simply because the mother had prayed for its 
 sweet dear life, or that God's visits are only in dreams. 
 But so it is. 
 
 Orthodoxy has not advanced upon the religion of the 
 Fiji Islander. It is the same yesterday, to-day and forever. 
 Now we are told that there is a god; and nearly every 
 nation has had a god; generally a good many of them. You 
 see the raw material was so cheap, and Gods were man- 
 ufactured so easily, that heaven has always been cram- 
 med with the phantoms of these monsters. But they say 
 there is a god, and every savage tribe believes in a God. 
 It is an argument made to rne every day. I concede to 
 you that fact; I concede to you that all savages agree 
 with you. I admit it takes a certain amount of civiliza- 
 tion, a certain amount of thought, to rise above the idea 
 that some personal being, for his own ends, for his own 
 glory, made and governs this universe. I admit that it 
 takes some thought to see the universe is good and all 
 that is good, and every star that shines is a part of God, 
 and I am something, no matter how little, and that the 
 infinite cannot exist without me, and that therefore I am 
 
734 INGERSOLLS LECTURES. 
 
 a part of the infinite. I admit that it takes a little civ- 
 ilization to get to that point. 
 
 Now every nation has made a god, and every man that 
 has made a god has used himself for a pattern; and men 
 have put into the mouth of their god all their mistakes 
 in astronomy, in geography, in philosophy, in morality, 
 and the god is never wiser or better than his creators. If 
 they believe in slavery, so did he; if they believe in eat- 
 ing human flesh, he wanted his share; if they were po- 
 lygamous, so was he; if they were cruel, so was he. And 
 just to the extent that man has become civilized, he has 
 civilized his god. You can hardly imagine the progress 
 that our God has made in four thousand years. Four 
 thousand years ago He was a barbarian; to-night He is 
 quite an educated gentleman. Four thousand years ago 
 He belived in killing and butchering little babes at the 
 breasts of their mothers; He has reformed. Four thou- 
 sand years ago He did not believe in taking prisoners of 
 war. He said, kill the old men; mingle their blood with 
 the white hair. Kill the women. But what shall we do, 
 O God, with the maidens? Give them to satisfy the lust 
 of the soldiers and of the priests! If there is anywhere 
 in the serene heaven a real God, I want him to write in 
 the book of His eternal rememberance, opposite my 
 name, that I deny that lie for Him. 
 
 Four thousand years ago our God was in favor of 
 slavery; four thousand years ago our God would have a 
 man beaten to death with rugged rocks for expressing his 
 honest thought; four thousand years ago our God told the 
 husband to kill his wife if she disagreed with him upon 
 the important subject of religion; four thousand years ago 
 our God was a monster; and if He is any better now, it 
 
HOW THE GODS GROW. 735 
 
 is simply because we have made Him so. I am talking 
 about the God of the Christian world. There may be, 
 for aught I know, upon the shore of the eternal vast, 
 some being whose very thought is the constellation of 
 those numberless stars. I do not know; but if there is 
 he has never written a bible; he has never been in favor 
 of slavery; he has never advocated polygamy, and he 
 never told the murderer to sheathe his dagger in the dim- 
 pled breast of a babe. But they say to me, our God has 
 written a book. I am glad he did, and it is by that book 
 that I propose to judge them. I find in that book that it 
 was a crime to eat of the tree of knowledge. I find that 
 the church has always been the enemy of education, and 
 I find that the church still carries the flaming sword of 
 ignorance and bigotry over the tree of knowledge. 
 
 And if that story is true, ought we not after all to 
 thank the devil? He was the first school 'master; he was 
 the first to whisper liberty in our ears; he was the author 
 of modesty. He was the author of ambition and pro- 
 gress. And as for me, give me the storm and tempest of 
 thought and action rather than the dead calm of ignor- 
 ance and faith. Punish me when and how you will, but 
 first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. And 
 there is one peculiar thing I might as well speak of here. 
 While the world has made gods, it has also made devils; 
 and as a rule the devils have been better friends to man 
 than the gods. It was not a devil that drowned the 
 world; it was not a devil that covered with the multitudi- 
 nous waves of an infinite sea the corpses of men, women 
 and children. 
 
 That was the good god. The devil never sent pesti- 
 lence and famine; the devil -never starved women and 
 
736 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 children; that was the good God. The meanest thing 
 recorded of the devil is what happened concerning my 
 servant Job. According to that book God met the devil 
 and said: " Where have you been? " " Oh, been walk- 
 ing up and down." "Have you noticed my man Job; 
 nobody like him! " " Well, who wouldn't be; you have 
 given him everything; but take away what he has, and 
 he will curse you to your face." And so the devil went 
 to work and tried it. It was a mean thing. And that 
 was all done to decide what you might call a wager on a 
 difference of opinion between the serene highnesses. He 
 took away his property, but Job didn't sin; and when 
 God met the devil, he said: "Well, what did I tell you, 
 smarty? " "Ah," he said, "that is all very well, but 
 you touch his flesh and he will curse you; and he did, but 
 Job didn't curse him. And then what did God do to help 
 him! He gave him some other children better looking 
 than the first ones. What kind of an idea is that for a 
 God to kill our children and then give us better looking 
 ones! If you have loved a child, I don't care if it is de- 
 formed if you have held it in your arms and covered its 
 face with kisses, you want that child back and no other. 
 I find in this bible that there was an old gentleman a 
 little short of the article of hair. And as he was going 
 through the town a number of little children cried out to 
 him "Go up, thou bald head!" And this man of God 
 turned and cursed them. A real good-humored old fellow! 
 And two bears came out of the woods and tore in pieces 
 forty-two children! How did the bears get there? Elisha 
 could not control the bears. Nobody but God could con- 
 trol the bears in that way. Now just think of an infinite 
 God making a shining star, having his attention attracted 
 
HOW THE GODS GROW. 737 
 
 by hearing some children saying to an old gentlemen, 
 " Go up, thou bald head! " and then speaking to his sec- 
 retary or somebody else, "Bring in a couple of bears 
 now!" What a magnificent God! What would the 
 devil have done under the same circumstances? And yet 
 that is the God they want to put into the constitution in 
 order to make our children gentle and kind and loving. 
 
 You hate a God like that. I do; I despise him. And 
 yet little children in the Sabbath-school are taught that 
 infamous lie. Why, I have very little respect for an old 
 man that will get mad about such a thing, anyway. 
 What would the Christian world say of me if I should 
 have a few children torn to pieces if they should make 
 that remark in my face? What would the devil have 
 done under the same circumstances? 
 
 I tell you, I cannot worship a God who is no better 
 than the devil! I cannot do it. And if you will just read 
 the old testament with the bandage off your eyes and 
 the cloud of fear from your heart, you will come to the 
 conclusion that it was written not only by men, but by 
 barbarians, by savages, and that it is totally unworthy of 
 a civilized age. I believe in no God who believes in 
 slavery. I will worship no God who ever said that one 
 of His children should own another of His children. 
 But they say to me, there must be a God somewhere! 
 Well, I say I don't know. There may be. I hope there 
 is more than one one is so lonesome. Just think of an 
 old bachelor, always alone! I want more than one. And 
 they say, somebody must have made this! Well, I say I 
 don't know. But it strikes me that the indestructible 
 cannot be created. What would you make it of? ' ' Oh, 
 nothing! " Well, it strikes me that nothing, considered 
 
738 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 in the light of a raw material, is a decided failure. For 
 my part, I cannot conceive of force apart from matter, 
 and I cannot conceive of matter apart from force. I can- 
 not conceive of force somewhere without acting upon 
 something; because force must be active, or it is not 
 force; and if it has no matter to act upon, it ceases to be 
 force. I cannot conceive of the smallest atom of matter 
 staying together without force. Beside, if some god 
 made all this, then; must have been some morning when 
 he commenced! And if he has existed always, there is an 
 eternity back of that when he never did anything; when 
 he lived in an infinite hole, without side, top or bottom! 
 He did not think, for there was nothing to think about. 
 Certainly he did not remember, for nothing had ever 
 happened. Now I cannot conceive of this! I do not 
 say it is not so. I may be damned for my smartness, 
 yet I simply say I cannot conceive of it, that is all. 
 But men tell me, you cannot conceive of eternity! That 
 is just what I can conceive of. I cannot conceive of its 
 stopping. They say I cannot conceive of infinite space! 
 That is just what I can conceive of; because, let me im- 
 agine all I can, my imagination will stand upon the 
 verge and see infinite space beyond. Infinite space is a 
 necessity of the mind, because I cannot think of enough 
 matter to fill it. Eternity is a necessity of the mind, 
 because I cannot dream of the cessation of time. But 
 they say there is a design in the world, consequently there 
 must be a designer. Well, I don't know. 
 
 Paley says that the more wonderful thing is, the greater 
 the necessity for creation; that a watch is a wonderful 
 thing, and that it must have had a creator; that the 
 watchmaker is more wonderful than the watch, there- 
 
HOW THE GODS GROW. 739 
 
 fore he must have had a creator. Then we come to God; 
 He is altogether more wonderful than the watchmaker, 
 therefore He had no creator. There is a link out some- 
 where; I don't pretend to understand it. And so I say, 
 that had the world been any other way, you would have 
 seen the same evidence of design, precisely. We grow 
 up with our conditions, and you cannot imagine of a first 
 cause. Why? Every cause has an effect. 
 
 Strike your hands together; they feel warm. The 
 effect becomes a cause instantly, and that cause pro- 
 duces another effect, and the effect another cause; and 
 there could not have been a cause until there was an 
 effect. Because until there was an effect, nothing had 
 been caused; until something had been caused, I am pos- 
 itive there was no cause. Now you cannot conceive of 
 a lost effect, because the lost effect of which you can 
 think, will in turn become a cause and that cause pro- 
 duce another effect. And as you cannot think of a lost 
 effect, you cannot think of a first cause; it is not thinka- 
 ble by the human mind. 
 
 They say God governs this world. Why does He not 
 govern Russia as well as He does Massachusetts? Why 
 does He allow the Czar to send beautiful girls of sixteen, 
 seventeen, eighteen, simply for saying a word in favor of 
 human liberty, to mines in Siberia, where they draw 
 carts with knees bruised and bleeding, with hands scarred 
 and swollen? What is that God worth that allows such 
 things in the world He governs? Did He govern this 
 country when it had four millions of slaves? when it 
 turned the cross of Christ into a whipping-post? when 
 the holy bible was an auction-block on which the mother 
 stood while her babe was sold from her breast? when 
 
740 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 bloodhounds were considered apostles? Was God gov- 
 erning the world when the prisoners were confined in the 
 Bastile? It seems to me, if-there is a God, and someone 
 would repeat the word " Bastile." it would cover almost 
 his face with the blood of shame. But they say heaven 
 will balance all the ills of life. Let us see: A large 
 majority of us are sinners at least a large majority with 
 whom I am acquainted; and a majority of the Christians 
 with whom I am acquainted are worse than sinners. And 
 if their doctrine is true, you will be astonished at the 
 gentlemen you will see in hell that day. You will know 
 by the cast of their countenance that they used to preach 
 here. They say that it may be that the sinners here have 
 a very good time, and that the Christians don't have a 
 very good time; that it is awful hard work to serve the 
 Lord, and that you carry a cross when you deny yourself 
 the delights of murder and forgery, and all manner of 
 rascality that fills life with delight. But they say that 
 while the rascals are having a good time, they will catch 
 it in the other world. But, according to their account, 
 ninety-nine out of a huudred will be damned, and I think 
 it will be a close call for the hundredth . Like that dear 
 old Scotch woman, when she was talking about the Pres- 
 byterian faith, some one said to her: " My dear woman, 
 if your doctine is true, nobody but you and your husband 
 will be saved." " Ah," said she, " I'm na' sae sure about 
 John." About one in a hundred will be saved, and the 
 other ninety-nine will be in misery. So that on the aver- 
 age there will not be half as much happiness in the next 
 world as in this. So, instead of God's plan getting bet- 
 ter, it gets worse; and throughout all the ages of eternity 
 there will be less happiness than in this world. This 
 
HOW THE GODS GROW. 74 1 
 
 world is a school; this world is where we develop moral 
 muscle. It may be that w^e are here simply because men 
 cannot advance only through agony and pain. If it is 
 necessary to have pain and agony to advance morally, 
 then nobody can advance in heaven. Hell will be the 
 only place offering opportunities to any gentleman who 
 wishes to increase his moral muscle. 
 
 A gentleman once asked me if I could suggest any im- 
 provement on the present order of things, if I had the 
 power. Well, said I, in the first place, I would make 
 good health catching instead of disease. There will be 
 no humanity until we get the orthodox God out of our 
 religion. I want to do what little I can to put another 
 one in God's name, so that we will worship a supreme 
 human god, so that we will worship mercy, justice, love 
 and truth, and not have the idea that we must sacrifice 
 our brother upon the altar of fear to please some imagin- 
 ary phantom. See what Christianity has done for the 
 world! It has reduced Spain to a guitar, Italy to a hand- 
 organ and Ireland to exile. That is what religion has 
 done. Take every country in the whole world, and the 
 country that has got the least religion is the most pros- 
 perous, and the country that has got the most religion is 
 in the worst condition. 
 
 In the vast cemetery, called the past, are most of the 
 religions of men and there, too, are nearly all their gods. 
 
 The sacred temples of India were ruins long ago. Over 
 column and cornice; over the painted and pictured walls, 
 cling and creep the trailing vines. Brahma, the golden, 
 with four heads and four arms; Vishnu, the sombre, the 
 punisher of the wicked, with his three eyes, his crescent, 
 and his necklace of skulls; Siva, the destroyer, red with 
 
74-2 INGERSOLLS LECTURES. 
 
 seas of blood; Kali, the goddess; Draupadi, the white- 
 armed, and Chrishna, the Christ, all passed away and 
 left the thrones of heaven desolate. Along the banks of 
 the sacred Nile, Iris no longer wandering weeps, search- 
 ing for the dead Osiris. The shadow of Typhon's scowl 
 falls no more upon the waves. The sun rises as of yore, 
 and his golden beams still smite the lips of Memnon, but 
 Memnon is as voiceless as the Sphinx. The sacred fanes 
 are lost in desert sands; the dusty mummies are still wait- 
 ing for the resurrection promised by their priests, and the 
 old beliefs wrought in curiously sculptured stone, sleep in 
 the mystery of a language lost and dead Odin, the author 
 of life and soul, Vili and Ve, and the mighty giant Ymir, 
 strode long ago from the ice halls of the North; and 
 Thor, with iron glove and glittering hammer, dashes 
 mountains to the earth no more. 
 
 Broken are the circles and the cromlechs of the ancient 
 Druids; fallen upon the summits of the hills, and covered 
 with the centuries' moss are the sacred cairns. The 
 divine fires of Persia and of the Aztecs have died out in 
 the ashes of the past, and there is none to rekindle, and 
 none to feed the holy flames. The harp of Orpheus is 
 still; the drained cup of Bacchus has been thrown aside; 
 Venus lies dead in stone, and her white bosom heaves no 
 more with love. The streams still murmur, but no 
 naiads bathe; the trees still wave, but in the forest aisles 
 no dryads dance. The gods have flown from high Olym- 
 pus. Not even the beautiful women can lure them back, 
 and Danae lies unnoticed, naked to the stars. Hushed 
 forever are the thunders of Sinai; lost are the voices of 
 the prophets, and the land once flowing with milk and 
 honey is but a desert waste. One by one the myths have 
 
HOW THE GODS GROW. 743 
 
 faded from the clouds; one by one the phantom host has 
 disappeared, and, one by one, facts, truths and realities 
 have taken their places. The supernatural has almost 
 gone, but man is the natural remains. The gods have 
 fled, but man is here. Nations, like individuals, have 
 their periods of youth, of manhood and decay. Religions 
 are the same. The same inexorable destiny awaits them 
 all. The gods created with the nations must perish with 
 their creators. They were created by men, and, like 
 men, they must pass away. The deities of one age are 
 the by-words of the next. The religion of our day, and 
 country, is no more exempt from the sneer of the future 
 than others have been. When India was supreme, 
 Brahma sat upon the world's throne. When the sceptre 
 passed to Egypt, Isis and Osiris received the homage of 
 mankind. Greece, with her fierce valor, swept to 
 empire, and Zeus put on the purple of authority. The 
 earth trembled with the tread of Rome's intrepid sons, 
 and Jove grasped with mailed hand the thunderbolts of 
 heaven. Rome fell, and Christians from her territory, 
 with the red sword of war, carved out the ruling nations 
 of the world, and now Jehovah sits upon the old throne. 
 Who will be His successer? 
 
INGEKSOLL'S LECTURE 
 
 ON 
 
 THE RELIGION OF OUR DAY. 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I am glad that I have 
 lived long enough to see one gentleman in the pulpit 
 brave enough to say that God would not be offended at 
 one* who speaks according to the dictates of his con- 
 science; who does not believe that God will give wings 
 to a bird, and then damn the bird for flying. I thank 
 the pastor and I thank the church for allowing its pastor 
 to be so brave. 
 
 I admit that thousands and thousands of church peo- 
 ple, with their pastors and the deacons, are to-day ad- 
 vocating religious principles that they deem right and 
 good. I honor these men, but I do not believe that 
 their method is a good one. I do not want these people 
 to forgive me for the views I entertain, but I want them 
 so to act that I will not have to forgive them. I am the 
 friend of every one who preaches the gospel of absolute 
 intellectual liberty, and that man is my friend. 
 
 744 
 
THE RELIGION OF OUR DAY. 745 
 
 Is there a God who says that if man does so and so 
 He will damn him ? Can there be such a fiend ? I am 
 not responsible to man unless I injure him; nor to God 
 unless I injure Him, but one cannot injure God, for "He 
 is infinite." 
 
 When I was young I was told that the bible was in- 
 spired, written by God, that even the lids of the book 
 were inspired. They say He is a personal God; if so, 
 He has not revealed Himself to me. There may be many 
 gods. As I look around I see that justice does not pre- 
 vail, that innocence is not always effectual and a perfect 
 shield. If there be a God these things could not be. If 
 God made us all, why did He not make us all equally 
 well. He had the power of an infinite god. Why did 
 God people the earth with so many idiots ? I admit that 
 orthodoxy could not exist without them, but why did 
 God make them ? If we believe the bible then He should 
 have made us all idiots, for the orthodox Christian says 
 the idiots will not be damned, simply transplanted, 
 while the sensible man, who believeth not, will be sent 
 to eternal damnation ? If there is any God that made 
 us, what right had He to make idiots ? Is a man with a 
 head like a pin under any obligation to thank God ? Is 
 the black man, born in slavery, under any obligation to 
 thank God for his badge of servitude ? 
 
 What kind of a God is it that will allow men and 
 women to be put in dungeons and chains simply because 
 they loved Him and prayed to Him ? And what kind of 
 a God is it that will allow such men and women to be 
 burned at the stake ? If God won't love such men and 
 women, then under what circumstances will he love ? 
 
746 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 Famine stalks over the land and millions die, not only 
 the bad but the good, and there in the heavens above 
 sits an infinite God who can do anything, can change the 
 rocks and the stones, and yet these millions die. I do 
 not say there is no God, but I do ask, what is God do- 
 ing ? Look at the agony, and wretchedness and woe all 
 over the land. Is there goodness, is there mercy in this ? 
 I do not say there is not, but I want to know, and I want 
 to know if a man is to be damned for asking the ques- 
 tion ? 
 
 (He eloquently recited the agonies that clustered around 
 the French Bastile, where great men and heroic women 
 suffered and died for loving liberty, and said: If there is 
 a God, I think that one word, Bastile, would bring the 
 blush of shame to His face.) 
 
 I find that the men who have received revelation are 
 the worst; and that where the bible goes there go the 
 sword and the fagot . If an infinite God makes a reve- 
 lation to me He knows how I will understand it. If God 
 wrote the bible he knew that no two people would under- 
 stand it alike. 
 
 When I read the bible I found that God in His infinite 
 wisdom couldn't control the people He had created and 
 that He had to drown them. If I had infinite power 
 and couldn't make a people that I could control and had 
 to drown them, why I'd resign. 
 
 Then I read in the bible such cruel things, and I do 
 not believe that God can be cruel. Such cruelty may 
 make one afraid, but cannot inspire love. I can't love a 
 god that will inflict pain and sorrow, and I won't. 
 
 The preachers say all unbelievers will go to hell tid- 
 ings of great joy. When I confront them they say I'm 
 
THE RELIGION OF OUR DAY. 747 
 
 taking away their consolation. The old bible does not 
 mention hell or heaven. Now God should have notified 
 Adam and Cain of hell, but He didn't. When He came 
 to drown all those people He didn't tell a single one that 
 He would drown him. He talked all about water noth- 
 ing about fire. When He came down on Mount Sinai, 
 and told Moses how to cut out clothes for a priest, He 
 never said one word on the subject. When God gave 
 Moses the ten commandments, engraved on stone, there 
 He said not one word about hell. There was plenty of 
 room on the stone; why did He not add: "If you don't 
 keep these commandments you will be damned." Through 
 all these ages, when God was talking all the time, and 
 when every howling prophet had His ear, not one word 
 did He utter of hell or heaven. For 4,000 years God 
 got along without mentioning those places or even hint- 
 ing of them. It seems to me that we ought to have been 
 notified by Him. 
 
 (Here the orator recalled many stories from the old 
 bible and subjected them to keen irony and ridicule. 
 Reciting the story wherein the she bears came out of the 
 woods and tore to pieces the forty children who mocked 
 the prophet, he asked: If God did that, what would the 
 devil have done under the same circumstances ? Why, 
 he said, did not God give a sure cure for leprosy, unless 
 He wanted to have His chosen people to have that 
 frightful disease ?) 
 
 Do you believe that God ever told a widow if her 
 brother-in-law refused to marry her to spit in his face ? Do 
 you believe any such nonsense from a god ? I call that 
 courting under difficulties. (Then Colonel Ingersoll dwelt 
 pathetically on the sweet, innocent babes eaten up by 
 
748 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 the lions in the den, after Daniel was rescued from their 
 jaws, and asked the question, what kind of a god was it 
 that allowed such horrible' deeds ? 
 
 They say that I pick out all the bad things in the bible. 
 Well, God ought not to have put bad things in the book. 
 If you only read the bible YOU will not believe it. Why, 
 it is such a bad book that it has to be supported by leg- 
 islation. In Maine and elsewhere they will send you to 
 jail for two years if you deny the bible or the judgment 
 day. 
 
 No, we are told we must not only believe in the God 
 we have been talking about, but must also believe in an- 
 other one. 
 
 Let us look at the church to-day. The orthodox 
 church that is, all but the Universalist. He is trying 
 to be orthodox, but he can't get in. The God of the 
 Universalists, to say the least, is a gentleman. 
 
 Now, what is this religion ? To believe certain things 
 that we may be saved, that we won't be damned. What 
 are they ? 
 
 First, that the old and new testament are inspired. 
 No matter how kind, how just a man may be, unless he 
 believes in the inspiration, he will be damned. 
 
 Second, he must believe in the trinity. That there 
 are three in one. That father and son are precisely of 
 the same age, the son, possibly, a little mite older; that 
 three times one is one, and that once one is three. It 
 is a mercy you don't know how to understand it, but 
 you must believe it or be damned. Therein you see the 
 mercy of the Lord . This trinity doctrine was announced 
 several hundred years after Christ was born. 
 
 Do you believe such a doctrine will make a man good 
 
THE RELIGION OF OUR DAY. 749 
 
 or honest ? Will it make him more just ? Is the man 
 that believes any better than the man who does not be- 
 lieve ? 
 
 How is it with nations ? Look at Spain, the last 
 slaveholder in the civilized world; she's Christian, she 
 believes in the trinity ! And Italy, the beggar of the 
 world. Under the rule of priestcraft money streamed in 
 from every land and yet she did not advance. To-day she 
 is reduced to a hand-organ. Take poor Ireland, groan- 
 ing under the heel of British oppression; could she cast 
 off her priests she would soon be one with America in 
 freedom. 
 
 Protestantism is better than Catholicism, because there 
 is less of it. Both dread education. They say they 
 brought the arts and sciences out of the dark ages; why, 
 they made the dark ages and what did they preserve ? 
 Nothing of value, only an account of events that never 
 happened. What did they teach the world ! Slavery ! 
 
 The best country the sun ever shown upon is the 
 northern part of the United States, and there you will 
 find less religion than anywhere else on the face of the 
 earth. You will find here more people that don't believe 
 the bible, and you will find better husbands, better 
 wives, happier homes, where the women are most re- 
 spected and where the children get less blows and more 
 huggings and kissings. We have improved just as we 
 lost this religion and this superstition. 
 
 Great Britain is the religious nation par excellence, 
 and there you will find the most cant and most hypoc- 
 ricy. They are always thanking God that they have 
 killed somebody. Look at the opium war with China. 
 They forced the Chinese to open their ports and receive 
 
750 IXGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 the deadly drug, and then had the impudence to send a. 
 lot of driviling idiots of missionaries into China. 
 
 Go around the world, and where you find the least 
 superstition, there you will find the best men, the best 
 women, the best children. Two powerful levers are at 
 work; love and intelligence. The true test of a man is 
 generosity, that covers a multitude of sins. 
 
 They have got so now they damn a man on a techni- 
 cality. You must be baptized by immersion, sprinkling 
 or pouring. If you come to the day of judgment and 
 can't show the water-mark, you're damned ! 
 
 What more: That a fellow named Adam, whom you 
 don't know and never voted for, is your representative. 
 You are charged with his sins. Equally abused is the 
 doctrine of atonement, that you are created with the 
 sacrifice of another. 
 
 If Christ had more virtue than Adam had meanness, 
 then you are ahead. 
 
 Atonement is the corner-stone of the Christian religion. 
 But there is one great objection. It saves the wrong 
 man, and it is not honest. (In holding up the atone- 
 ment to ridicule the orator said: " If Judas had failed to 
 betray Christ, the mother of Christ would be in hell to- 
 day. " 
 
 Then he ridiculed the miracles recorded in the new 
 testament, pronounced them absurdities. He said that 
 the four apostolic writers were very contradictory in 
 their statements, and did not even agree as to the last 
 word of this great man. 
 
 The ascension was the most striking, the grandest of 
 the miracles, if true, yet the ascension is only recorded 
 by two of these writers. If He was God, I know he will 
 
THE RELIGION OF OUR DAY. 751 
 
 forgive somebody for not believing the miracles, unless 
 convinced. 
 
 Another contradiction in the book: In one gospel the 
 condition of salvation is "whosoever believeth shall not 
 be damned," and in another we are promised that if we 
 forgive our enemies God will forgive us and there's 
 sense in this last promise. The first I believe a lie it 
 was never spoken by God. 
 
 Christ said: Love your enemies. Nobody can do that. 
 The doctrine of Confucius is sound to love one's friends 
 and to do justice to one's enemies without any mixture 
 of revenge. 
 
 If Christ was God, did He not know on His cross what 
 crimes would be done in His name ? Why didn't He 
 settle all disputes about the trinity and about baptism ? 
 Why didn't He post His disciples ? Because He could 
 no more see into the future than I can. Only in this 
 way can you acquit him of the crimes committed in His 
 name. 
 
 The way to save our own souls is to save another soul. 
 God can't turn into hell a man who makes on this earth 
 a little heaven for himself, wife and babes. 
 
 Any minister who preaches the doctrine of hell ought 
 to be ashamed. I want, if I can while I live, to put an 
 end to all belief in this infamous doctrine. That doc- 
 trine has done incalculable harm, wrought incalculable 
 injury. I despise it, and I defy it. 
 
 The orthodox church says that religion does good; 
 that it restrains crime. It restrains a man from arti- 
 ficial, not from natural crimes. A man can be made so 
 religious that he will not eat meat on Friday, yet he will 
 steal 
 
752 
 
 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 Did you ever hear of a tramp coming to town and in- 
 quiring where the deacon of the Presbyterian church 
 lived . 
 
 The bible says consider the lilies. What good would 
 it do a naked man standing out in the bitter blasts of 
 this night to consider the lilies. 
 
 What is the social position of a man in heaven who 
 through all eternity remembers that if he had had a 
 grain of courage he would never have been there. 
 
 The realization of our day does not satisfy the intelli- 
 gence of the people the people have outgrown it. It 
 shocks us and we have got to have another religion. We 
 must have a religion of charity; one that will do away 
 with poverty, close the prisons and cover this world 
 with homes. 
 
INGEKSOLL'S LECTUKE 
 
 ON- 
 
 HERETICS AND HERESIES. 
 
 " Liberty, a word without which 
 
 All other words are vain." 
 
 Whoever has an opinion of his own, and honestly- ex- 
 presses it, will be guilty of heresy. Heresy is what the 
 minority believe; it is a name given by the powerful to 
 the doctrine of the weak. This word was born of the 
 hatred, arrogance, and cruelty of those who love their 
 enemies, and who, when smitten on one cheek, turn the 
 other. This word was born of intellectual slavery in the 
 feudal ages of thought. It was an epithet used in the 
 place of argument. From the commencement of the 
 Christian era, every art has been exhausted, and every 
 conceivable punishment inflicted to force all people to 
 hold the same religious opinions. This effort was born 
 of the idea that a certain belief was necessary to the sal- 
 vation of the soul. Christ taught, and the church still 
 teaches, that unbelief is the blackest of crimes. God is 
 
 753 
 
754 INGERSOLLS LECTURES. 
 
 supposed to hate with an infinite and implacable hatred, 
 every heretic upon the earth, and the heretics who have 
 died are supposed, at this moment, to be suffering the 
 agonies of the damned. The church persecutes the liv- 
 ing, and her God burns the dead. 
 
 It is claimed that God wrote a book called the bible, 
 and it is generally admitted that this book is somewhat 
 difficult to understand. As long as the church had all the 
 copies of this book, and the people were not allowed to 
 read it, there was comparatively little heresy in the world; 
 but when it was printed and read, people began honestly 
 to differ as to its meaning. A few were independent and 
 brave enough to give the world their real thoughts, and 
 for the extermination of these men the church used all 
 her power. Protestants and catholics vied with each 
 other in the work of enslaving the human mind. For 
 ages they were rivals in the infamous effort to rid the 
 earth of honest people. They infested every country, 
 every city, town, hamlet, and family. They appealed to 
 the worst passions of the human heart. They sowed the 
 seeds of discord and hatred in every land. Brother de- 
 nounced brother, wives informed against their husbands, 
 mothers accused their children, dungeons were crowded 
 with the innocent; the flesh of the good and true rotted 
 in the clasp of chains, the flames devoured the heroic, 
 and in the name of the most merciful God, his children 
 were exterminated with famine, sword and fire. Over 
 the wild waves of battle rose and fell the banner of Jesus 
 Christ. For sixteen hundred years the robes of the 
 church were red with innocent blood. The ingenuity of 
 Christians was exhausted in devising punishment severe 
 enough to be inflicted upon other Christians who honestly 
 
HERETICS AND HERESIES. 755 
 
 and sincerely differed with them upon any point what- 
 ever. 
 
 Give any orthodox church the power, and to-day they 
 would punish heresy with whip, and chain, and fire. As 
 long as a church deems a certain belief essential to salva- 
 tion, just so long it will kill and burn if it has thepow^r. 
 Why should the church pity a man whom her God hates? 
 Why should she show mercy to a kind and noble heretic 
 whom her God will burn in eternal fire? Why should a 
 Christian be better than his God? It is impossible for 
 the imagination to conceive of a greater atrocity than has 
 been perpetrated by the church. 
 
 Let it be remembered that all churches have persecuted 
 heretics to the extent of their power. Every nerve in the 
 human body capable of pain has been sought out and 
 touched by the church. Toleration has increased only 
 when and where the power of the church has diminished. 
 From Augustine until now the spirit of the Christian has 
 remained the same. There has been the same intoler- 
 ance, the same undying hatred of all who think for them- 
 selves, the same determination to crush out of the human 
 brain all knowledge inconsistent with the ignorant creed. 
 
 Every church pretends that it has a revelation from 
 God, and that this revelation must be given to the people 
 through the church; that the church acts through its 
 priests, and that ordinary mortals must be content with 
 a revelation not from God but from the church. Had 
 the people submitted to this preposterous claim, of 
 course there could have been but one church, and that 
 church never could have advanced. It might have ret- 
 rograded, because it is not necessary to think, or inves- 
 tigate, in order to forget. Without heresy there could 
 have been no progress. 
 
756 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 The highest type of the orthodox Christian does not 
 forget. Neither does he learn. He neither advances 
 nor recedes. He is a living fossil, imbedded in that rock 
 called faith. He makes no effort to better his condition, 
 because all his strength is exhausted in keeping other 
 people from improving theirs. The supreme desire of 
 his heart is to force all others to adopt his creed, and in 
 order to accomplish this object, he denounces all kinds of 
 free thinking as a crime, and this crime he calls heresy. 
 When he had the power, heresy was the most terrible 
 and formidable of words. It meant confiscation, exile, 
 imprisonment, torture, and death. 
 
 In those days the cross and rack were inseparable com- 
 panions. Across the open bible lay the sword and fagot. 
 Not content with burning such heretics as were alive, 
 they even tried the dead, in order that the church might 
 rob their wives and children . The property of all her- 
 etics was confiscated, and on this account they charged 
 the dead with being heretical indicted, as it were, their 
 dust to the end that the church might clutch the bread 
 of orphans. Learned divines discussed propriety of tear- 
 ing out the tongues of heretics before they were burned, 
 and the general opinion was that this ought to be done, 
 so that the heretics should not be able, by uttering blas- 
 phemies, to shock the Christians who were burning them. 
 With a mixture of ferocity and Christianity, the priests 
 insisted that heretics ought to be burned at a slow fire, 
 giving as a reason, that more time was given them for 
 repentance. 
 
 No wonder that Jesus Christ said, "I came not to 
 bring peace but a sword! " 
 
 Every priest regarded himself as the agent of God. 
 
HERETICS AND HERESIES 757 
 
 He answered all questions by authority, and to treat him 
 with disrespect was an insult offered to God. No one 
 was asked to think, but all were commanded to obey. 
 
 In 1208 the inquisition was established. Seven years 
 afterward; the fourth council of the Lateran enjoined all 
 kings and rulers to swear an oath that they would ex- 
 terminate heretics from their dominions. The sword of 
 the church was unsheathed, and the world was at the 
 mercy of ignorant and infuriated priests, whose eyes 
 feasted upon the agonies they inflicted. Acting as they 
 believed, or pretended to believe under the command of 
 God, stimulated by the hope of infinite reward in another 
 world hating heretics with every drop of their bastile 
 blood savage beyond description merciless beyond con- 
 ception these infamous priests in a kind of frenzied joy, 
 leaped upon the helpless victims of their rage. They 
 crushed their bones in iron boots, tore their quivering flesh 
 with iron hooks and pinchers, cut off their lips and eyelids, 
 pulled out their nails, and into the bleeding quick thrust 
 needles tore out their tongues, extinguished their eyes, 
 stretched them upon racks, flayed them alive, crucified 
 them with their head downward, exposed them to wild 
 beasts, burned them at the stake, mocked their cries and 
 groans, ravished their wives, robbed their children, and 
 then prayed God to finish the holy work in hell. 
 
 Millions upon millions were sacrificed upon the altars 
 of bigotry. The Catholic burned the Lutheran, the 
 Lutheran burned the Catholic; the Episcopalian tortured 
 the Presbyterian, the Presbyterian tortured the Episco- 
 palian. Every denomination killed all it could of every 
 other; and each Christian felt it duty bound to extermin- 
 ate every other Chistian who denied the smallest fraction 
 of his creed. 
 
758 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 In the reign of Henry the VIII. , that pious and moral 
 founder of the Apostolic Episcopal church, there was 
 passed by the Parliament of England an act entitled, 
 4 'An act for abolishing of (diversity of opinion." And in 
 this act was set forth what a good Christian was obliged 
 to believe. 
 
 First, that in the sacrament was the real body and 
 blood of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Second, that the body and blood of Jesus Christ was 
 in the bread, and the blood and body of Jesus Christ was 
 in the wine . 
 
 Third, that priests should not marry. 
 
 Fourth, that vows of chastity were of perpetual obliga- 
 tion . 
 
 Fifth, that private masses ought to be continued. 
 
 And sixth, that auricular confession to a priest must be 
 maintained. 
 
 This creed was made by law, in order that all men 
 might know just what to believe by simply reading the 
 st^tate. The church hated to see the people wearing out 
 their brains in thinking upon these subjects. It was 
 thought far better that a creed should be made by Parlia- 
 ment, so that whatever might be lacking in evidence 
 might be made up in force. The punishment for denying 
 the first article was death by fire. For the denial of any 
 other article, imprisonment, and for the second offense 
 death. 
 
 Your attention is called to these six articles, estab- 
 lished during the reign of Henry VIII, and by the Church 
 of England, simply because not one of these articles is 
 believed by that church to-day. If the law then made 
 by the church could be enforced now, every Episcopalian 
 would be burned at the stake. 
 
HERETICS AND HERESIES. 759 
 
 Similar laws were passed in most Christian countries, 
 as all orthodox churches firmly believed that mankind 
 could be legislated into heaven. According to the creed 
 of every church, slavery leads to heaven, liberty leads to 
 hell. It was claimed that God had founded the church, 
 and that to deny the authority of the church was to be a 
 traitor to God, and consequently an ally of the devil. To 
 torture and destroy one of the soldiers of Satan was a 
 duty no good Christian cared to neglect. Nothing can 
 be sweeter than to earn the gratitude of God by killing 
 your own enemies. Such a mingling of profit and re- 
 venge, of heaven for yourself and damnation for those 
 you dislike, is a temptation that your ordinary Christian 
 never resists. 
 
 According to the theologians, God, the father of us all 
 wrote a letter to His children. The children have always 
 differed somewhat as to the meaning of this letter. In 
 consequence of these honest differences, these brothers 
 began to cut out each other's hearts. In every land, 
 where this letter from God has been read, the children to 
 whom and for whom it was written have been filled with 
 hatred and malice. They have imprisoned and murdered 
 each other, and the wives and children of each other. In 
 the name of God every possible crime has been 
 committed, every conceivable outrage has been perpe- 
 trated. Brave men, tender and loving women, beautiful 
 girls, prattling babes have been exterminated in the name 
 of Jesus Christ. For more than fifty generations the 
 church has carried the black flag. Her vengeance has 
 been measured only by her power. During all these years 
 of infamy no heretic has ever been forgiven. With 
 the heart of a fiend she has hated; with the clutch of 
 
760. INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 avarice she has grasped; with the jaws of a dragon she 
 has devoured, pitiless as famine, merciless as fire, with 
 the conscience of a serpent. Such is the history of the 
 church of God. 
 
 I do not say, and I do not believe, that Christians are 
 as bad as their creeds. In spite of church and dogma, 
 there have been millions and millions of men and women 
 true to the loftiest and most generous promptings of the 
 human heart. They have been true to their convictions, 
 and with a self-denial and fortitude excelled by none, 
 have labored and suffered for the salvation of men. Im- 
 bued with the spirit of self-sacrifice, believing that by 
 personal effort they could rescue at least a few souls from 
 the infinite shadow of hell, they have cheerfully endured 
 every hardship and scorned danger and death. And yet, 
 notwithstanding all this, they believed that honest error 
 was a crime. They knew that the bible so declared, and 
 they believed that all unbelievers would be eternally lost. 
 They believed that religion was of God, and all heresy 
 of the devil. They killed heretics in defence of their own 
 souls and the souls of their children. They killed them, 
 because, according to their idea, they were the enemies 
 of God, and because the bible teaches that the blood of 
 the unbeliever is a most acceptable sacrifice to heaven. 
 Nature never prompted a loving mother to throw her 
 child into the Ganges. 
 
 Nature never prompted men to exterminate each other 
 for a difference of opinion concerning the baptism of in- 
 fants. These crimes have been produced by religions 
 filled with all that is illogical, cruel and hideous. These 
 religions were produced for the most part by ignorance, 
 tyranny, and hypocrisy. Under the impression that the 
 
HERETICS AND HERESIES. ?6l 
 
 infinite ruler and creator of the universe had commanded 
 the destruction of heretics and infidels, the church per- 
 petrated all these crimes. 
 
 Men and women have been burned for thinking that 
 there was but one God; that there was none; that the 
 Holy Ghost is younger than God; that God was some- 
 what older than his Son; for insisting that good works 
 will save a man, without faith; that faith will do without 
 good works; for declaring that a sweet babe will not be 
 barned eternally, because its parents failed to have its 
 head wet by a priest; for speaking of God as though He 
 had a nose; for denying that Christ was His own father; 
 for contending that three persons, rightly added together, 
 make more than one; for believing in purgatory; for deny- 
 ing the reality of hell; for pretending that priests can for- 
 give sins; for preaching that God is an essence; for deny- 
 ing that witches rode through the air on sticks; for doubt- 
 ing the total depravity of the human heart; for laughing 
 at irresistible grace, predestination, and particular re- 
 demption; for denying that good bread could be made of 
 the body of a dead man; for pretending that the Pope 
 was not managing this world for God, and in place of 
 God- for disputing the efficacy of a vicarious atonement; 
 for thinking that the Virgin Mary was born like other 
 people; for thinking that a man's rib was hardly sufficient 
 to make a good sized woman; for denying that God used 
 His finger for a pen; for asserting that prayers are not 
 answered, that diseases are not set to punish unbelief; for 
 denying the authority of the bible; for having a bible in 
 their possession; for attending mass, and for refusing to 
 attend; for wearing a surplice; for carrying a cross, and 
 for refusing; for being a Catholic, and for being a Pr Jtes- 
 
762 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 tant, for oemg an Episcopalian, a Presbyterian, a Baptist, 
 and for being a Quaker. In short, every virtue has been 
 a crime, and every crime a virtue. The church has 
 burned honesty and rewarded hypocrisy, and all this she 
 did because it was commanded by a book a book that 
 men had been taught implicitly to believe, long before 
 they knew one word that was in it. They had been 
 taught that to doubt the truth of this book, to examine 
 it, even, was a crime of such enormity that it could not 
 be forgiven, either in this world or in the next. 
 
 The bible was the real persecutor. The bible burned 
 heretics, built dungeons, founded the Inquisition, and 
 trampled upon all the liberties of men. 
 
 How long, O how long will mankind worship a book? 
 How long will they grovel in the dust before the ignor- 
 ant legends of the barbaric past? How long, O how 
 long will they pursue phantoms in a darkness deeper than 
 death? 
 
 Unfortunately for the world, about the beginning of 
 the sixteenth century a man by the name of Gerard 
 Chauvin was married to Jeanne Lefranc, and still more 
 unfortunately for the world, the fruit of this marriage 
 was a son, called John Chauvin, who afterward became 
 famous as John Calvin, the founder of the Presbyterian 
 church. 
 
 This man forged five fetters for the brain. These 
 fetters he called points. That is to say, predestination, 
 particular redemption, total depravity, irresistible grace, 
 and the perseverance of the saints. About the neck of 
 each follower he put a collar, bristling with these five 
 iron points. The presence of all these points on the 
 collar is still the test of orthodoxy in the church he 
 
HERETICS AND HERESIES. 763 
 
 founded. This man, when in the flush of youth, was 
 elected to the office of preacher in Geneva. He at once, 
 in union with Farel, drew up a condensed statement of 
 the Presbyterian doctrine, and all the citizens of Geneva, 
 on pain of banishment, were compelled to take an oath 
 that they believed this statement. Of this proceeding 
 Calvin very innocently remarked, that it produced great 
 satisfaction. A man by the name of Caroli had the 
 audacity to dispute with Calvin. For this outrage he 
 was banished. 
 
 To show you what great subjects occupied the attention 
 of Calvin, it is only necessary to state, that he furiously 
 discussed the question, as to whether the sacramental 
 bread should be leavened or unleavened. He drew up laws 
 regulating the cut of the citizens' clothes, and prescribing 
 their diet, and all whose garments were not in the Calvin 
 fashion were refused the sacrament. At last, the people be- 
 coming tired of this petty, theological tyranny, banished 
 Calvin. In a few years, however, he was recalled and 
 received with great enthusiasm. After this, he was su- 
 preme, and the will of Calvin became the law of Geneva. 
 
 Under the benign administration of Calvin, James 
 Gruet was beheaded because he had written some pro- 
 fane verses. The slightest word against Calvin or his 
 absurd doctrine was punished as a crime. 
 
 In 1553, a man was tried at Vienne by the Catholic 
 church for heresy. He was convicted and sentenced to 
 death by burning. It was his good fortune to escape. 
 Pursued by the sleuth hounds of intolerance he fled to 
 Geneva for protection. A dove flying from hawks, 
 sought safety in the nest of a vulture. This fugitive 
 from the cruelty of Rome asked shelter from John Calvin, 
 
764 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 who had written a book in favor of religious toleration. 
 Servetus had forgotten that this book was written by 
 Calvin when in the minority; that it was written in weak- 
 ness to be forgetten in power; that it was produced by 
 fear instead of principle. He did not know that Calvin 
 had caused his arrest at Vienne, in France, and had sent 
 a cop^ of his work, which was claimed to be blasphem- 
 ous to the archbishop. He did not then know that the 
 Protestant, Calvin, was acting as one of the detectives 
 of the Catholic church, and had been instrumental in 
 procuring his conviction for heresy. Ignorant of all this 
 unspeakable infamy, he put himself in the power of this 
 very Calvin. The maker of the Presbyterian creed 
 caused the fugitive Servetus to be arrested for blasphemy. 
 He was tried; Calvin was his accuser. He was convicted 
 and condemned to death by fire. On the morning of the 
 fatal day, Calvin saw him; and Servetus, the victim, 
 asked forgiveness of Calvin, the murderer, for anything 
 he might have said that had wounded his feelings. 
 Servetus was bound to the stake, the fagots were lighted. 
 The wind carried the flames somewhat away from his 
 body, so that he slowly roasted for hours. Vainly he 
 implored a speedy death. At last the flame climbed 
 around his form; through smoke and fire his murderers 
 saw a white, heroic face. And there they watched until 
 a man became a charred and shriveled mass. 
 
 Liberty was banished from Geneva, and nothing but 
 Presbyterianism was left; honor, justice, mercy, reason 
 and charity were all exiled; but the five points of pre- 
 destination, particular redemption, irresistible grace, to- 
 tal depravity, and the certain perseverance of the saints 
 remained instead. 
 
HERETICS AND HERESIES. 765 
 
 Calvin founded a little theocracy in Geneva, modeled 
 after the old testament, and succeeded in erecting the 
 most detestable government that ever existed, except the 
 one from which it was copied. 
 
 Against all this intolerance, one man, a minister, raised 
 his voice. The name of this man should never be for- 
 gotten. It was Castellio. This brave man had the 
 goodness and the courage to declare tfre innocence of 
 honest error. He was the first of the so-called reformers 
 to take this noble ground. I wish I had the genius to 
 pay a fitting tribute to his memory. Perhaps it would be 
 impossible to pay him a grander compliment than to say, 
 Castellio was in all things the opposite of Calvin. To 
 plead for the right of individual judgment was considered 
 as a crime, and Castellio was driven from Geneva by 
 John Calvin. By him he was denounced as a child of 
 the devil, as a dog of Satan, as a beast from hell, and as 
 one who, by this horrid blasphemy of the innocence of 
 honest error, crucified Christ afresh, and by him he was 
 pursued until rescued by the hand of death. 
 
 Upon the name of Castellio, Calvin heaved every 
 epithet, until his malice was satisfied and his imagination 
 exhausted. It is impossible to conceive how human 
 nature can become so frightfully perverted as to pursue a 
 fellow-man with the malignity of a fiend, simply because 
 he is good, just and generous. 
 
 Calvin was of a pallid, bloodless complexion, thin, 
 sickly, irritable, gloomy, impatient, egotistic, tyrannical, 
 heartless and infamous. He was a strange compound of 
 revengeful morality, malicious forgiveness, ferocious 
 charity, egotistic humility, and a kind of hellish justice. 
 In other words, he was as near like the God of the old 
 testament as his health permitted. 
 
766 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 The best thing, however, about the Presbyterians of 
 Geneva was, that they denied the power of the Pope, 
 and the best thing about the Pope was, that he was not a 
 Presbyterian. 
 
 The doctrines of Calvin spread rapidly, and were 
 eagerly accepted by multitudes on the continent. But 
 Scotland, in a few years, became the real fortress of 
 Presbyterianism. The Scotch rivaled the adherents of 
 Calvin, and succeeded in establishing the same kind of 
 theocracy that flourished in Geneva. The clergy took 
 possession and control of everybody and everything. It 
 is impossible to exaggerate the slavery, the mental deg- 
 radation, the abject superstition of the people of Scot- 
 land during the reign of Presbyterianism. Heretics were 
 hunted and devoured as though they had been wild beasts. 
 The gloomy insanity of Presbyterianism took possession 
 of a great majority of the people. They regarded their 
 ministers as the Jews did Moses and Aaron. They be- 
 lieved that they were the especial agents of God, and 
 that whatsoever they bound in Scotland would be bound 
 in heaven. There was not one particle of intellectual 
 freedom. No one was allowed to differ from the church, 
 or to even contradict a priest. Had Presbyterianism 
 maintained its ascendancy, Scotland would have been 
 peopled by savages to-day. The revengeful spirit of 
 Calvin took possession of the Puritans and caused them 
 to redden the soil of the new world with the brave blood 
 of honest men. Clinging to the five points of Calvin, 
 they, too, established governments in accordance with 
 the teachings of the old testament. They, too, attached 
 the penalty of death to the expression of honest thought. 
 They, too, believed their church supreme, and exerted 
 
HERETICS AND HERESIES. 767 
 
 all their power to curse this continent with a spiritual 
 despotism as infamous as it was absurd. They believed 
 with Luther that universal toleration is universal error, 
 and universal error is universal hell. Toleration was 
 denounced as a crime. 
 
 Fortunately for us, civilization has had a softening 
 effect upon the Presbyterian church. To the ennobling 
 influence of the arts and science the savage spirit of Cal- 
 vinism has, in some slight degree, succumbed. True, the 
 old creed remains substantially as it was written, but by 
 a kind of tacit understanding it has come to be regarded 
 as a relic of the past. The cry of <( heresy" has been 
 growing fainter and fainter, and, as a consequence, the 
 ministers of that denomination have ventured now and 
 then to express doubts as to the damnation of infants, 
 and the doctrine of total depravity. The fact is, the old 
 ideas became a little monotonous to the people. The 
 fall of man, the scheme of redemption and irresistible 
 grace, began to have a familiar sound. The preachers 
 told the old stories while the congregation slept. Some 
 of the ministers became tired of these stories themselves. 
 The five points grew dull, and they felt that nothing 
 short ot irresistible grace could bear this endless repeti- 
 tion. The outside world was full of progress, and in 
 every direction men advanced, while the church, anchored 
 to a creed, idly rotted at the shore. Other denomina- 
 tions, imbued some little with the spirit of investigation, 
 were springing up on every side, while the old Presbyte- 
 rian ark rested on the Ararat of the past, rilled with the 
 theological monsters of another age. 
 
 Lured by the splendors of the outer world, tempted by 
 the achievements of science, longing to feel the throw 
 
768 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 and beat of the mighty march of the human race, a few 
 of the ministers of this conservative denomination were 
 compelled by irresistible sense, to say a few words in 
 harmony with the splendid ideas of to-day. 
 
 These utterances have upon several occasions so nearly 
 awakened some of the members, that, rubbing their 
 eyes, they have feebly inquired whether these grand ideas 
 were not somewhat heretical? These ministers found 
 that just in proportion as their orthodoxy decreased, their 
 congregations increased. Those who dealt in the pure 
 unadulterated article, found themselves demonstrating 
 the five points to a less number of hearers than they had 
 points. Stung to madness by this bitter truth, this gall- 
 ing contrast, this harassing fact, the really orthodox have 
 raised the cry of heresy, and expect with this cry to seal 
 the lips of honest men. One of these ministers, and one 
 who has been enjoying the luxury of a little hones* 
 thought, and the real rapture of expressing it, has already 
 been indicted, and is about to be tried by the Presby- 
 tery of Illinois. 
 
 He has been charged: 
 
 First. With speaking in an ambiguous language in 
 relation to that dear old doctrine of the fall of man . 
 With having neglected to preach that most comforting 
 and consoling truth, the eternal damnation of the soul. 
 
 Surely, that man must be a monster who could wish 
 to blot this blessed doctrine out and rob earth's wretched 
 children of this blissful hope! 
 
 Who can estimate the misery that has been caused by 
 this most infamous doctrine of eternal punishment? 
 Think of the lives it has blighted of the tears it has 
 caused of the agony it has produced. Think of the 
 
HERETICS AND HERESIES. 769 
 
 millions who have been driven to insanity by this most 
 terrible of dogmas. This doctrine renders God the basest 
 and most cruel being in the universe. Compared with 
 him, the most frightful deities of the most barbarous and 
 degraded tribes are miracles of goodness and mercy. 
 There is nothing more degrading than to worship such a 
 God. Lower than this the soul can never sink. If the 
 doctrine of eternal damnation is true, let me have my 
 portion in hell, rather than in heaven with a God infam- 
 ous enough to inflict eternal misery upon any of the sons 
 of men. 
 
 Second With having spoken a few kind words of 
 Robert Collyer and John Stuart Mill . 
 
 I have the honor of a slight acquaintance with Robert 
 Collyer. I have read with pleasure some of his exquisite 
 productions. He has a brain full of the dawn, the head 
 of a philosopher, the imagination of a poet, and the sin- 
 cere heart of a child. 
 
 Is a minister to be silenced because he speaks fairly of 
 a noble and candid adversary? Is it a crime to compli- 
 ment a lover of justice, an advocate of liberty; one who 
 devoted his life to the elevation of man, the discovery of 
 truth, and the promulgation of what he believed to be 
 right? 
 
 Can that tongue be palsied by a presbytery that praises 
 a self-denying and heroic life? Is it a sin to speak a charit- 
 able word over the grave of John Stuart Mill? Is it 
 heretical to pay a just and graceful tribute to departed 
 worth? Must the true Presbyterian violate the sanctity 
 of the tomb, dig open the grave, and ask his God to curse 
 the silent dust? Is Presbyterianism so narrow that it 
 conceives of no excellence, of no purity of intention, of 
 
7/O INGERSOLLS LECTURES. 
 
 no spiritual and moral grandeur outside of its barbaric 
 creed? Does it still retain within its stony heart all the 
 malice of its founder? Is it still warming its fleshless 
 hands at the flames that consumed Servetus? Does it 
 still glory in the damnation of infants, and does it still 
 persist in emptying the cradle in order that perdition 
 may be filled? Is it still starving the soul and famishing 
 the heart? Is it still trembling and shivering, crouching 
 and crawling, before its ignorant confession of faith? 
 
 Had such men as Robert Collyer and John Stuart Mill 
 been present at the burning of Servetus, they would have 
 extinguished the flames with their tears. Had the Pres- 
 bytery of Chicago been there, they would have quietly 
 turned their backs, solemnly divided their coat-tails and 
 warmed themselves. 
 
 Third. With having spoken disparagingly of the doc- 
 trine of predestination. 
 
 If there is any dogma that ought to be protected by 
 law, predestination is that doctrine. Surely it 'is a cheer- 
 ful, joyous thing to one who is laboring, struggling and 
 suffering in this weary world, to think that before he ex- 
 isted, before the earth was, before a star had glittered in 
 the heavens, before a ray of light had left the quiver of 
 the sun, his destiny had been irrevocably fixed, and that 
 for an eternity before his birth he had been doomed to 
 bear eternal pain! 
 
 Fourth. With having failed to preach the efficacy of 
 "vicarious sacrifice." 
 
 Suppose a man had been convicted of murder, and was 
 about to be hanged the Governor acting as the execu- 
 tioner. And suppose just as the doomed man was to 
 suffer death, some one in the crowd should step forward 
 
HERETICS AND HERESIES. 7/1 
 
 and say, " I am willing to die in the place of that mur- 
 derer. He has a family, and I have none." And sup- 
 pose further that the Governor should reply. " Come 
 forward, young man, your offer is accepted. A murder 
 has been committed, and somebody must be hung, and 
 your death will satisfy the law just as well as the death 
 of the murderer." What would you then think of the 
 doctrine of " vicarious sacrifice?" 
 
 This doctrine is the consummation of two outrages 
 forgiving one ciime and committing another. 
 
 Fifth. With having inculcated a phase of the doctrine 
 commonly known as "Evolution" or "Development.'' 
 
 The church believes and teaches the exact opposite of 
 this doctrine. According to the philosophy of theology, 
 man has continued to degenerate for six thousand years. 
 To teach that there is that in Nature which impels to 
 higher forms and grander ends, is heresy of course. The 
 Deity will damn Spencer and his "Evolution," Darwin 
 and his "Origin of Species," Bastin and his "Spon- 
 taneous Generation," Huxley and his "Protoplasm," 
 Tyndall and his "Prayer Guage," and will save those, 
 and those only who declare that the universe has been 
 cursed from the smallest atom to the grandest star; that 
 everything tends to evil, and to that only; and that the 
 only perfect thing in Nature is the Presbyterian confes- 
 sion of faith. 
 
 Sixth. With having intimated that the reception of 
 Socrates and Penelope at heaven's gate was, to say the 
 least, a trifle more cordial than that of Catherine II. 
 
 Penelope waiting patiently and trustfully for her lord's 
 return, delaying her suitors, while sadly weaving and un- 
 weaving the shroud of Laertes, is the most perfect type 
 
77 2 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 of wife and woman produced by the civilization of 
 Greece. 
 
 Socrates, whose life was above reproach, and whose 
 death was beyond all praise, stands to-day, in the esti- 
 mation of every thoughtful man, at least the peer of 
 Christ. 
 
 Catharine II assassinated her husband. Stepping 
 upon his corpse, she mounted the throne. She was the 
 murderess of Prince Iwan, the grand-nephew of Peter the 
 Great, who was imprisoned for eighteen years, and who, 
 during all that time, saw the sky but once. Taken all in 
 all, Catharine was probably one of the most intellectual 
 beasts that ever wore a crown. 
 
 Catharine, however, was the head of the Greek Church, 
 Socrates was a heretic, and Penelope lived and died with- 
 out having once heard of " particular redemption," or 
 ''irresistible grace." 
 
 Seventh. With repudiating the idea of a "call "to 
 ministry, and pretending that men were "called," to 
 preach as they were to the other avocations of life. 
 
 If this doctrine is true, God, to say the least of it, is 
 an exceedingly poor judge of human nature. It is more 
 than a century since a man of true genius has been found 
 in an orthodox pulpit. Every minister is heretical just 
 to the extent that his intellect is above the average. The 
 Lord seems to be satisfied with mediocrity; but the peo- 
 ple are not. 
 
 An old deacon, wishing to get rid of an unpopular 
 preacher, advised him to give up the ministry, and turn 
 his attention to something else. The preacher replied 
 that he could not conscientiously desert the pulpit, as he 
 had a "call" to the ministry. To which the deacon 
 
HERETICS AND HERESIES. 773 
 
 replied, " That may be so, but it's mighty unfortunate 
 for you that when God called you to preach, He forgot 
 to call anybody to hear you." 
 
 There is nothing more stupidly egotistic than the claim 
 of the clergy that they are, in some divine sense, set 
 apart to the service of the Lord; that they have been 
 chosen and sanctified; that there is an infinite difference 
 between them and persons employed in secular affairs. 
 They teach us that all other professions must take care 
 of themselves; that God allows anybody to be a doctor, 
 a lawyer, statesman, soldier, or artist; that the Motts 
 and Coopers the Mansfields and Marshalls the Wilber- 
 forces and Sumners the Angelos and Raphaels were 
 never honored by a "call." These chose their profes- 
 sions and won their laurels without the assistance of the 
 Lord. All these men were left free to follow their own 
 inclinations while God was busily engaged selecting and 
 " calling " priests, rectors, elders, ministers and exhorters. 
 
 Eighth. With having doubted that God was the 
 author of the lOQth Psalm. 
 
 The portion of that Psalm which carries with it the 
 clearest and most satisfactory evidences of inspiration, 
 and which has afforded almost unspeakable consolation 
 to the Presbyterian church, is as follows: 
 
 "Set thou a wicked man over him; and let Satan 
 stand at his right hand. 
 
 "When he shall be judged, let him be condemned; 
 and let his prayer become sin. 
 
 " Let his days be few; and let .another take his office. 
 
 " Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. 
 
 " Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg; 
 let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places. 
 
774 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 "Let the extortioner catch all that he hated; and let 
 the strangers spoil his labor. 
 
 " Let there be none to. extend mercy unto him; neither 
 let there be none to favor his fatherless children. 
 
 " Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation 
 following let their name be blotted out. 
 
 * # # * # 
 
 "But do thou for me, O God the Lord, for Thy 
 name's sake; because Thy mercy is good, deliver thou me. 
 * * * I will greatly praise the Lord with my mouth." 
 
 Think of a God wicked and malicious enough to in- 
 spire this prayer. Think of one infamous enough to 
 answer it. 
 
 Had this inspired Psalm been found in some temple 
 erected for the worship of snakes, or in the possession of 
 some cannibal king, written with blood upon the dried 
 skins of babes, there would have been a perfect harmony 
 between its surroundings -and its sentiments. 
 
 No wonder that the author of this inspired Psalm 
 coldly received Socrates and Penelope, and reserved his 
 sweetest smiles for Catharine the Second! 
 
 Ninth. With having said that the battles in which 
 the Israelites engaged with the approval and command of 
 Jehovah surpassed in cruelty those of Julius Cassar. 
 
 Was it Julius Caesar who said, "And the Lord our 
 God delivered him before us; and we smote him, and his 
 sons, and all his people. And we took all his cities, and 
 utterly destroyed the men, and the women and the little 
 ones, of every city, we left none to remain? " 
 
 Did Julius Caesar send the following report to the 
 Roman Senate? "And we took all his cities at that 
 time, there was not a city which we took not from them, 
 
HERETICS AND HERESIES. 775 
 
 three-score city, all the region of Argob, the kingdom of 
 Og, in Bashan. All these cities were fenced with high 
 walls, gates and bars; besides un walled towns a great 
 many. And we utterly destroyed them, as we did unto 
 Sihon, king of Heshbon, utterly destroying the men, 
 women, and children of every city." 
 
 Did Caesar take the city of Jericho "and utterly 
 destroy all that was in the city, both man and woman, 
 young and old?" Did he smite " all the country of the 
 hills, and of the south, and of the vale, and of the springs, 
 and all their kings, and leave none remaining that 
 breathed, as the Lord God had commanded?" 
 
 Search the records of the whole world, find out the 
 history of every barbarous tribe, and you can find no 
 crime that touched a lower depth of infamy than those 
 the bible's God commanded and approved . For such a 
 God I have no words to express my loathing and con- 
 tempt, and all the words in all the languages of man 
 would scarcely be sufficient. Away with such a God! 
 Give me Jupiter rather, with lo and Europa, or even 
 Siva with his skulls and snakes, or give me none. 
 
 Tenth. With having repudiated the doctrines of 
 "total depravity." 
 
 What a precious doctrine is that of the total depravity 
 of the human heart! How sweet it is to believe that the 
 lives of all the good and great were continual sins and 
 perpetual crimes; that the love a mother bears her child 
 is, in the sight of God, a sin; that the gratitude of the 
 natural heart is simple meanness; that the tears of pity 
 are impure; that for the unconverted to live and labor for 
 others is an offense to heaven; that the noblest aspira- 
 tions of the soul are low and grovelling in the sight of 
 
776 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 God; that man should fall upon his knees and ask for- 
 giveness, simply for loving his wife and child, and that 
 even the act of asking forgiveness is in fact a crime. 
 
 Surely it is a kind of bliss to feel that every woman 
 and child in the wide world, with the exception of those 
 who believe the five points, or some other equally cruel 
 creed, and such children as have been baptized, ought at 
 this very moment to be dashed down to the lowest glow- 
 ing gulf of the hell! 
 
 Take from the Christian the history of his own church; 
 leave that entirely out of the question, and he has no 
 argument left with which to substantiate the total 
 depravity of man. 
 
 A minister once asked an old lady, a member of his 
 church, what she thought of the doctrine" of total 
 depravity, and the dear old soul replied that she thought 
 it a mighty good doctrine if the Lord would only give the 
 people grace enough to live up to it? 
 
 Eleventh. With having doubted the "perseverance 
 of the saints." 
 
 I suppose the real meaning of this doctrine is that Pres- 
 byterians are just as sure of going to heaven as all other 
 folks are of going to hell. The real idea being, that it 
 all depends upon the will of God, and not upon the 
 character of the person to be damned or saved; that God 
 has the weakness to send Presbyterians to Paradise, and 
 the justice to doom the rest of mankind to eternal fire. 
 
 It is admitted that no unconverted brain can see the 
 least of sense in this doctrine; that it is abhorrent to all 
 who have not been the recipients of a te new heart; " 
 that only the perfectly good can justify the perfectly in- 
 famous. 
 
HERETICS AND HERESIES. 777 
 
 It is contended that the saints do not persevere of their 
 own free will that they are entitled to no credit for per- 
 severing; but that God forces them to persevere; while on 
 the other hand, every crime is committed in accordance 
 with the secret will of God, who does all things for His 
 own glory. 
 
 Compared with this doctrine, there is no other idea, 
 that has ever been believed by man, that can properly be 
 called absurd. 
 
 As to the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, 
 I wish with all my heart that it may prove to be a fact. 
 I really hope that every saint, no matter how badly he 
 may break on the first quarter, nor how many shoes he 
 may cast at the half-mile pole, will foot it bravely down 
 the long home-stretch, and win eternal heaven by at least 
 a neck. 
 
 Twelfth. With having spoken and written somewhat 
 ightly of the idea of converting the heathen with doc- 
 trinal sermons. 
 
 Of all the failures of which we have any history or 
 knowledge the missionary effort is the most conspicuous. 
 The whole question has been decided here, in our own 
 country, and conclusively settled. We have nearly ex- 
 terminated the Indians; but we have converted none. 
 From the days of John Eliot to the execution of the last 
 Modoc, not one Indian has been the subject of irresisti- 
 ble grace or particular redemption. The few red men 
 who roam the Western wilderness have no thought or 
 care concerning the five points of Calvin. They are 
 utterly oblivious to the great and vital truths contained 
 in the Thirty-nine articles, the Saybrook platform, and 
 the resolutions of the Evangelical Alliance. No Indian 
 
778 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 has ever scalped another on account of his religious belief. 
 This of itself shows conclusively that the missionaries 
 have had no effect. 
 
 Why should we convert the heathen of China and kill 
 our own? Why should we send missionaries across the 
 seas, and soldiers over the plains? Why should we send 
 bibles to the East and muskets to the West? If it is im- 
 possible to convert Indians who have no religion of their 
 own; no prejudice for or against the " eternal procession 
 of the Holy Ghost," how can we expect to convert a 
 heathen who has a religion; who has plenty of gods and 
 bibles and prophets and Christs, and who has a religious 
 literature far grander than our own? Can we hope, with 
 the story of Daniel in the lion's den, to rival the stupend- 
 ous miracles of India? Is there anything in our bible as 
 lofty and loving as the prayer of the Buddhist? Com- 
 pare your "Confession of Faith" with the following: 
 
 " Never will I seek nor receive private individual sal- 
 vation never enter into final peace alone; but forever 
 and everywhere will I live and strive for the universal 
 redemption of every creature throughout all worlds. 
 Until all are delivered, never will I leave the world of sin, 
 sorrow and struggle, but will remain where I am." 
 
 Think of sending an average Presbyterian to convert a 
 man who daily offers this tender, this infinitely generous 
 and incomparable prayer! Think of reading the io9th 
 Psalm to a heathen who has a bible of his own, in which 
 is found this passage: Blessed is that man, and beloved 
 of all the gods, who is afraid of no man, and of whom no 
 man is afraid! " 
 
 Why should you read even the new testament to a 
 Hindoo, when his own Christna has said: " If a man 
 
HERETICS AND HERESIES. 7/9 
 
 strike thee, arid in striking drop his staff, pick it up and 
 hand it to him again? " Why send a Presbyterian to a 
 Sufi, who says: " Better one moment of silent contem- 
 plation and inward love, than seventy thousand years of 
 outward worship? " " Whosoever would carelessly tread 
 one worm that crawls on earth, that heartless one is darkly 
 alienate from God; but he that, living, embraceth all 
 things in his love, to live with him God bursts all bounds 
 above, below." 
 
 Why should we endeavor to thrust our cruel and heart- 
 less theology upon one who prays this prayer: " O God, 
 show pity toward the wicked; for on the good thou hast 
 already bestowed thy mercy by having created them 
 virtuous? " 
 
 Compare this prayer with the curses and cruelties of 
 the old testament with the infamies commanded and 
 approved by the being whom we are taught to worship 
 as a God, and with the following tender product of Pres- 
 byterianism: " It may seem absurd to human wisdom 
 that God should harden, blind, and deliver up some men 
 to a reprobate sense; that He should first deliver them 
 over to evil, and then condemn them for that evil; but 
 the believing spiritual man sees no absurdity in all this, 
 knowing that God would never be a whit less good, even 
 though He should destroy all men." 
 
 Of all the religions that have been produced by the 
 egotism, the malice, the ignorance and ambition of man, 
 Presbyterianism is the most hideous. 
 
 But what shall I sa^ more? for the time would fail me 
 to tell of Sabellianism, of a "Model trinity," and the 
 " eternal procession of the Holy Ghost? " 
 
 Upon these charges a minister is to be tried, here in 
 
780 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 Chicago; in this city of pluck and progress this marvel 
 of energy, and this miracle of nerve. The cry of ' ' her- 
 esy, " here, sounds like a -wail from the Dark Ages a 
 shriek from the Inquisition, or a groan from the grave of 
 Calvin. 
 
 Another effort is being made to enslave a man. 
 
 It is claimed that every member of the church has 
 solemnly agreed never to outgrow the creed; that he has 
 pledged himself to remain an intellectual dwarf. Upon 
 this condition the church agrees to save his soul, and he 
 hands over his brains to bind the bargain. Should a fact 
 be found inconsistent with the creed, he binds himself to 
 deny the fact and curse the finder. With scraps of dog- 
 mas and crumbs of doctrine, he agrees that his soul shall 
 be satisfied forever. What an intellectual feast the con- 
 fession of faith must be! It reminds one of the dinner 
 described by Sidney Smith, where everything was cold 
 except the water, and everything sour except the vinegar. 
 
 Every member of a church promises to remain ortho- 
 dox, that is to say stationary. Growth is heresy. 
 Orthodox ideas are the feathers that have been molted 
 by the eagle of progress. They are the dead leaves 
 under the majestic palm, while heresy is the bud and 
 blossom at the top. 
 
 Imagine a vine that grows at one end and decays at 
 the other. The end that grows is heresy; the end that 
 rots is orthodox. The dead are orthodox, and your 
 cemetery is the most perfect type of a well regulated 
 church. No thought, no progress, no heresy there. 
 Slowly and silently, side by side, the satisfied members 
 peacefully decay. There is only this difference the 
 dead do not persecute. 
 
HERETICS AND HERESIES. 781 
 
 And what does a trial for heresy mean? It means that 
 the church says to a heretic, " Believe as I do, or I will 
 withdraw my support; I will not employ you; I will pur- 
 sue you until your garments are rags; until your children 
 cry for bread; until your cheeks are furrowed with tears. 
 I will hunt you to the very portals of the tomb, and then 
 my God will do the rest. I will not imprison you. I 
 will not burn you. The law prevents my doing that. I 
 helped make the law, not, however, to protect you, nor 
 deprive me of the right to exterminate you, but in order 
 to keep other churches from exterminating me. " 
 
 A trial for heresy means that the spirit of persecution 
 still lingers in the church; that it still denies the right of 
 private judgment; that it still thinks more of creed than 
 truth; that it is still determined to prevent the intellectual 
 growth of man. It means that churches are shambles in 
 which are bought and sold the souls of men. It means 
 that the church is still guilty of the barbarity of opposing 
 thought with force. It means that if it had the power, 
 the mental horizon would be bounded by a creed, that it 
 would bring again the whips, and chains, and dungeon 
 keys, the rack and fagot of the past. 
 
 But let me tell the church it lacks the power. There 
 has been, and still are, too many men who own them- 
 selves too much thought, too much knowledge for 
 the church to grasp again the sword of power. The 
 church must abdicate. For the Eglon of superstition, 
 science has a message from truth. 
 
 The heretics have not thought and suffered and died in 
 vain. Every heretic has been, and is, a ray of light. 
 Not in vain did Voltaire, that great man, point from the 
 foot of the Alps, the finger of scorn at every hypocrite in 
 
782 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 Europe. Not in vain were the splendid utterances of 
 the infidels, while beyond all price are the discoveries of 
 science. 
 
 The church has impeded, but it has not and it cannot 
 stop the onward march of the human race. Heresy can- 
 not be burned, nor imprisoned, nor starved. It laughs 
 at presbyteries and synods, at (Ecumencial councils and 
 the impotent thunders of Sinai. Heresy is the eternal 
 dawn, the morning star, the glittering herald of the day. 
 Heresy is the last and best thought. It is the perpetual 
 new world; the unknown sea, toward which the brave all 
 sail. It is the eternal horizon of progress. Heresy ex- 
 tends the hospitalities of the brain to new thoughts. 
 Heresy is a cradle; orthodoxy a coffin. 
 
 Why should a man be afraid to think, and why should 
 he fear to express his thoughts? 
 
 Is it possible that an infinite Deity is unwilling that 
 man should investigate the phenomena by which he is 
 surrounded? Is it possible that a God delights in threat- 
 ening and terrifying men? What glory, what honor and 
 renown a God must win in such a field! The ocean rav- 
 ing at a drop; a star envious of a candle; the sun jealous 
 of a fire. fly! 
 
 Go on, presbyteries and synods, go on! Thrust 'the 
 heretics out of the church. That is to say, throw away 
 your braius put out your eyes. The Infidels will thank 
 you. They are willing to adopt your exiles. Every 
 deserter trom your camp is a recruit for the army of pro- 
 gress. Cling to the ignorant dogmas of the past; read 
 the lOQth Psalrn; gloat over the slaughter of mothers and 
 babes; thank God for total depravity; shower your honors 
 upon hypocrites, and silence every minister who is 
 touched with that heresy called genius. 
 
HERETICS AND HERESIES. 783 
 
 Be true to your history . Turn out the astronomers, 
 the geologists, the naturalists, the chemists, and all the 
 honest scientists. With a whip of scorpions, drive them 
 all out. We want them all. Keep the ignorant, the 
 superstitious, the bigoted, and the writers of charges and 
 specifications. Keep them, and keep them all. Repeat 
 your pious platitudes in the drowsy ears of the faithful, 
 and read your bible to heretics, as kings read some for- 
 gotten riot-act to stop and stay the waves of revolution. 
 You are too weak to excite anger. We forgive your 
 efforts as the sun forgives a cloud as the air forgives the 
 breath you waste. 
 
 How long, O how long will man listen to the threats 
 of God, and shut his ears to the spendid promises of 
 Nature? How long, O how long will man remain the 
 cringing slave of a false and cruel creed. 
 
 By this time the whole world should know that the 
 real bible has not yet been written; but is being written, 
 and that it will never be finished until the race begins its 
 downward march or ceases to exist. The real bible is 
 not the work of inspired men, nor prophets, nor apostles, 
 nor evangelists, nor of Christ. Every man who finds a 
 fact, adds, as it were, a word to this great book. It is 
 not attested by prophecy, by miracles or by signs. It 
 makes no appeal to faith, to ignorance, to credulity of 
 fear. It has no punishment for unbelief, and no reward 
 for hypocrisy. It appears to men in the name of demon- 
 stration. It has nothing to conceal. It has no fear of 
 being read, of being investigated and understood. It 
 does not pretend to be holy or sacred; it simply claims to 
 be true. It challenges the scrutiny of all, and implores 
 every reader to verify every line for himself. It is incapa" 
 
INGERSOLLS LECTURES. 
 
 ble of being blasphemed. This book appeals to all the 
 surroundings of man. Each thing that exists testifies of 
 its perfection. The earth with its heart of fire and 
 .crowns of snow; with its forests and plains, its rocks and 
 seas; with its every wave and cloud; with its every leaf, 
 and bud, and flower, confirms its every word, and the 
 solemn stars, shining rn the infinite abysses, are the 
 eternal witnesses of its truth. 
 
INGEKSOLL'S LECTUKE 
 
 ON 
 
 THE BIBLE: 
 
 The true bible appeals to man in the name of demon- 
 stration. It has nothing to conceal. It has no fear of 
 being read, of being contradicted, of being investigated 
 and understood. It does not pretend to be holy or sacred, 
 it simply claims to be true. It challenges the scrutiny 
 of all, and implores every reader to verify every line for 
 himself. It is incapable of being blasphemed. This 
 book appeals to all the surroundings of man. Each 
 thing that exists testifies of its perfection. The earth, 
 with its heart of fire and crowns of snow; with its forests 
 and plains, its rocks and seas; with its every wave and 
 cloud; with its every leaf and bud and flower, confirms 
 its every w.ord, and the solemn stars, shining in the in- 
 finite abysses, are the external witnesses of its truth. 
 
 I will tell you what I mean by inspiration. I go and 
 look at the sea, and the sea says something to me; it 
 makes an impression upon my mind. That impression 
 
 785 
 
786 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 depends, first, upon my experience; secondly, upon my 
 intellectual capacity. Another looks upon the same sea. 
 He has a different brain, .he has had a different experi- 
 ence, he has different memories and different hopes. 
 The sea may speak to him of joy and to me of grief and 
 sorrow. The sea cannot tell the same thing to two be- 
 ings, because no two human beings have had the same 
 experience. So, when I look upon a flower, or a star, 
 or a painting, or a statue, the more I know about sculp- 
 ture the more that statue speaks to me. The more I 
 have had of human experience, the more I have read, 
 the greater brain I have, the more the star says to me. 
 In other words, nature says to me all that I am capable 
 of understanding. 
 
 Think of a God wicked and malicious enough to in- 
 spire this prayer in the iO9th Psalm ! Think of one in- 
 famous enough to answer it ! Had this inspired Psalm 
 been found in some temple erected for the worship of 
 snakes, or in the possession of some cannibal king, writ- 
 ten with blood upon the dried skins of babes, there would 
 have been a perfect harmony between its surroundings 
 and its sentiments. 
 
 Now, I read the bible, and I find that God so loved 
 this world that he made up his mind to damn the most 
 of us. I have read this book and what shall I say of it ? 
 I believe it is generally better to be honest. Now, I 
 don't believe the bible. Had I not better say so ? They 
 say that if you do you will regret it when you come to 
 die. If that be true, I know a great many religious peo- 
 ple who will have no cause to regret it they don't tell 
 their honest convictions about the bible. 
 
 The bible was the real persecutor. The bible burned 
 
THE BIBLE. 787 
 
 heretics, built dungeons, founded the Inquisition, and 
 trampled upon all the liberties of men. How long, O how 
 long, will mankind worship a book ? How long will 
 they grovel in the dust before the ignorant legends of 
 the barbaric past ? How long, O how long, will they 
 pursue phantoms in a darkness deeper than death ? 
 
 The believers in the bible are loud in their denunciation 
 of what they are pleased to call the immoral literature of 
 the world; and yet few books have been published con- 
 taining more moral filth than this inspired word of God. 
 These stories are not redeemed by a single flash of wit 
 or humor. They never rise above the dull details of stupid 
 vice. For one, I cannot afford to soil my pages with 
 extracts from them; and all such portions of the scrip- 
 tures I leave to be examined, written upon, and ex- 
 plained by the clergy. Clergymen may know some way 
 by which they can extract honey from these flowers. 
 Until these passages are expunged from the old testa- 
 ment, it is not a fit book to be read by either old or 
 young. It contains pages that no minister in the United 
 States would read to his congregation for any reward 
 whatever. There are chapters that no gentleman would 
 read in the presence of a lady. There are chapters that 
 no father would read to his child. There are narratives 
 utterly unfit to be told; and the time will come when 
 mankind will wonder that such a book was ever called 
 inspired. 
 
 But as long as the bible is considered as the work of 
 God, it will be hard to make all men too good and pure 
 to imitate it; and as long as it is imitated there will be 
 vile and filthy books. The literature of our country will 
 not be sweet and clean until the bible ceases to be re- 
 garded as the production of a god. 
 
TNGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 In the days of Thomas Paine the church believed and 
 taught that every word in the bible was absolutely true. 
 Since his day it has been proven false in its cosmogony, 
 false in its astronomy, false in its chronology, false in its 
 history, and so far as the old testament is concerned, 
 false in almost everything. There are but few, if any, 
 scientific men who apprehend that the bible is literally 
 true. Who on earth at this day would pretend to settle 
 any scientific question by a text from the bible ? The 
 old belief is confined to the ignorant and zealous. The 
 church itself will before long be driven to occupy the 
 position of Thomas Paine ! 
 
 I love any man who gave me, or helped to give me, 
 the liberty I enjoy to-night. I love every man who 
 helped put our flag in heaven. I love every man who 
 has lifted his voice in all the ages for liberty, for a chain- 
 less body, and a fetterless brain. I love every man who 
 has given to every other human being every right that 
 he claimed for himself. I love every man who thought 
 more of principle than he did of position. I love the 
 men who have trampled crowns beneath their feet that 
 they might do something for mankind. 
 
 The best minds of the orthodox world, to-day, are en- 
 deavoring to prove the existence of a personal Deity. 
 All other questions occupy a minor place. You are no 
 longer asked to swallow the bible whole, whale, Jonah 
 and all; you are simply required to believe in God, and 
 pay your pew-rent. There is not now an enlightened 
 minister in the world who will seriously contend that 
 Samson's strength was in his hair, or that the necroman- 
 cers of Egypt could turn water into blood, and pieces of 
 wood into serpents. These follies have passed away. 
 
THE BIBLE. 789 
 
 For my part, I would infinitely prefer to know all the 
 results of scientific investigation than to be inspired as 
 Moses was. Supposing the bible to be true; why is it 
 any worse or more wicked for free-thinkers to deny it, 
 than for priests to deny the doctrine of evolution, or the 
 dynamic theory of heat ? Why should we be damned for 
 laughing at Samson and his foxes, while others, holding 
 the nebular hypothesis in utter contempt, go straight to 
 heaven ? 
 
 Now when I come to a book, for instance, I read the 
 writings of Shakespeare Shakespeare, the greatest hu- 
 man being who ever existed upon this globe. What do 
 I get out of him ? All that I have sense enough to under- 
 stand. I get my little cup full. Let another read him 
 who knows nothing of the drama, who knows nothing of 
 the impersonation of passion; what does he get from 
 him ? Very little. In other words, every man gets from 
 a book, a flower, a star, or the sea, what he is able to 
 get from his intellectual development and experience. 
 Do you then believe that the bible is a different book to 
 every human being that receives it ? I do. Can God, 
 then, through the bible, make the same revelation to two 
 men ? He cannot. Why ? Because the man who reads 
 is the man who inspires. Inspiration is in the man and 
 not in the book. 
 
 The real oppressor, enslaver and corrupter of the peo- 
 ple is the bible. That book is the chain that binds, the 
 dungeon that holds the clergy. That book spreads the 
 pall of supersition over the colleges and schools. That 
 book puts out the eyes of science, and makes honest in- 
 vestigation a crime. That book unmans the politician 
 and degrades the people. That book fills the world with 
 bigotry, hypocricy and fear. 
 
79 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 Volumes might be written upon the infinite absurdity 
 of this most incredible, wicked and foolish of all the 
 fables contained in that repository of the impossible, 
 called the bible. To me it is a matter of amazement, 
 that it ever was for a moment believed by any intelligent 
 human being. 
 
 Is it not infinitely more reasonable to say that this 
 book is the work of man, that it is filled with mingled truth 
 and error, with mistakes and facts, and reflects, too 
 faithfully perhaps, the "very form and pressure of its 
 time ? " If there are mistakes in the bible, certainly 
 they were made by man. If there is anything contrary 
 to nature, it was written by man. If there is anything 
 immoral, cruel, heartless or infamous, it certainly was 
 never written by a being worthy of the adoration of man- 
 kind. 
 
 It strikes me that God might write a book that would 
 not necessarily excite the laughter of his children. In 
 fact, I think it would be safe to say that a real god could 
 produce a work that would excite the admiration of man- 
 kind. 
 
 The man who now regards the old testament as, in 
 any sense, a sacred or inspired book is, in my judgment, 
 an intellectual and moral deformity. There is in it so 
 much that is cruel, ignorant and ferocious that it is to 
 me a matter of amazement that it was ever thought to 
 be the work of a most merciful deity. 
 
 Admitting that the bible is the book of God, is that 
 His only good job ? Will not a man be damned as quick 
 for denying the equator as denying the bible ? Will he 
 not be damned as quick for denying geology as for deny- 
 ing the scheme of salvation ? When the bible was first 
 
THE BIBLE. 
 
 written it was not believed. Had they known as much 
 about science as we know now, that bible would not 
 have been written. 
 
 Every sect is a certificate that God has not plainly re- 
 vealed His will to man. To each reader the bible con- 
 veys a different meaning. About the meaning of this 
 book, called a revelation, there have been- ages of war 
 and centuries of sword and flame. If written by an in- 
 finite God, He must have known that these results must 
 follow; and thus knowing, He must be responsible for all. 
 
 Paine thought the barbarities of the old testament in- 
 consistent with what he deemed the real character of 
 God. He believed that murder, massacre and indis- 
 criminate slaughter had never been commanded by the 
 Deity. He regarded much of the bible as childish, un- 
 important and foolish. The scientific world entertains 
 the same opinion. Paine attacked the bible precisely in 
 the same spirit in which he had attacked the pretensions 
 of kings. He used the same weapons. All the pomp in 
 the world could not make him cower. His reason knew 
 no <( Holy of Holies," except the abode of Truth. 
 
 Nothing can be clearer than that Moses received from 
 the Egyptians the principal parts of his narrative, mak- 
 ing such changes and additions as were necessary to 
 satisfy the peculiar superstitions of his own people. 
 
 According to the theologians, God, the Father of us 
 all, wrote a letter to His children. The children have 
 always differed somewhat as to the meaning of this letter. 
 In consequence of these honest difficulties, these broth- 
 ers tygan to cut out each other's hearts. In every 
 land, where this letter from God has been read, the 
 children to whom and for whom it was written have been 
 
79 2 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 filled with hatred and malice. They have imprisoned 
 and murdered each other, and the wives and children of 
 each other. In the name ot God every possible crime 
 has been committed, every conceivable outrage has been 
 perpetrated. Brave men, tender and loving women, 
 beautiful girls and prattling babes have been exterminated 
 in the name of Jesus Christ. 
 
 The church has burned honesty and rewarded hypoc- 
 ricy. And all this, because it was commanded by a book 
 a book that men had been taught implicitly to believe, 
 long before they knew one word that was in it. They 
 had been taught that to doubt the truth of this book to 
 examine it, even was a crime of such enormity that it 
 could not be forgiven, either in this world or in the next. 
 
 All that is necessary, as it seems to me, to convince 
 any reasonable person that the bible is simply and purely 
 of human invention of barbarian invention is to read 
 it. Read it as you would any other book; think of it as 
 you would any other; get the bandage of reverence from 
 your eyes; drive from your heart the phantom of fear; 
 push from the throne of your brain the cowled form of 
 superstition then read the holy bible, and you will be 
 amazed that you ever, for one moment, supposed a be- 
 ing of infinite wisdom, goodness and purity, to be the 
 author of such ignorance and such atrocity. 
 
 Whether the bible is false or true, is of no consequence 
 in comparison with the mental freedom of the race. 
 Salvation through slavery is worthless. Salvation from 
 slavery is inestimable. As long as man believes the bible 
 to be infallible, that book is his master. The civilization 
 of this century is not the child of faith, but of unbelief 
 the result of free thought. 
 
THE BIBLE. 793 
 
 What man who ever thinks, can believe that blood 
 can appease God ? And yet our entire system of religion 
 is based on that belief. The Jews pacified Jehovah with 
 the blood of animals, and according to the Christian sys- 
 tem, the blood of Jesus softened the heart of God a little, 
 and rendered possible the salvation of a fortunate few. 
 
 It is hard to conceive how any sane man can read the 
 bible and still believe in the doctrine of inspiration. 
 
 The bible was originally written in the Hebrew lan- 
 guage, and the Hebrew language at that time had no 
 vowels in writing. It was written entirely with conso- 
 nants, and without being divided into chapters and 
 verses, and there was no system of punctuation what- 
 ever. After you go home to-night write an English sen- 
 tence or two with only consonants close together, and 
 you will find that it will take twice as much inspiration 
 to read it as it did to write it. 
 
 The real bible is not the result of inspired men, nor 
 prophets, nor evangelists, nor of christs. The real bible 
 has not been written, but is being written. Every man 
 who finds a fact adds a word to this great book. 
 
 The bad passages in the brble are not inspired. No 
 god ever upheld human slavery, polygamy or a war of 
 extermination. No god ever ordered a soldier to sheathe 
 his sword in the breast of a motiier, No god ever ordered 
 a warrior to butcher a smiling, prattling babe. No god 
 ever upheld tyranny. No god ever said, be subject to 
 the powers that be. No god endeavored to make man a 
 slave and woman a beast of burden. There are thou- 
 sands^pf good passages in the bible. Many of them are 
 true. There are in it wise laws, good customs, some 
 lofty and splendid things. And I do not care whether 
 
794 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 they are inspired or not, so they are true. But what I 
 do insist upon is that the bad is not inspired. 
 
 There is no hope for you. It is just as bad to deny 
 hell as it is to deny heaven. Prof. Swing says the bible 
 is a poem. Dr. Ryder says it is a picture. The Garden 
 of Eden is pictorial; a pictorial snake and a pictorial 
 woman, I suppose, and a pictorial man, and may be it 
 was a pictorial sin. And only a pictorial atonement ! 
 
 Man must learn to rely on himself. Reading bibles 
 will not protect him from the blasts of winter, but houses, 
 fire and clothing will. To prevent famine one plow is 
 worth a million sermons, and even patent medicines will 
 cure more diseases than all the prayers uttered since the 
 beginning of the world. 
 
INGERSOLL'S LECTURE 
 
 ON 
 
 VOLTAIRE. 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: The infidels of one age 
 have often been the aureoled saints of the next. 
 
 The destroyers of the old are the creators of the new. 
 
 As time sweeps on the old passes away and the new 
 in its turn becomes of old. 
 
 There is in the intellectual world, as in the physical, 
 decay and growth, and ever by the grave of buried age 
 stand youth and joy. 
 
 The history of intellectual progress is written in the 
 lives of infidels. 
 
 Political rights have been preserved by traitors; the 
 liberty of mind by heretics. 
 
 To attack the king was treason; to dispute the priest 
 was blasphemy. 
 
 For many years the sword and cross were allies. To- 
 gether they attacked the rights of man. They defended 
 each other, 
 
 795 
 
796 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 The throne and altar were twins two vultures from 
 the same egg. 
 
 James I said: ' No bishop; no king." He might have 
 added: No cross, no crown. The king owned the bodies 
 of men; the priest, the souls. One lived on taxes col- 
 lected by force, the other on alms collected by fear 
 both robbers, both beggars. 
 
 These robbers and these beggars controlled two worlds. 
 The king made laws, the priest made creeds. Both ob- 
 tained their authority from God, both were the agents 
 of the infinite. With bowed backs the people carried 
 the burdens of one, and with wonder's open mouth re- 
 ceived the dogmas of the other. If the people aspired 
 to be free, they were crushed by the king, and every 
 priest was a Herod, who slaughtered the children of the 
 brain. 
 
 The king ruled by force, the priest by fear, and both 
 by both. The king said to the people: " God made you 
 peasants, and He made me king; He made you to labor, 
 and me to enjoy; He made rags and hovels for you, 
 robes and palaces for me. He made you to obey and me 
 to command. Such is the justice of God," And the 
 priest said: "God made you ignorant and vile; He made 
 me holy and wise; you are the sheep, I am the shepherd; 
 your fleeces belong to me. If you do not obey me here, 
 God will punish you now and torment you forever in an- 
 other world. Such is the mercy of God." 
 
 "You must not reason. Reason is a rebel. You must 
 not contradict contradiction is born of egotism; you 
 must believe. He that has ears to hear let him hear. 
 Heaven is a question of ears." 
 
 Fortunately for us, there have been traitors and there 
 
VOLTAIRE. 797 
 
 have been heretics, blasphemers, thinkers, investigators, 
 lovers of liberty, men of genius, who have given their 
 lives to better the condition of their fellow-men. 
 
 It may be well enough here to ask the question: ' 'What 
 is greatness?" A great man adds to the sum of know- 
 ledge, extends the horizon of thought, releases souls from 
 the Bastile of fear, crosses unknown and mysterious seas, 
 gives new islands and new continents to the domain of 
 thought, new constellations to the firmament of mind. 
 A great man does not seek applause or place; he seeks 
 for truth; he seeks the road to happiness, and what he 
 ascertains he gives to others. 
 
 A great man throws pearls before swine, and the swine 
 are sometimes changed to men. If the great had always 
 kept their pearls, vast multitudes would be barbarians 
 now. 
 
 A great man is a torch in the darkness, a beacon in 
 superstition's night, an inspiration and a prophecy. 
 Greatness is not the gift of majorities; it cannot be 
 thrust upon any man; men cannot give it to another; 
 they can give place and power, but not greatness. The 
 place does not make the man, nor the sceptre the king. 
 Greatness is from within. 
 
 The great men are the heroes who have freed the bod- 
 ies of men; they are the philosophers and thinkers who 
 have given liberty to the soul; they are the poets who 
 have transfigured the common and filled the lives of 
 minv millions with love and song. " They are the artists 
 who have covered the bare walls of weary life with the 
 triumphs of genius. They are the heroes who have slain 
 the monsters of ignorance and fear, who have outgazed 
 the Gorgon and driven the cruel gods from their thrones. 
 
INGERSOLLS LECTURES. 
 
 They are the inventors, the discoverers, the great me- 
 chanics, the kings of the. useful who have civilized this 
 world. 
 
 At the head of this heroic army, foremost of all, stands 
 Voltaire, whose memory we are honoring to-night. 
 
 Voltaire ! a name that excites the admiration of men, 
 the malignity of priests. Pronounce that, name in the 
 presence of a clergyman, and you will find that you have 
 made a declaration of war. Pronounce that name, and 
 from the face of the priest the mask of meekness will 
 fall, and from the mouth of forgiveness will pour a 
 Niagara of vituperation and calumny. And yet Voltaire 
 was the greatest man of his century, and did more for 
 the human race than any other of the sons of men. 
 
 On Sunday, the 2ist of November, 1694, a babe was 
 born; a babe exceedingly frail, whose breath hesitated 
 about remaining. This babe became the greatest man 
 of the eighteenth century. 
 
 When Voltaire came to this " great stage of fools, " 
 his country had been christianized not civilized for 
 about fourteen hundred years. For a thousand years 
 the religion of peace and good will had been supreme. 
 The laws had been given by Christian kings, sanctioned 
 by 4< wise and holy men." 
 
 Under the benign reign of universal love, every court 
 had its chamber of torture, and every priest relied on 
 the thumbscrew and rack. Such had been the success 
 of the blessed gospel that every science was an outcast. 
 To speak your honest thoughts, to teach your fellow 
 men, to investigate for yourself, to seek the truth, these 
 were crimes, and the "Holy Mother Church" pursued 
 the criminals with sword and flame. 
 
VOLTAIRE. 799 
 
 The believers in a God of love an infinite father 
 punished hundreds of offenses with torture and death. 
 Suspected persons were tortured to make them confess. 
 Convicted persons were tortured to make them give the 
 names of their accomplices. Under the leadership of 
 the church cruelty had become the only reforming power. 
 In this blessed year 1694 all authors were at the mercy 
 of king and priest. The most of them were cast into 
 prisons, impoverished by fines and costs, exiled or exe- 
 cuted. The little time that hangmen could snatch from 
 professional duties was occupied in burning books. The 
 courts of justice were traps in which the innocent were 
 caught. The judges were almost as malicious and cruel as 
 though they had been bishops "or saints. There was no 
 trial by jury, and the rules of evidence allowed the con- 
 viction of the supposed criminal by the proof of suspicion 
 or hearsay. The witnesses, being liable to torture, gen- 
 erally told what the judges wished to hear. 
 
 When Voltaire was born the church ruled and owned 
 France . It was a period of almost universal corruption. 
 The priests were mostly libertines, the judges cruel and 
 venal. The royal palace was a house of prostitution. 
 The nobles were heartless, proud, arrogant and cruel to 
 the last degree. The common people were treated as 
 beasts. It took the church a thousand years to bring 
 about this happy condition of things. 
 
 The seeds of the revolution unconsciously were being 
 scattered by every noble and by every priest. They were 
 germinating slowly in the hearts of the wretched; they 
 were being watered by the tears of agony; blows began 
 to bear interest. There was a faint longing for blood. 
 Workmen, blackened by the sun, bowed by labor, de- 
 
8oo INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 formed by want, looked at the white throats of scornful 
 ladies and thought about cutting them. In those days 
 the witnesses were cross-examined with instruments of 
 torture; the church was the arsenal of superstition; mir- 
 acles, relics, angels, and devils were as common as lies. 
 
 Voltaire was of the people. In the language of that 
 day, he had no ancestors. His real name was Francois 
 Marie Arouet. Mis mother was Marguerite d'Aumard. 
 This mother died when he was seven years of age. He 
 had an elder brother, Armand, who was a devotee, very 
 religious and exceedingly disagreeable. This brother 
 used to present offerings to the church, hoping to make 
 amends for the unbelief of his brother. So far as we 
 know none of his ancestors were literary people. The 
 Arouets had never written a line. The Abbe le Chaulieu 
 was his godfather, and, although an abbe, was a deist 
 who cared nothing about his religion except in connection 
 with his salary. Voltaire's father wanted to make a law- 
 yer of him, but he had no taste for law. At the age of 
 10 he entered the college of Louis le Grand. This was 
 a Jesuit school, and here he remained for seven years, 
 leaving at 17, and never attending any other school. 
 According to Voltaire he learned nothing at this school 
 but a little Greek, a good deal of Latin, and a vast 
 amount of nonsense. 
 
 In this college of Louis le Grand they did not teach 
 geography, history, mathematics, or any science. This 
 was a Catholic institution, controlled by the Jesuits. In 
 that day the religion was defended, was protected, or 
 supported by the state. Behind the entire creed were 
 the bayonet, the ax, the wheel, the fagot, and the tor- 
 lure chamber. While Voltaire was attending the college 
 
VOLTAIRE. 801 
 
 of Louis le Grand the soldiers of the king were hunting 
 Protestants in the mountains of Cevennes for magistrates 
 to hang on gibbets, to put to torture, to break on the 
 wheel or to burn at the stake. 
 
 There is but one use for law, but one excuse for gov- 
 ernment the preservation of liberty to give to each 
 man his own, to secure to the farmer what he produces 
 from the soil, the mechanic what he invents and makes, 
 to the artist what he creates, to the thinker the right to 
 express his thoughts. Liberty is the breath of progress. 
 In France the people were the sport of a king's caprice. 
 Everywhere was the shadow of the Bastile. It fell upon 
 the sunniest field, upon the happiest home. With the 
 king walked the headsman; back of the throne was the 
 chamber of torture. The church appealed to the rack, 
 and faith relied on the fagot. Science was an outcast, 
 and philosophy, so-called, was the pander of supersti- 
 tion. Nobles and priests were sacred. Peasants were 
 vermin . Idleness sat at the banquet and industry gath- 
 ered the crumbs and crusts. 
 
 At 17 Votaire determined to devote his life to liter- 
 ature. The father said, speaking of his two sons, Armand 
 and Francois: "I have a pair of fools for sons, one in 
 verse and the other in prose." In 1713 Voltaire, in a 
 small way, became a diplomat. He went to The Hague 
 attached to the French minister, and there he fell in 
 love. The girl's mother objected. Voltaire sent his 
 clothes to the young lady that she might visit him. 
 Everything was discovered and he was dismissed. To 
 this girl he wrote a letter, and in it you will find the key- 
 note of Voltaire: "Do not expose yourself to the fury of 
 your mother. Ton know what she is capable of. You 
 
8o2 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 have experienced it too well. Dissemble; it is your only 
 chance. Tell her that you have forgotten me, that you 
 hate me; then after telling her, love me all the more." 
 On account of this epis'ode Voltaire was formally dis- 
 inherited by his father. The father procured an order 
 of arrest and gave his son the choice of going to prison 
 or beyond the seas. He finally consented to become a 
 lawyer, and says: "I have already been a week at work 
 in the office of a solicitor learning the trade of a petti- 
 . fogger." About this time he competed for a prize, 
 writing a poem on the king's generosity in building the 
 new choir in the cathedral Notre Dame. He did not 
 win it. After being with the solicitor a little while, he 
 hated the law, he began to write poetry and the outlines 
 of tragedy. Great questions were tnen agitating the 
 public mind, questions that throw a flood of light upon 
 that epoch. 
 
 Louis XIV having died, the regent took possession; 
 and then the prisons were opened. The regent called 
 for a list of all persons then in the prisons sent there at 
 the will of the king. He found that, as to many prison- 
 ers, nobody knew any cause why they had been in 
 prison. They had been forgotten. Many of the prison- 
 ers did not know themselves, and could not guess why 
 they had been arrested. One Italian had been in 'the 
 Bastile thirty-three years without ever knowing why. 
 On his arrival to Paris thirty-three years before he was 
 arrested and sent to prison. He had grown old. He 
 had survived his family and friends. When the rest were 
 liberated he asked to remain where he was, and lived 
 there the rest of his life. The old prisoners were par- 
 doned; but in a little while their places were taken by 
 
VOLTAIRE. .803 
 
 new ones. At this time Voltaire was not interested in 
 the great world knew very little of religion or of gov- 
 ernment. He was busy writing poetry, busy thinking of 
 comedies and tragedies. He was full of life. All his 
 fancies were winged, like moths. He was charged with 
 having written some cutting epigrams. He was exiled 
 to Tulle, three hundred miles away. From this place 
 he wrote in the true vein: "I am at a chateau, a place 
 that would be the most agreeable in the world if I had 
 not been exiled to it, and where there is nothing wanting 
 fjr my perfect happiness except the liberty of leaving. 
 It would be delicious to remain if I only were allowed to 
 go." At last the exile was allowed to return. Again he 
 was arrested; this time sent to the Bastile, where he re- 
 mained for nearly a year. While in prison he changed 
 his name from Francois Marie Arouet to Voltaire, and 
 by that name he has since been known. Voltaire began 
 to think, to doubt, to inquire. He studied the history of 
 the church of the creed. He found that the religion of 
 his time rested on the usurpation of the scriptures the 
 infallibility of the church the dreams of insane hermits 
 the absurdities of the fathers the mistakes and false- 
 hoods of saints the hysteria of nuns the cunning of 
 priests and the stupidity of the people. He found that 
 the Emperor Constantine, who lifted Christianity into 
 power, murdered his wife Fansta and his eldest son 
 Crispus the same year that he convened the council of 
 Nice to decide whether Christ was a man or the son of 
 God. The council decided, in the year 325, that Christ 
 was consubstantial with the Father. He found that the 
 church was indebted to a husband who assassinated his 
 wife a father who murdered his son for settling the 
 
INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 vexed question of the divinity of the Savior. He found 
 that Theodosius called a council at Constantinople in 
 381 by which it was decided that the Holy Ghost pro- 
 ceeded from the Father that Theodosius, the younger, 
 assembled a council at Ephesus in 431 that declared the 
 Virgin Mary to be the mother of God that the Emperor 
 Marcian called another council at Chalcedon in 451 that 
 decided that Christ had two wills that Pognatius called 
 another in 680 that declared that Christ had two natures 
 to go with his tow wills and that in I 274, at the council of 
 Lyons, the important fact was found that the Holy Ghost 
 ''proceeded" not only from the Father, but also from the 
 Son at the same time. 
 
 So Voltaire has been called a mocker! What did he 
 mock? He mocked kings that were unjust; kings who 
 cared nothing for the sufferings of their subjects. He 
 mocked the titled fools of his day. He mocked the cor- 
 ruption of courts; the meanness, the tyranny, and the 
 brutality of judges. He mocked the absurd arid cruel 
 laws, the barbarous customs. He mocked popes and 
 cardinals, bishops and priests, and all the hypocrites "on 
 the earth. He mocked historians who filled their books 
 with lies, and philosophers who defended superstition. 
 He mocked the haters of liberty, the persecutors of their 
 fellow-men. He mocked the arrogance, the cruelty, the 
 impudence and the unspeakable baseness of his time. 
 
 He has been blamed because he used the weapon of 
 ridicule. Hypocricy has always hated laughter, and al- 
 ways will. Absurdity detests humor and supidity de- 
 spises wit. Voltaire was the master of ridicule. He 
 ridiculed the absurd, the impossible. He ridiculed the 
 mythologies and the miracles, the stupid lives and lies 
 
VOLTAIRE. 805 
 
 of the saints. He found pretense and mendacity crowned 
 by credulity. He found the ignorant many controlled 
 by the cunning and cruel few. He found the historian, 
 saturated with superstition, filling his volumes with the 
 details of the impossible, and he found the scientists 
 satisfied with ' 'they say." Voltaire had the instinct of 
 the probable. He knew the law of average; the sea 
 level; he had the idea of proportion; and so he ridiculed 
 the mental monstrosities and deformities the non 
 sequiturs of his day. Aristotle said women had more 
 teeth than men. This was repeated again and again by 
 the Catholic scientists of the eighteenth century. Vol- 
 taire counted the teeth. The rest were satisfied with 
 "the> say." 
 
 We may, however, get an idea of the condition of 
 France from the fact that Voltaire regarded England as 
 the land of liberty. While he was in England he saw 
 the body of Sir Isaac Newton deposited in Westminster 
 Abbey. He read the works of this great man and after- 
 ward gave to France the philosophy of the great English- 
 man. Voltaire was the apostle of common sense. He 
 knew that there could have been no primitive or first 
 language from which all other languages had been 
 formed. He knew that every language had been influ- 
 enced by the surroundings of the people. He knew that 
 the language of snow and ice was not the language of 
 palm and flower. He knew also that there had been no 
 miracle in language. He knew it was impossible 
 that the story of the Tower of Babel should be true. 
 That everything in the whole world had been natural. 
 He was the enemy of alchemy, not only in language, 
 but in science. One passage from him is enough to 
 
806 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 show his philosophy in this regard. He says: "To 
 transmute iron into gold two things are necessary. First, 
 the annihilation of the iron; second, the creation of 
 gold." Voltaire was a man of humor, of good nature, 
 of cheerfulness. He despised with all his heart the phi- 
 losophy of Calvin, the creed of the somber, of the se- 
 vere, of the unnatural. He pitied those who needed the 
 aid of religion to be honest, to be cheerful. He had the 
 courage to enjoy the present and the philosophy to bear 
 what the future might bring. And yet for more than a 
 hundred and fifty years the Christian world has fought 
 this man and has maligned his memory. In every Chris- 
 tian pulpit his name has been pronounced with scorn, 
 and every pulpit has been an arsenal of slander. He is 
 one man of whom no orthodox minister has ever told 
 the truth. He has been denounced equally by Catholics 
 and Protestants. 
 
 Priests and ministers, bishops and exhorters, presiding 
 elders and popes have filled the world with slanders, 
 with calm calumnies about Voltaire. I am amazed that 
 ministers will not or cannot tell the truth about an 
 enemy of the church. As a matter of fact, for more than 
 1,000 years almost every pulpit has been a mint in which 
 slanders were coined. 
 
 For many years this restless man filled Europe with 
 the product of his brain. Essays, epigrams, epics, come- 
 dies, tragedies, histories, poems, novels, representing 
 every phase and every faculty of the human mind. At 
 the same time engrossed in business, full of speculation, 
 making money like a millionaire, busy with the gossip 
 of courts, and even with the scandals of priests. At the 
 same time alive to all the discoveries of science and the 
 
VOLTAIRE. 807 
 
 theories oi' philosophers, and in this babel never forget- 
 ting for a moment to assail the monster of superstition. 
 Sleeping and waking he hated the church. With the 
 eyes of Argus he watched, and with the arms of Briarie- 
 ius he struck. For sixty years he waged continuous and 
 unrelenting war, sometimes in the open field, sometimes 
 striking from the hedges of opportunity, taking care dur- 
 ing all this time to remain independent of all men. He 
 was in the highest sense successful. He lived like a 
 prince, became one of the powers of Europe, and in him, 
 for the first time, literature was crowned. Voltaire, in 
 spite of his surroundings, in spite of almost universal 
 tyranny and oppression, was a believer in God and in 
 what he was pleased to call the religion of nature. He 
 attacked the creed of his time because it was dishonor- 
 able to his God. He thought of the Deity as a father, 
 as the fountain of justice, intelligence and mercy, and 
 the creed of the Catholic church made him a monster of 
 cruelty and stupidity. He attacked the bible with all 
 the weapons at his command. He assailed its geology, 
 its astronomy, its idea of justice, its laws and customs,. 
 its absurd and useless miracles, its foolish wonders, its 
 ignorance on all subjects, its insane prophecies, its cruel 
 threats, and its extravagant promises. At the same time 
 he praised the God of nature, the God who gives us rain 
 and light, and food and flowers, and health and happi- 
 ness he who fills the world with youth and beauty. 
 
 In 1755 came the earthquake at Lisbon. This fright- 
 ful disaster became an immense interrogation. The op- 
 timist was compelled to ask, "What was my God do- 
 ing? Why did the Universal Father crush to shapeless- 
 ness thousands of his poor children, even at the moment 
 
808 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 when they were upon their knees returning thanks to 
 Him?" What could be done with this horror? If earth- 
 quake there must be, why did it not occur in some un- 
 inhabited desert on some wide waste of sea? This fright- 
 ful fact changed the theology of Voltaire. He became 
 convinced that this is not the best possible of all worlds. 
 He became convinced that evil is evil here, now and for- 
 ever. 
 
 Who can establish the existence of an infinite being? 
 It is beyond the conception the reason the imagination 
 of man probably or possibly where the zenith and 
 nadir meet this God can be found. 
 
 Voltaire, attacked on every side, fought with every 
 weapon that wit, logic, reason, scorn, contempt, laugh- 
 ter, pathos and indignation could sharpen, form, devise 
 or use. He often apologized, and the apology was an 
 insult. He often recanted, and the recantation was a 
 thousand times worse than the thing recanted. He took 
 it back by giving more. In the name of eulogy he flayed 
 his victim. In his praise there was poison. He often 
 advanced by retreating, and asserted by retraction. He 
 did not intend to give priests the satisfaction of seeing 
 him burn or suffer. Upon this very point of recanting, 
 he wrote: 
 
 "They say I must retract. Very willingly. I will 
 declare the Pascal is always right. That if St. Luke and 
 St. Mark contradict one another it is only another proof 
 of the truth of religion to those who know how to under- 
 stand such things; and that another lovely proof of re- 
 ligion is that it is unintelligible. I will even avow that 
 all priests are gentle and disinterested; that Jesuits are 
 honest people; that monks are neither proud nor given 
 
VOLTAIRE. 809 
 
 to intrigue, and that their odor is agreeable; that the 
 Holy Inquisition is the triumph of humanity and toler- 
 ance. In a word, I will say all that may be desired of 
 me, provided they leave me in repose, and will not prose- 
 cute a man who has done harm to none." 
 
 He gave the best years of his wondrous life to succor 
 the oppressed, to shield the defenseless, to reverse in- 
 famous decrees, to rescue the innocent, to reform the 
 laws of France, to do away with torture, to soften the 
 hearts of priests, to enlighten judges, to instruct kings, 
 to civilize the people, and to banish from the heart of 
 man the love and lust of war. 
 
 Voltaire was not a saint. He was educated by the 
 Jesuits. He was never troubled about the salvation of 
 his soul. All the theological disputes excited his laugh- 
 ter, the creeds his pity, and the conduct of bigots his 
 contempt. He was much better than a saint. Most of 
 the Christians in his day kept their religion not for every- 
 day use but for disaster, as ships carry lifeboats to be 
 used only in the stress of storm. 
 
 Voltaire believed in the religion of humanity of good 
 and generous deeds. For many centuries the church had 
 painted virtue so ugly, sour and cold that vice was re- 
 garded as beautiful. Voltaire taught the beauty of the 
 useful, the hatefulness and hideousness of superstition. 
 He was not the greatest of poets, or of dramatists, but 
 he was the greatest man of his time, the greatest friend 
 of freedom, and the deadliest foe of superstition. He 
 wrote the best French plays but they were not wonder- 
 ful. He wrote verses polished and persect in their way. 
 He filled the air with painted moths but not with 
 Shakespearean eagles. 
 
8 io INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 You may think that I have said too much; that I have 
 placed this man too high. Let me tell you what Goethe, 
 the great German, said of this man: "If you wish depth, 
 genius, imagination, taste, reason, sensibility, philosophy, 
 elevation, originality, nature, intellect, fancy, rectitude, 
 facility, flexibility, precision, art, abundance, variety, 
 fertility, warmth, magic, charm, grace, force, an eagle 
 sweep of vision, vast understanding, instruction rich, 
 tone excellent, urbanity, suavity, delicacy, correctness, 
 purity, cleanness, eloquence, harmony, brilliancy, rapid- 
 ity, gayety, pathos, sublimity, and universality perfection 
 indeed, behold Voltaire." 
 
 Even Carlyle, the old Scotch terrier, with the growl 
 of a grizzly bear, who attacked shams, as I have some- 
 times thought, because he hated rivals, was forced to 
 admit that Voltaire gave the death stab to modern super- 
 stition. It was the hand of Voltaire that sowed the 
 seeds of liberty in the heart and brain of Franklin, of Jef- 
 ferson, and of Thomas Paine. 
 
 Toulouse was a favored town. It was rich in relics. 
 The people were as ignorant as wooden images, but they 
 had in their possession the dried bodies of seven apostles 
 the bones of many of the infants slain by Herod part 
 of a dress of the Virgin Mary, and lots of skulls and 
 skeletons of the infallible idiots known as saints. 
 
 In this city the people celebrated every year with 
 great joy two holy events: The expulsion of the Hugue. 
 nots and the blessed- massacre of St. Bartholomew. The 
 citizens of Toulouse had been educated and civilized by 
 the church. A few Protestants, mild because in the 
 minority, lived among these jackals and tigers. One of 
 these Protestants was Jean Galas a small dealer in dry 
 
VOLTAIRE. 8ll 
 
 goods. For forty years he had been in this business, 
 and his character was without a stain. He was honest, 
 kind and agreeable. He had a wife and six children 
 four sons and two daughters. One of the sons became 
 a Catholic. The eldest son, Marc Antoine, disliked his 
 father's business and studied law. He could not be al- 
 lowed to practice unless he became a Catholic. He tried 
 to get his license by concealing that he was a Protestant. 
 He was discovered grew morose. Finally he became 
 discouraged and committed suicide by hanging himself 
 one evening in his father's store. The bigots of Toulouse 
 started the story that his parents had killed him to pre- 
 vent his becoming a Catholic. On this frightful charge 
 the father, mother, one son, a servant, and one guest at 
 their house were arrested. The dead son was considered 
 a martyr, the church taking possession of the body. This 
 happened in 1761. There was what was called a trial. 
 There was no evidence, not the slightest, except here- 
 say. All the facts were in favor of the accused. The 
 united strength of the defendants could not have done 
 the deed. 
 
 Jean Calas was doomed to torture and to death upon 
 the wheel. This was on the 9th of March, 1762, and 
 the sentence was to be carried out the next day. On the 
 the morning of the loth the father was taken to the tor- 
 ture room. The executioner and his assistants were 
 sworn on the cross to administer the torture according 
 to the judgment of the court. They bound him by the 
 wrists to an iron ring in the stone wall four feet from the 
 ground and his feet to another ring in the floor. Then 
 they shortened the ropes and chains until every joint in 
 his arms and legs were dislocated. Then he was ques- 
 
812 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 tioned. He declared that he was innocent. Then the 
 ropes were again shortened until life fluttered in the torn 
 body; but he remained firm. This was called the ques- 
 tion ordinaire. Again the magistrate exhorted the vic- 
 tim to confess, and again he refused, saying that there 
 was nothing to confess. Then came the question extra- 
 ordinaire. Into the mouth of the victim was placed a 
 horn holding three pints of water. In this way thirty 
 pints of water were forced into the body of the sufferer. 
 The pain was beyond description, and yet Jean ('alas re- 
 mained firm. He was then carried to a scaffold in a 
 tumbril. He was bound to a wooden cross that lay on 
 the scaffold. The executioner then took a bar of iron, 
 broke each leg and arm in two places, striking eleven 
 blows in all. He was then left to die if he could. He 
 lived for two hours, declaring his innocence to the last. 
 He was slow to die and so the executioner strangled 
 him. Then his poor lacerated, bleeding and broken 
 body was chained to a stake and burned. All this was 
 a spectacle a festival for the savages of Toulouse. 
 What would they have done if their hearts had not been 
 softened by the glad tidings of great joy, peace on earth 
 and good will to men? 
 
 But this was not all. The property of the family was 
 confiscated; the son was released on condition that he 
 become a Catholic; the servant if she would enter aeon- 
 vent. The two daughters were consigned to a convent 
 and the heart-broken widow was allowed to wander 
 where she would. 
 
 Voltaire heard of this case. In a moment his soul 
 was on fire . He took one of the sons under his roof. 
 He wrote a history of the case. He corresponded with 
 
VOLTAIRE. 813 
 
 kings and queens, with chancellors and lawyers. If 
 money was needed he advanced it. For years he filled 
 Europe with the echoes of the groans of Jean Galas. He 
 succeeded. The horrible judgment was annulled the 
 poor victim declared innocent and thousands of dollars 
 raised to support the mother and family. This was the 
 work of Voltaire. 
 
 Sirven, a Protestant, lived in Languedoc with his wife 
 and three daughters. The housekeeper of the bishop 
 wanted to make one of the daughters a Catholic. The 
 law allowed the bishop to take the child of Protestants 
 from its parents for the sake of its soul. The little girl 
 was so taken and placed in a convent. She ran away 
 and came back to her parents. Her poor little body was 
 covered with the marks of the convent whip. ' 'Suffer 
 little children to come unto me." The child was out of 
 her mind; suddenly she disappeared; and three days 
 after her little body was found in a well, three miles 
 from home. The cry was raised that her folks had mur- 
 dered her to keep her from becoming a Catholic. This 
 happened only a little way from the Christian city of 
 Toulouse while Jean Calas was in prison. The Sirvens 
 knew that a trial would end in conviction. They fled. 
 In their absence they were convicted, their property 
 confiscated. The parents sentenced to die by the hang- 
 man, the daughters to be under the gallows during the 
 execution of their mother and then to be exiled. The 
 family fled in the midst of winter; the married daughter 
 gave birth to a child in the snows of the Alps; the 
 mother died, and at last the father, reaching Switzer- 
 land, found himself without the means of support. They 
 went to Voltaire. He espoused their cause. He took 
 care of them, gave them the means to live, and labored 
 
8 14 INGEKSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 to annul the sentence that had been pronouced against 
 them for nine long and weary years. He appealed to 
 kings for money, to Catherine II of Russia, and to hun- 
 dreds of others. He was successful. He said of this 
 case: "The Sirvens were tried and condemned in two 
 hours in January, I 762, and now in January, 1772, after ten 
 years of effort, they have been restored to their rights.'" 
 
 This was the work of Voltaire. Why should the wor- 
 shipers of God hate the lovers of men? 
 
 Espenasse was a Protestant, of good estate. In 1740* 
 he received into his house a Protestant clergyman, to 
 whom he gave supper and lodging. In a country where 
 priests repeated the parable of the "Good Samaritan" 
 this was a crime. For this crime Espenasse was tried,, 
 convicted and sentenced to the galleys for life. When he 
 had been imprisoned for twenty-three years his case came 
 to the knowledge of Voltaire, and he was, through the ef- 
 forts of Voltaire, released and restored to his family. 
 
 This was the work of Voltaire. There is not time to 
 tell of the case of Gen. Lally, of the English Gen. Byng, 
 of the niece of Corneille, of the Jesuit Adam, of the 
 writers, dramatists, actors, widows and orphans for 
 whose benefit he gave his influence, his money and his 
 time. 
 
 But I will tell another case: In 1765 at the town of 
 Abbeville an old wooden cross on a bridge had been 
 mutilated whittled with a knife a terrible crime. 
 Sticks, when crossing each other, were far more sacred 
 than flesh and blood. Two young men were suspected 
 the Chevalier de la Bc,rre and d'Ettalonde, D'Ettal- 
 londe fled to Prussia and enlisted as a common soldier. 
 
 La Barre remained and stood his trialj He was con- 
 
VOLTAIRE. 815 
 
 victed without the slightest evidence, and he and d'Et- 
 tallonde were both sentenced: First, to endure the tor- 
 ture, ordinary and extraordinary; second, to have their 
 tongues torn out by the roots with pincers of iron; third, 
 to have their right hands cut off at the door of the 
 church; and fourth, to be bound to stakes by chains of 
 iron and burned to death by a slow fire. ' 'Forgive us 
 our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against 
 us." Remembering this, the judges mitigated the sen- 
 tence by providing that their heads should be cut off be- 
 fore their bodies were given to the flames. The case 
 was appealed to Paris; heard by a court composed of 
 twenty-five judges learned in law, and the judgment was 
 confirmed. The sentence was carried out on the ist 
 day of July, 1766. 
 
 Voltaire had fought with every weapon that genius 
 could devise or use. He was the greatest of all carica- 
 turists, and he used this wonderful gift without mercy. 
 For pure crystallized wit he had no equal. The art of 
 flattery was carried by him to the height of an exact sci- 
 ence. He knew and practiced every subterfuge. He 
 fought the army of hypocricy and pretense, the army of 
 faith and falsehood. Voltaire was annoyed by the 
 meaner and baser spirits of his time, by the cringers and 
 crawlers, by the fawners and pretenders, by those who 
 wished to gain the favors of priests, the patronage of 
 nobles. Sometimes he allowed himself to be annoyed 
 by these scorpions; sometimes he attacked them. And, 
 but for these attacks, long ago they would have been 
 forgotten. In the amber of his genius Voltaire preserved 
 these insects, these tarantulas, these scorpions. 
 
 It is fashionable to say that he was not profound. 
 
8i6 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 This is because he was not stupid. In the presence of 
 absurdity he laughed, and was called irreverent. He 
 thought God would not damn even a priest forever. 
 This was regarded as blasphemy. He endeavored to 
 prevent Christians from murdering each other, and did 
 what he could to civilize the disciples of Christ. Had he 
 founded a sect, obtained control o some country, and 
 burned a, few heretics at slow fires, he would have won 
 the admiration, respect and love of the Christian world. 
 Had he only pretended to believe all the fables of anti- 
 quity, and had he mumbled Latin prayers, counted 
 beads, crossed himself, devoured now and then the flesh 
 of God, and carried fagots to the feet of Philosophy in 
 the name of Christ, he might have been in heaven this 
 moment, enjoying a sight of the damned. 
 
 If he had only adopted the creed of his time if he 
 had asserted that a God of infinite power and and mercy 
 had created millions and billions of human beings to suf- 
 fer eternal pain, and all for the sake of his glorious jus- 
 tice that he had given his power of attorney to a cun- 
 ning and cruel Italian pope, authorizing him to save the 
 soul of his mistress and send honest wives to hell if he 
 had given to the nostrils of this God the odor of burning 
 flesh the incense of the fagot if he had filled his ears 
 with the shrieks of the tortured the music of the rack, 
 he would now be known as St. Voltaire. 
 
 Instead of doing these things he willfully closed his 
 eyes to the light of the gospel, examined the bible for 
 himself, advocated intellectual liberty, struck from the 
 brain the fetters of an arrogant faith, assisted the weak, 
 cried out against the torture of man, appealed to reason, 
 endeavored to establish universal toleration, succored 
 
VOLTAIRE. 8 1 / 
 
 the indigent, and defended the oppressed. He demon- 
 strated that the origin of all religions is the same, the 
 same mysteries the same miracles the same impos- 
 tures the same temples and ceremonies the same kind 
 of founders, apostles and dupes the same promises and 
 threats the same pretense of goodness and forgiveness 
 and the practice of the same persecution and murder. 
 He proved that religion made enemies philosophy, 
 friends and that above the rites of gods were the rights 
 of man. These were his crimes. Such a man God 
 would not suffer to die in peace. If allowed to meet 
 death with a smile, others might follow his example, 
 until none would be left to light the holy fires of the auto 
 da fe. It would not do for so great, so successful an 
 enemy of the church to- die without leaving some shriek 
 of fear, some shudder of remorse, some ghastly prayer 
 of chattered horror, uttered by lips covered with blood 
 and foam. For many centuries the theologians have 
 taught that an unbeliever an infidel one who spoke or 
 wrote against their creed, could not meet death with com- 
 posure; that in his last moments God would fill his con- 
 science with the serpents of remorse. For a thousand 
 years the clergy have manufactured the facts to fit this 
 theory this infamous conception of the duty of man 
 and the justice of God. The theologians have insisted 
 that crimes against men were, and are, as nothing com- 
 pared with crimes against God. That, while kings and 
 priests did nothing worse than to make their fellows 
 wretched, that so long as they only butchered and burnt the 
 innocent and helpless, God would maintain the strictest 
 neutrality; but when some honest man, some great and 
 tender soul, expressed a doubt as to the truth of the scrip- 
 
8i8 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 tures, or prayed to the wrong god, or to the right one 
 by the wrong name, then the real God leaped like a 
 wounded tiger upon his victim, and from his quivering 
 flesh tore the wretched soul. 
 
 There is no recorded instance where the uplifted hand 
 of murder has been paralyzed no truthful account in all 
 the literature of the world of the innocent child being 
 shielded by God. Thousands of crimes are being com- 
 mitted ever day men are at this moment lying in wait 
 for their human prey wives are whipped and crushed, 
 driven to insanity and death little children begging for 
 mercy, lifting imploring, tear-filled eyes to the brutal 
 faces of fathers and mothers sweet girls are deceived, 
 lured and outraged, but God has no time to prevent 
 these things no time to defend the good and protect 
 the pure. He is too busy numbering hairs and watching 
 sparrows. He listens for blasphemy; looks for persons 
 who laugh at priests; examines baptismal registers; 
 watches professors in college who begin to doubt the 
 geology of Moses and the astronomy of Joshua. He 
 does not particularly object to stealing, if you don't 
 swear. A great many persons have fallen dead in the 
 act of taking God's name in vain, but millions of men, 
 women and children have been stolen from their homes 
 and used as beasts of burden, but no one engaged in this 
 infamy has ever been touched by the wrathful hand of 
 God. All kinds of criminals, except infidels, meet death 
 with reasonable serenity. As a rule there is nothing in 
 the death of a pirate to cast any discredit on his profes- 
 sion. The murderer upon the scaffold, with a priest on 
 either side, smilingly exhorts the multitude to meet him 
 in heaven. The man who has succeeded in making his 
 
VOLTAIRE. SlQ 
 
 home a hell meets death without a quiver, provided he 
 has never expressed any doubt as to the divinity of Christ 
 or the eternal "procession" of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 Now and then a man of genius, of sense, of intellectual 
 honesty, has appeared. Such men have denounced the 
 superstition of their day. They have pitied the multi- 
 tude. To see priests devour the substance of the people 
 priests who made begging one of the learned profes- 
 sions filled them with loathing and contempt. These 
 men were honest enough to tell their thoughts, brave 
 enough to speak the truth. Then they were denounced, 
 tried, tortured, killed by rack or flame. But some es- 
 caped the fury of the fiends who loved their enemies and 
 died naturally in their beds. It would not do for the 
 church to admit that they died peacefully. That would 
 show that religion was essential at the last moment. 
 Superstition gets its power from the terror of death. It 
 would not do to have the common people understand 
 that a man could deny the bible, refuse to kiss the cross; 
 contend that humanity was greater than Christ, and then 
 die as sweetly as Torquemada did after pouring molten 
 lead into the ears of an honest man, or as calmly as Cal- 
 vin after he had burned Servetus, or as peacefully as 
 King David after advising with his last breath one son to 
 assassinate another. 
 
 The church has taken great pains to show that the last 
 moments of all infidels (that Christians did not succeed 
 in burning) were infinitely wretched and despairing. It 
 was alleged that words could not paint the horrors that 
 were endured by a dying infidel. Every good Christian 
 was expected to, and generally did, believe these ac- 
 counts . They have been told and retold in every pulpit 
 
82O INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 of the world. Protestant ministers have repeated the 
 lies invented by Catholic priests, and Catholics, by a 
 kind of theological comity, have sworn to the lies told 
 by the Protestants. Upon this point they have always 
 stood together, and will as long as the same falsehood 
 can be used by both. Upon the death-bed subject the 
 clergy grew eloquent. When describing the shudderings 
 and shrieks of the dying unbeliever their eyes glitter 
 with delight. It is a festival. They are no longer men. 
 They become hyenas. They dig open graves. They de- 
 vour the dead. It is a banquet. Unsatisfied still, they 
 paint the terrors of hell. They gaze at the souls of the 
 infidels writhing in the coils of the worm that never dies. 
 They see them in flames in oceans of fire in gulfs of 
 pain in abysses of despair. They shout with joy. They 
 applaud. 
 
 It is an auto da fe, presided over by God. But let us 
 come back to Voltaire to the dying philosopher. He 
 was an old man of 84. He had been surrounded with 
 the comforts, the luxuries of life. He was a man of great 
 wealth, the richest writer that the world had known. 
 Among the literary men of the earth he stood first. He 
 was an intellectual monarch one who had built his own 
 throne and had woven the purple of his own power. He 
 was a man of genius. The Catholic God had allowed 
 him the appearance of success. His last years were filled 
 with the intoxication of flattery of almost worship. He 
 stood at the summit of his age. The priests became 
 anxious. They began to fear that God would forget, in 
 a multiplicity of business, to make a terrible example of 
 Voltaire. Toward the last of May, 1778, it was whis- 
 pered in Paris that Voltaire was dying. Upon the fences 
 
VOLTAIRE, 821 
 
 of expectation gathered the unclean birds of superstition, 
 impatiently waiting for their prey. Two days before his 
 death, his nephew went to seek the cure of Saint Sul- 
 plice and the Abbe Gautier, and brought them to his 
 uncle's sick chamber, who, being informed that they were 
 there, said: "Ah, well, give them my compliments and 
 my thanks." The abbe spoke some words to him, ex- 
 horting him to patience. The cure of Saint Sulplice 
 then came forward, having announced himself, and asked 
 of Voltaire, elevating his voice, if he acknowledged the 
 divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. The sick man pushed 
 one of his hands against the cure's coif, shoving him 
 back, and cried, turning abruptly to the other side: "Let 
 me die in peace." The cure seemingly considered his 
 person soiled and his coif dishonored by the touch of a 
 philosopher. He made the nurse give him a little brush- 
 ing and went out with the Abbe Gautier. He expired, 
 says Wagnierre, on the 3oth of May, 1778, at about a 
 quarter past 1 1 at night, with the most perfect tranquil- 
 lity. A few moments before his last breath he took the 
 hand of Morand, his valet de chambre, who was watch- 
 ing by him, pressed it, and said: "Adieu, my dear Mor- 
 and, I am gone." These were his last words. Like a 
 peaceful river, with green and shaded banks, he flowed 
 without a murmur into the waveless sea, where life is 
 rest. 
 
 From this death, so simple and serene, so kind, so 
 philosophic and tender, so natural and peaceful; from 
 these words so utterly destitute of cant or dramatic 
 touch, all the frightful pictures, all the despairing utter- 
 ances have been drawn and made. From these materials, 
 and from these alone, or rather, in spite of these facts, 
 
822 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 have been constructed by priests and clergymen and 
 their dupes all the shameless lies about the death of this 
 great and wonderful man. A man, compared with whom 
 all of his calumniators, dead and living, were, and are, 
 but dust and vermin. Let us be honest. Did all the 
 priests of Rome increase the mental wealth of man as 
 much as Bruno? Did all the priests of France do as 
 great a work for the civilization of the world as Voltaire 
 or Diderot? Did all the ministers of Scotland add as 
 much to the sum of human knowledge as David Hume? 
 Have all the clergymen, monks, friars, ministers, priests, 
 bishops, cardinals and popes, from the day of Pentecost 
 to the last election, done as much for human liberty as 
 Thomas Paine? What would the world be if infidels 
 had never been? The infidels have been the brave and 
 thoughtful men; the flower of all the world; the pioneers 
 and heralds of the blessed day of liberty and love; the 
 generous spirits of the unworthy past; the seers and 
 prophets of our race; the great chivalric souls, proud 
 victors on the battlefields of thought, the creditors of all 
 the years to be. 
 
 In those days the philosophers that is to say, the 
 thinkers were not buried in holy ground. It was feared 
 that their principles might contaminate the ashes of the 
 just. And they also feared that on the morning of the 
 resurrection they might, in a moment of confusion, slip 
 into heaven. Some were burned and their ashes scat- 
 tered; and the bodies of some were thrown naked to 
 beasts, and others buried in unholy earth. Voltaire knew 
 the history of Adrienne Le Couvreur, a beautiful actress, 
 denied burial. After all, we do feel an interest in what 
 is to become of our bodies. There is a modesty that be- 
 
VOLTAIRE. 823 
 
 longs to death. Upon this subject Voltaire was infinitely 
 sensitive. It was that he might be buried that he went 
 through the farce of confession, of absolution, and of 
 the last sacrament. The priests knew that he was not 
 in earnest, and Voltaire knew that they would not allow 
 him to be buried in any of the cemeteries of Paris. His 
 death was kept a secret. The Abbe Mignot made ar- 
 rangements for the burial at Romilli-on-the-Seine, more 
 than 100 miles from Paris. Sunday evening, on the last 
 day of May, 1778, the body of Voltaire, clad in a dress- 
 ing gown, clothed to resemble an invalid, posed to sim- 
 ulate life, was placed in a carriage; at its side a servant, 
 whose business it was to keep it in position. To this 
 carriage were attached six horses, so that people might 
 think a great lord was going to his estates. Another 
 carriage followed in which were a grand-nephew and two 
 cousins ol Voltaire. All night they traveled, and on the 
 following day arrived at the court-yard of the abbey. 
 The ncecessary papers were shown, the mass was per- 
 formed in the presence of the body, and Voltaire found 
 burial. A few moments afterward the prior who "for 
 charity had given a little earth" received from his bishop 
 a menacing letter forbidding the burial of Voltaire. It 
 was too late. He could not then be removed, and he 
 was allowed to remain in peace until 1791. 
 
 Voltaire was dead. The foundations of State and 
 throne had been sapped. The people were becoming 
 acquainted with the real kings and with the actual priests. 
 Unknown men born in misery and want, men whose 
 fathers and mothers had been pavement for the rich, 
 were rising towards the light and their shadowy faces 
 were emerging from darkness. Labor and thought be- 
 
824 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 came friends. That is, the gutter and the attic frater- 
 nized. The monsters of the night and the angels of dawn 
 the first thinking of revenge and the others dreaming 
 of equality, liberty and fraternity. For 400 years the 
 Bastile had been the outward symbol of oppression. 
 Within its walls the noblest had perished. It was a per- 
 petual threat. It was the last and often the first argu- 
 ment of king and priest. Its dungeons, damp and ray- 
 less, its massive towers, its secret cells, its instruments 
 of torture, denied the existence of God. In 1789, on 
 the 1 4th of July, the people, the multitude, frenzied by 
 suffering, stormed and captured the Bastile. The battle- 
 cry was, "Vive le Voltaire!" 
 
 In 1791 permission was given to place in the Pantheon 
 the ashes of Voltaire. He had been buried 110 miles 
 from Paris. Buried by stealth he was to be removed by 
 a nation. A funeral procession of a hundred miles; every 
 village with its flags and arches in his honor; all the peo- 
 ple anxious to honor the philosopher of France the 
 savior of Galas the destroyer of superstition! On reach- 
 ing Paris the great procession moved along the Rue St. 
 Antoine. Here it paused, and for one night upon the 
 ruins of the Bastile rested the body of Voltaire rested 
 in triumph, in glory rested on fallen wall and broken 
 arch, on crumbling stone still damp with tears, on rust- 
 ing chain, and bar and useless bolt above the dungeons 
 dark and deep, where light had faded from the lives of 
 men and hope had died in breaking hearts. The con- 
 queror resting upon the conquered. Throned upon the 
 Bastile, the fallen fortress of night, the body of Voltaire, 
 from whose brain had issued the dawn. 
 
 For a moment his ashes must 1 ave felt the Promethean 
 
VOLTAIRE. 825 
 
 fire, and the old smile must have illumined once more 
 the face of the dead. 
 
 While the vast multitude were trembling with love and 
 awe, a priest was heard to cry, " God shall be avenged!" 
 The grave of Voltaire was violated. The cry of the 
 priest, " God shall be avenged! " had borne its fruit. 
 Priests, skulking in the shadows, with faces sinister .as 
 night-ghouls in the name of the gospel, desecrated the 
 grave. They carried away the body of Voltaire. The 
 tomb was empty. God was avenged! The tomb was 
 empty, but the world is filled with Voltaire's fame. Man 
 has conquered! 
 
 What cardinal, what bishop, what priest raised his 
 voice for the rights of men? What ecclesiastic, what 
 nobleman, took the side of the oppressed of the 
 peasant? Who denounced the frightful criminal code 
 the torture of suspected persons? What priest pleaded 
 for the liberty of the citizen? What bishop pitied the 
 victim of the rack? Is there the grave of a priest in 
 France on which a lover of liberty would now drop a 
 flower or a tear? Is there a tomb holding the ashes of a 
 s aint from which emerges one ray of light? If there be 
 tanother life, a day of judgment, no God can afford to 
 torture in another world a man who abolished torture in 
 his. If God be the keeper of an eternal penitentiary, s 
 He should not imprison there those who broke the chain 
 of slavery here. He cannot afford to make eternal con- 
 victs of Franklin, of Jefferson, of Paine, of Voltaire. 
 
 Voltaire was perfectly equipped for his work. A per- 
 fect master of the French language, knowing all its 
 moods, tenses, and declinations, in fact and in feeling, 
 playing upon it as skillfully as Paganini on his violin, 
 
826 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 finding expression for every thought and fancy, writing 
 on the most serious subjects with the gayety of a harle- 
 quin, plucking jests from -the mouth of death, graceful as 
 the waving of willows, dealing in double meanings that 
 covered the asp with flowers and flattery, master of satire 
 and compliment, mingling them often in the same line, 
 always interested himself, therefore interesting others, 
 handling thoughts, questions, subjects, as a juggler does 
 balls, keeping them in the air with perfect ease, dressing 
 old words in new meanings, charming, grotesque, 
 pathetic, mingling mirth with tears, wit with wisdom, 
 and sometimes wickedness, logic, and laughter. With a 
 woman's instinct knowing the sensitive nerves just 
 where to touch hating arrogance of place, the stupidity 
 of the solemn, snatching masks from priest and king, 
 knowing the springs of action and ambition's ends, per- 
 fectly familiar with the great world, the intimate of 
 kings and their favorites, sympathizing with the oppressed 
 and imprisoned, with the unfortunate and poor, hating 
 tyranny, despising superstition, and loving liberty with 
 all his heart. Such was Voltaire, writing " Edipus " at 
 seventeen, "Irene" at eighty-three, and crowding be- 
 tween these two tragedies, the accomplishment of a 
 thousand lives. 
 
INGERSOLL'S LECTURE 
 
 ON 
 
 MYTH AND MIRACLE 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: What, after all, is the 
 object of life? What is the highest possible aim? The 
 highest aim is to accomplish the only good. Happiness 
 is the only good of which man by any possibility can con- 
 ceive. The object of life is to increase human joy, and 
 that means intellectual and physical development. The 
 question, then, is: Shall we rely upon superstition or 
 upon growth? Is intellectual development the highway 
 of progress or must we depend on the pit of credulity? 
 Must we "rely on belief or credulity, or upon manly 
 virtues, courageous investigation, thought, and intellect- 
 ual development? For thousands of years men have been 
 talking about religious freedom. I am now contending 
 for the freedom of religion, not religious freedom for the 
 freedom which is the only real religion. Only a few years 
 ago our poor ancestors tried to account for what they 
 saw. Noticing the running river, the shining star, or the 
 
 837 
 
828 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 painted flower, they put a spirit in the river, a spirit in 
 the star, and another in the flower. Something makes 
 this river run, something makes this star shine, some- 
 thing paints the bosom of that flower. They were all 
 spirits. That was the first religion of mankind fetich- 
 ism and in everything that lived, everything that pro- 
 duced an effect upon them, they said: "This is a spirit 
 that lives within." That is called the lowest phase of 
 religious thought, and yet it is quite the highest phase of 
 religious thought. One by one these little spirits died. 
 One by one nonentities took their places, and last of all 
 we have one infinite fetich that takes the place of all 
 others. Now, what makes the river run? We say the 
 attraction of gravitation, and we know no more about 
 that than we do about this fetich. What makes the tree 
 grow? The principle of life vital forces. These are 
 simply phrases, simply names of ignorance. Nobody 
 knows what makes the river run, what makes the trees 
 grow, why the flowers burst and bloom nobody knows 
 why the stars shine, and probably nobody ever will know. 
 There are two horizons that have never been passed by 
 man origin and destiny. All human knowledge is con- 
 fined to the diameter of that circle. All religions rest on 
 supposed facts beyond the circumference of the absolutely 
 known. What next? The next thing that came in the 
 world the next man was the mythmaker. He gave 
 to these little spirits human passions; he clothed ghosts 
 in flesh; he warmed that flesh with blood, and in that 
 blood he put desire motive. And the myths were born, 
 and were only produced through the fact of the impres- 
 sions that nature makes upon the brain of man. They 
 were every one a natural production, and let me say here, 
 
MYTH AND MIRACLE. 82Q 
 
 to-night, that what men call monstrosities are only 
 natural productions. Every religion has grown just as 
 naturally as the grass; every one, as I said before, and it 
 cannot be said too often, has been naturally produced. 
 All the Christs, all the gods and goddesses, all the- furies 
 and fairies, all the mingling of the beastly and human, 
 were all produced by the impressions of nature upon the 
 brain of man by the rise of the sun, the silver dawn, the 
 golden sunset, the birth and death of day, the change of 
 seasons, the lightning, the storm, the beautiful bow- 
 all these produced within the brain of man all myths, 
 and they are all natural productions. 
 
 There have been certain myths universal among men. 
 Gardens of Eden have been absolutely universal the 
 golden age, which is absolutely the same thing. And 
 what was the golden age born of? Any old man in Bos- 
 ton will tell you that fifty years ago all people were 
 honest. Fifty years ago all people were sociable there 
 was no stuck-up aristocracy then. Neighbors were 
 neighbors. Merchants gave full weight. Everything was 
 full length; everything was a yard wide and all wool. 
 Now everybody swindles everybody else, and calls it 
 business. Go back fifty years and you will find an old man 
 who will tell you that there was a time when all were 
 honest. Go back another fifty years and you will find 
 another sage who will tell you the same story. Every 
 man looks back to his youth, to the golden age, and 
 what is true of the individual is true of the whole human 
 race. It has its infancy, its manhood, and, finally, will 
 have an old age. The garden of Eden is not back of us. 
 There are more honest men, good women, and obedient 
 children in the world to-day than ever before. 
 
830 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 The myth of the Elysian fields universally born of 
 sunsets. When the golden clouds in the west turned to 
 amethyst, sapphire, and purple, the poor savage thought 
 it a vision of another land a land without care or grief 
 a world of perpetual joy. This myth was born of the 
 setting of the sun. A universal myth, all nations have 
 belived in floods. Savages found everywhere evidences 
 of the sea having been above the earth, and saw in the 
 shells souvenirs of the ocean's visit. It had left its cards 
 on the tops of mountains. The savage knew nothing 
 of the slow rise and sinking of the crust of the earth. He 
 did not dream of it. We now know that where the 
 mountains lift their granite foreheads to the sun, the bil- 
 lows once held sway, and that where the waves dash into 
 white caps of joy, the mountains will stand once more. 
 Everywhere the land is, the ocean will be; and where the 
 ocean is the land will be. The Hindoos believed in the 
 flood myth. Their hero, who lived almost entirely on 
 water, went to the Ganges to perform his ablutions, and, 
 taking up a little water in his hand, he saw a small fish 
 that prayed him to save it from the monster of the river, 
 and it would save him in turn from nis enemies. He did 
 so, and put it into different receptacles until it grew so 
 large that he let it loose in the sea; then it was large 
 enough to take care of itself. The fish told him that 
 there was going to be an immense flood, and told him to 
 gather all kinds of seed and take two of each kind of 
 animals of use to man, and he would come along with an 
 ark and take them all in. He told him to pick out seven 
 saints. And the fish towed the ark along tied to its 
 horns, and took them in and carried them to the top of 
 a mountain, where he hitched the ark to a tree. When 
 
MYTH AND MIRACLE. 831 
 
 the waters receded, they came out and followed them 
 down until they reached the plain. There were the same 
 number eight in this ark as there were with Noah. I 
 find that the rnyth of the virgin mother is universal. 
 
 The virgin mother is the earth. I find also in countries 
 the idea of a trinity. In Egypt I find Isis, Osiris, and 
 Horus. This idea prevailed in Central America among 
 the Aztecs. We find the myth of the judgment almost 
 universal. I imagine men have seen so much injustice 
 hire that they naturally expect that there must be some 
 day of final judgment somewhere. Nearly every theist 
 is driven to the necessity of having another world in 
 which his god may correct the mistakes he has made in 
 this. We find on the walls of Egyptian temples pictures 
 of the judgment; the righteous all go on the righ hand, 
 and those unworthy on the left. The myth of the sun 
 god was universal. Agni was the sun god of the Hin- 
 doos. He was called the most generous of all gods, yet 
 he ate his own father and mother. Baldur was another 
 sun god; he was a sun myth. Hercules was a sun god, 
 and so was Samson. Jonah, too, was a sun god, and 
 was swallowed by a fish. So was Hercules, and a wonder- 
 ful thing is that they were swallowed in about the same 
 place, near Joppa. Where did the big fish go? When 
 the sun went down under the earth, it was thought to be 
 followed by the fish, which was said to swallow it, and 
 carry it safely through the under world. The sun thus 
 came to be represented as the body of a woman with the 
 tail of a fish, and so the mermaid was born. Another 
 strange thing is that all the sun gods were born near 
 Christmas. The myth of Red Riding Hood, was known 
 among the Aztecs. The myth of eucharist came from 
 
832 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 the story of Ceres and Bacchus. When the cakes made 
 by the product of the field were eaten, it was the body of 
 Ceres, and when the wine was drank it was the blood of 
 Bacchus. From this idea the eucharist was born. There 
 is nothing original in Christianity. Holy water! Another 
 myth. The Hindoos imagined that the water had its 
 source in the throne of God. The Egyptians thought 
 the Nile sacred. Greece was settled by Egyptian 
 colonies, and they carried with them the water of the 
 Nile, and when any one died the water was sprinkled on 
 him. Finally Rome conquered Greece physically, but 
 Greece conquered Rome intellectually. This is the myth 
 of holy water, and with it grew up the idea of baptism, 
 and I presume that that is as old as water and dirt. The 
 cross is another universal symbol. There was once an 
 ancient people in Italy before the Romans, before the 
 Etruscans. They faded from the world, and history does 
 not even know the name of that nation. We find where 
 they buried the ashes of their dead, and we find chiseled, 
 hundreds of years before Christ, the cross, a symbol of 
 a hope of another life. We find the cross in Egypt, in 
 the cylinders from Babylon, and, more than that, we 
 find them in Central America. On the temples of the 
 Aztecs we find the cross, and on it a bleeding, dying god. 
 Our cross was built in the middle ages. 
 
 When Adam was very sick he sent Seth, his son, to 
 the garden of Eden. He told him he would have no 
 trouble in finding it; all he had to do was to follow the 
 tracks made by his mother and father when they left it. 
 He wanted a little balsam from the tree of life that he 
 might not die. Seth found there a cherub, with flaming 
 sword, who would not let him pass the door. He moved 
 
MYTH AND MIRACLE. 833 
 
 his wings so that he could see in, and he saw the tree of 
 life, with its roots running down to hell, and among them 
 Cain, the murderer. The angel gave Seth three seeds, 
 and told him to put them in his father's mouth when he 
 was buried and to watch the effect. The result was that 
 these trees grew up one pine, one cedar, and one 
 cypress. Solomon cut down one of these trees to put in 
 the temple, but it grew through the roof and he threw it 
 into the pool of Bethesda. When the soldiers went for 
 a beam on which to crucify Christ they took this tree 
 and made a cross of it. Helen, the mother of Constant- 
 ine, went to Jerusalem to find this cross. She found the 
 two crosses, also, that the thieves were crucified on. 
 They could not tell which was which, so they called a 
 sick woman who touched them, and when she touched 
 the right one she was immediately made whole. 
 
 Such is myth and fable. The history of one religion is 
 substantially the history of all religions. In embryo 
 man lives all lives. The man of genius knows within 
 himself the history of the human race; he knows the 
 history of all religions. The man of imagination, of 
 genius, having seen a leaf and a drop of water, can con- 
 struct the forests, the rivers, and the seas. In his pres- 
 ence all the cataracts fall and foam, the mists rise, and 
 the clouds form and float. To really know one fact is to 
 known its kindred and its neighbors. Shakespeare, look- 
 ing at a coat of mail, instantly imagined the society, the 
 conditions that produced it, and what it, in its turn, pro- 
 duced. He saw the castle, the moat, the drawbridge, 
 the lady in the tower, and the knightly lover spurring 
 over the plain. He saw the bold baron and the rude 
 retainer, the trampled serfs, and all the glory and the 
 
834 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 grief of feudal life. The man of imagination has lived the 
 life of all people, of all races. He has been a citizen of 
 Athens in the days of Pericles; listened to the eager elo- 
 quence of the great orator, and has sat upon the cliff, and 
 with the tragic poet heard "the multitudinous laughter of 
 the sea." He has seen Socrates thrust the spear of ques- 
 tion through the shield and heart of falsehood-r-was pres- 
 ent when the great man drank hemlock and met the night 
 of death tranquil as a star meets morning. He has fol- 
 lowed the peripatetic philosophers, and has been puzzled 
 by the sophists. He has watched Phidias, as he chiseled 
 shapeless stone to forms of love and awe. He has lived by 
 the slow Nile, amid the vast and monstrous. He knows 
 the very thought that wrought the form and features of the 
 Sphinx. He has heard great Memnon's morning song, 
 has laid him down with the embalmed dead, and felt 
 within their dust the expectation of another life, mingled 
 with cold and suffocating doubts the children born of 
 long delay. He has walked the ways of mighty Rome, 
 has seen the great Caesar with his legions in the field, has 
 stood with vast and motley throngs and watched the 
 triumphs given to victorious men, followed by uncrowned 
 kings, the captured hosts and all the spoils of ruthless 
 war. He has heard the shout that shook the Coliseum's 
 roofless walls when from the reeling gladiator's hand the 
 short sword fell, while from his bosom gushed the stream 
 of wasted life. He has lived the life of savage men- 
 has trod the forest's silent depths, and in the desperate 
 game of life or death has matched his thought against the 
 instinct of the beast. He has sat beneath the botree's 
 contemplative shade, rapt in Buddha's mighty thougat, 
 and he has dreamed all dreams that light, the alchemist, 
 
MYTH AND MIRACLE. 835 
 
 hath wrought from dust and dew and stored within the 
 slumbrous poppy's subtle blood. He has knelt with awe 
 and dread at every prayer; has felt the consolation and 
 the shuddering fear; has seen all the devils; has mocked 
 and worshiped all the gods; enjoyed all heavens, and felt 
 the pangs of every hell. He has lived all lives, and 
 through his blood and brain have crept the shadow and 
 the chill of every death, and his soul, Mazeppa-like, has 
 been lashed naked to the wild horse of every fear and 
 love and hate. The imagination hath a stage within the 
 brain, whereon he sets all scenes that lie between the 
 morn of laughter and the night of tears, and where his 
 players body forth the false and true, the joys and griefs, 
 the careless shadows, and the tragic deeps of human life. 
 
 Through with the myth-makers, we now come to the 
 wonder-worker. There is this difference between the 
 miracle and the myth a myth is an idealism of a fact, 
 and a miracle is a counterfeit of a fact. There is some 
 difference between a myth and a miracle. There is the 
 difference that there is between fiction and falsehood and 
 poetry and perjury. Miracles are probably only in the 
 far past or the very remote future. The present is the 
 property of the natural. You say to a man: "The 
 dead were raised 4,000 years ago." He says, "Well, 
 that's reasonable." You say to him, "In 4,000,000 
 years we shall all be raised." He says, "That is what I 
 believe." Say to him, "A man was raised from the 
 dead this morning," and he will say, "What are you 
 giving us?" Miracles never convince at the time they 
 were said to have been performed. 
 
 John the Baptist was the forerunner of Christ. He 
 was cast into prison. When Christ heard of it He 
 
836 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 " departed from that country." Afterward he returned 
 and heard that John had been beheaded, and he again 
 departed from that country. There is no possible rela- 
 tion between the miraculous and the moral. The mira- 
 cles of the middle ages are the children of superstition. 
 In the middle ages men told everything but the truth, 
 and believed everything but the facts. The middle ages 
 a trinity of ignorance, mendacity and insanity. There 
 is one thing about humanity. You see the faults of 
 others, but not your own. A Catholic in India sees a 
 Hindoo bowing before an idol and thinks it absurd. 
 Why does he not get him a plaster of paris virgin and 
 some beads and holy water? Why does the protestant 
 shut his eyes when he pra}s? The idea is a souvenir of 
 sun worship. It is the most natural worship in the 
 world. Religious dogmas have become absurd. The 
 doctrine of eternal torment to-day has become absurd, 
 low, grovelling, ignorant, barbaric, savage, devilish and 
 no gentleman would preach it. 
 
 Science, thou art the great magician! Thou alone per- 
 formest the true miracles. Thou alone workest the real 
 wonders. Fire is thy servant, lightning thy messenger. 
 The waves obey thee, and thou knowest the circuits of 
 the wind. Thou art the great philanthropist. Thou 
 hast freed the slave and civilized the master. Thou hast 
 taught man to chain, not his fellow-man, but the forces 
 of nature forces that have no backs to be scarred, no 
 limbs for chains to chill and eat forces that never 
 know fatigue, that shed no tears forces that have no 
 hearts to break. Thou gavest man the plow, the reaper 
 and the loom thou hast fed and clothed the world. 
 Thou art the great physician. Thy touch hath given 
 
MYTH AND MIRACLE. 837 
 
 sight. Thou hast made the lame to leap, the dumb to 
 speak, and in the pallid cheek thy hand hath set the rose 
 of health. "Thou hast given thy beloved sleep" a 
 sleep that wraps in happy dreams the throbbing nerves 
 of pain. Thou art the perpetual providence of man- 
 preserver of life and love. Thou art the teacher of every 
 virtue, and the enemy of every vice. Thou has dis- 
 covered the true basis of morals the origin and office of 
 conscience and hast revealed the nature and measure of 
 obligation. Thou hast taught that love is justice in its 
 highest form, and that even self-love, guided by wisdom, 
 embraces with loving arms the human race. Thou hast 
 slain the monsters of the past. Thou hast discovered the 
 one inspired book. Thou hast read the records of the 
 rocks, written by wind and wave, by frost and flame 
 records that even priestcraft cannot change and in thy 
 wondrous scales thou hast weighed the atoms and the 
 stars. Thou art the founder of the only true religion. 
 Thou art the very Christ, the only savior of mankind! 
 
 Theology has always been in the way of the advance 
 of the human race. There is this difference between 
 science and theology science is modest and merciful, 
 while theology is arrogant and cruel. The hope of 
 science is the perfection of the human race. The hope 
 of theology is the salvation of a few and the damnation 
 of almost everybody. As I told you in the first place, I 
 believe in the religion of freedom. O liberty! thou art 
 the god of my idolatry. Thou art the only deity that 
 hates the bended knee. In thy vast and unwalled temple, 
 beneath the roofless dome, star-gemmed and luminous 
 with suns, thy worshipers stand erect. They do not bow 
 or cringe or crawl or bend their foreheads to the earth. 
 
838 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 Thy dust hast never borne the impress of lips. Upon 
 thy sacred altars mothers do not sacrifice their babes, 
 nor men their rights. Thou askest naught from man 
 except the things that good men hate, the whip, the 
 chain, the dungeon key. Thou hast no kings, no popes, 
 no priests to stand between their fellow-men and thee. 
 Thou hast no monks, no nuns, who, in the name of duty, 
 murder joy. Thou carest not for forms nor mumbled 
 prayers. At thy sacred shrine hypocrisy does not bow, 
 fear does not crouch, virtue does not tremble, supersti- 
 tion's feeble tapers do not burn, but reason holds aloft 
 her inextinguishable torch, while on the ever-broadening 
 brow of science falls the ever coming morning of the ever 
 better day. 
 
INGERSOLL 
 
 ON 
 
 THE CHINESE GOD. 
 
 Messrs. Wright, Dickey, O'Conner and Murch, of the 
 select committee on the causes of the .present depression 
 of labor, presented the majority special report upon Chi- 
 nese immigration. 
 
 These gentlemen are in great fear for the future of our 
 most holy and perfectly authenticated religion, and have, 
 like faithful watchmen from the walls and towers of Zion, 
 hastened to give the alarm. They have informed Con- 
 gress that " Joss has his temple of worship in the Chi- 
 nese quarters, in San Francisco. Within the walls of a 
 dilapidated structure is exposed to the view of the faith- 
 ful the god of the Chinaman, and here are his altars of 
 worship. Here he tears up his pieces of paper; here he 
 offers up his prayers; here he receives his religious conso- 
 lations, and here is his road to the celestial land.-" That 
 "Joss is located in a long, narrow room, in a building in 
 a back alley, upon a kind of altar; " that " he is a wooden 
 
 839 
 
840 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 image, looking a% much like an alligator as like a human 
 being; " that the Chinese " think there is such a place as 
 heaven;" that " all classes of Chinamen worship idols; " 
 that "the temple is open every day at all hours; " that 
 "the Chinese have no Sunday; " that this heathen god 
 has "huge jaws, a big red tongue, large white teeth, a 
 half-dozen arms, and big, fiery eyeballs. About him are 
 placed offerings of meat, and other eatables a sacrifi- 
 cial offering. " 
 
 No wonder that these members of the committee were 
 shocked at such a god, knowing as they did that the 
 only true God was correctly described by the inspired 
 lunatic of Patmos in the following words: 
 
 "And there sat in the midst of the seven golden 
 candlesticks one like unto the son of man, clothed with 
 a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with 
 a golden girdle. His head and his hairs were white like 
 wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of 
 fire; and his feet like unto fine brass as if they burned in 
 a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. 
 And he had in his right hand seven stars; and out of his 
 mouth went a sharp, two-edged sword; and his counte- 
 nance was as the sun shining in his strength." 
 
 Certainly, a large mouth, filled with white teeth, is 
 preferable to one used as the scabbard of a sharp, two- 
 edged sword. Why should these gentlemen object to a 
 god with big fiery eyeballs, when their own Deity has 
 eyes like a flame of fire? 
 
 Is it not a little late in the day to object to people be- 
 cause they sacrifice meat and other eatables to their god? 
 We all know that for thousands of years the "real" 
 God was exceedingly fond of roasted meat; that He loved 
 
THE CHINESE GOD. 84! 
 
 the savor of burning flesh, and delighted in the perfume 
 of fresh, warm blood. 
 
 The following account of the manner in which the 
 "living God" desired that His people should sacrifice 
 tends to show the degradation and religious blindness of 
 the Chinese : 
 
 "Aaron therefore went unto the altar and slew the 
 calf of the sin-offering which was for himself. And the 
 sons of Aaron brought the blood unto him. And he 
 dipped his fingers in the blood and put it upon the horns 
 of the altar, and poured out the blood at the bottom of 
 the altar; but the fat and the kidneys and the caul above 
 the liver of the sin-offering he burnt upon the altar, as 
 the Lord commanded Moses, and the flesh and the hide 
 he burnt with fire without the camp. And he slew the 
 burnt offering. And Aaron's sons presented unto him the 
 blood which he sprinkled round about the altar. * 
 And he brought the meat offering and took a handful 
 thereof and burnt upon the altar. * * * He slew 
 also the bullock and the ram for a sacrifice of peace offer- 
 ing, which was for the people. And Aaron's sons pre- 
 sented unto him the blood which he sprinkled upon the 
 altar, round about, and the fat of the bullock and of the 
 ram, the rump and that which covereth the inwards, and 
 the kidneys, and the caul above the liver, and they put 
 the fat upon the breasts and he burnt the fat upon the 
 altar. And the breasts and the right shoulder Aaron 
 waved for a wave-offering before the Lord, as Moses had 
 commanded." 
 
 If the Chinese only did something like this, we would 
 know that they worshiped the " living " God. The idea 
 that the supreme head of the ' ' American system of 
 
842 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 religion" can be placated with a little meat and "ordi- 
 nary eatables," is simply preposterous. He has always 
 asked for blood, and has always asserted that without 
 the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin. 
 
 The world is also informed by these gentlemen that 
 "the idolatry of the Chinese produces a demoralizing 
 effect upon our American youth by bringing sacred things 
 into disrespect, and making religion a theme of disgust 
 and contempt." 
 
 In San Francisco there are some three hundred thou- 
 sand people. Is it possible that a few Chinese can 
 bring "our holy religion" into disgust and contempt? 
 In that city there are fifty times as many churches as 
 joss-houses. Scores of sermons are uttered every week; 
 religious books and papers are plentiful as leaves in au- 
 tumn, and somewhat dryer; thousands of bibles are with- 
 in the reach of all. And there, too, is the example of a 
 Christian city. 
 
 Why should we send missionaries to China if we can- 
 not convert the heathen when they come here? When 
 missionaries go to a foreign land, the poor, benighted 
 people have to take their word for the blessings showered 
 upon a Christian people ; but when the heathen come here, 
 they can see for themselves. What was simply a story 
 becomes a demonstrated fact. They come in contact 
 with people who love their enemies. They see that in a 
 Christian land men tell the truth; that they will not take 
 advantage of strangers; that they are just and patient; 
 kind and tender; and have no prejudice on account of 
 color, race, or religion; that they look upon mankind as 
 brethren; that they speak of God as a universal Father, 
 and are willing to work, and even to suffer, for the good, 
 
THE CHINESE GOD. 843 
 
 not only of their own countrymen, but of the heathen as 
 well. All this the Chinese see and know, and why they 
 still cling to the religion of their country is to me a 
 matter of amazement. 
 
 We all know that the disciples of Jesus do unto others 
 as they would that others should do unto them, and that 
 those of Confucius do not unto others anything that they 
 would not that others should do unto them. Surely, 
 such peoples ought to live together in perfect peace. 
 Rising with the subject, growing heated with a kind of 
 holy indignation, these Christian representatives of a 
 Christian people most solemnly declare that anyone 
 who is really endowed with a correct knowledge 
 of our religious system which acknowledges the 
 existence of a living God and an accountability to Him, 
 and a future state of reward and punishment, who feels 
 that he has an apology for this abominable pagan wor- 
 ship, is not a fit person to be ranked as a good citizen of 
 the American union. It is absurd to make any apology 
 for its toleration. It must be abolished, and the sooner 
 the decree goes forth by the power of this government, 
 the better it will be for the interests of this land. 
 
 I take this the earliest opportunity to inform these 
 gentlemen composing a majority of the committee that 
 we have in the United States no " religious system; '' 
 that this is a secular government. That it has no relig- 
 ious creed; that it does not believe nor disbelieve in a 
 future state of reward and punishment; that it neither 
 affirms nor denies the existence of a "living God; " and 
 that the only god, so far as this government is concerned, 
 is the legally expressed will of a majority of the people. 
 Under our flag the Chinese have the same right to wor- 
 
844 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 ship a wooden god that you have to worship any other. 
 The constitution protects equally the church of Jehovah 
 and the house of Joss. Whatever their relative positions 
 may be in heaven, they stand upon a perfect equality in 
 the United States. This government is an infidel govern- 
 ment. We have a constitution with man put in and God 
 left out; and it is the glory of this country that we have 
 such a constitution. 
 
 It may be surprising to you that I have an apology for 
 pagan worship, yet I have. And it is the same one that 
 I have for the writers of this report. I account for both 
 by the word superstition. Why should we object to their 
 worshiping God as they please? If the worship is im- 
 proper, the protestation should come not from a com- 
 mittee of congress, but from God himself. If He is satis- 
 fied, that is sufficient. 
 
 Our religion can only be brought into contempt by the 
 actions of those who profess to be governed by its teach- 
 ings. This report will do more in that direction than 
 millions of Chinese could do by burning pieces of paper 
 before a wooden image. If you wish to impress the Chi- 
 nese with the value of your religion, of what you are 
 pleased to call "the American system," show them that 
 Christians are better than heathens. Prove to them that 
 what you are pleased to call the "" living God " teaches 
 higher and holier things, a grander and purer code of 
 morals, than can be found upon pagan pages. Excel 
 these wretches in industry, in honesty, in reverence for 
 parents, in cleanliness, in frugality, and above all by ad- 
 vocating the absolute liberty of human thought. 
 
 Do not trample upon these people because they have 
 a different conception of things about which even this 
 committee knows nothing. 
 
THE CHINESE GOD. 845 
 
 Give them the same privilege you enjoy of making a 
 
 god after their own fashion, and let them describe him 
 
 as they will. Would you be willing to have them remain, 
 
 if one of their race, thousands of years ago, had pretended 
 
 to have seen God, and had written of Him as follows: 
 
 " There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out 
 
 of his mouth; coals were kindled by it, * * * and 
 
 he rode upon a cherub and did fly?" Why should you 
 
 object to these people on account of their religion? Your 
 
 objection has in it the spirit of hate and intolerance. Of 
 
 that spirit the inquisition was born. That spirit lighted 
 
 the fagot, made the thumbscrew, put chains upon the 
 
 limbs, and lashes upon the backs of men. The same 
 
 spirit bought and sold, captured and kidnaped human 
 
 beings; sold babes, and justified all the horrors of slavery. 
 
 Congress has nothing to do with the religion of the 
 
 people. Its members are not responsible to God for the 
 
 opinions of their constituents, and it may tend to the 
 
 happiness of the constituents for me to state that they 
 
 are in no way responsible for the religion of the members. 
 
 Religion is an individual not a national matter, and 
 
 where the nation interferes with the right of conscience, 
 
 the liberties of the people are devoured by the monster, 
 
 superstition. 
 
 If you wish to drive out the Chinese, do not make a 
 pretext of religion. Do not pretend that you are trying 
 to do God a favor. Injustice in His name is doubly 
 detestable. The assassin cannot sanctify his dagger by 
 falling on his knees, and it does not help a falsehood if it 
 be uttered as a prayer. Religion, used to intensify the 
 hatred of men toward men, under the pretense of pleas- 
 ing God, has cursed this world. 
 
846 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 A portion of this most remarkable report is intensely 
 religious. There is in it almost the odor of sanctity; and 
 when reading it, one is impressed with the living piety of 
 its authors. But on the twenty-fifth page, there are a 
 few passages that must pain the hearts of true believers. 
 Leaving their religious views, the members immediately 
 betake themselves to philosophy and prediction. Listen: 
 
 44 The Chinese race and the American citizen, whether 
 native-born or who is eligible to our naturalization laws 
 and becomes a citizen, are in a state of antagonism. 
 They cannot, nor will not, ever meet upon common 
 ground and occupy together the same so-called level. 
 This is impossible. The pagan and the Christian travel 
 different paths. This one believes in a living God; that 
 one in the type of monsters and worship of wood and 
 stone. Thus in the religion of the two races pf men, they 
 are as wide apart as the poles of the two hemispheres. 
 They cannot now, nor never [sic] will, approach the 
 same religious altar. The Christian will not recede to 
 barbarism, nor will the Chinese advance to the enlight- 
 ened belt [wherever it is] of civilization. * * He 
 cannot be converted to those modern ideas of religious 
 worship which have been accepted by Europe, and which 
 crown the American system. " 
 
 Christians used to believe that through their religion 
 all the nations of the earth were finally to be blest. In 
 accordance with that belief missionaries have been sent 
 to every land, and untold wealth has been expended for 
 what has been called the spread of the gospel. 
 
 I am almost sure that I have read somewhere that 
 1 ' Christ died for all men, " and that ' ' God is no respecter 
 of persons." It was once taught that it was the duty of 
 
THE CHINESE GOD. 847 
 
 Christians to tell to all people the " tidings of great joy.' 
 I have never believed these things myself, but have always 
 contended that an honest merchant was the best mission- 
 ary. Commerce makes friends, religion makes enemies; 
 the one enriches, and the other impoverishes; the one 
 thrives best where the truth is told, the otherwhere false- 
 hoods are believed. For myself, I have but little confi- 
 dence in any business, or enterprise, or investment, that 
 promises dividends only after the death of the stock- 
 holders. 
 
 But I am astonished that four Christian statesmen, 
 four members of Congress in the last quarter of the 
 nineteenth century, who seriously object to people on 
 account of their religious convictions, should still assert 
 that the very religion in which they believe and the only 
 religion established by the living God-head of the Ameri- 
 can system is not adapted to the spiritual needs of one- 
 third of the human race. It is amazing that these four 
 gentlemen have, in the defense of the Christian religion, 
 announced the discovery that it is wholly inadequate for 
 the civilization of mankind; that the light of the cross 
 can never penetrate the darkness of China; "that all 
 the labors of the missionary, the example of the good, 
 the exalted character of our civilization, make no im- 
 pression upon the pagan life of the Chinese; " and that 
 even the report of this committee will not tend to elevate, 
 refine and Christianize the yellow heathen of the Pacific 
 coast. In the name of religion these gentlemen have 
 denied its power and mocked at the enthusiasm of its 
 founder. Worse than this, they have predicted for the 
 Chinese a future of ignorance and idolatry in this world, 
 and, if the " American system " of religion is true, hell- 
 fire in the next. 
 
848 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 For the benefit of these four philosophers and prophets, 
 I will, give a few extracts from the writings of Confucius 
 that will in my judgment, compare favorably with the 
 best passages of their report: 
 
 " My doctrine is that man must be true to the princi- 
 ples of his nature, and the benevolent exercises of them 
 toward others. 
 
 "With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and 
 with my bended arm for a pillow, I still have joy. 
 
 " Riches and honor acquired by injustice are to me but 
 floating clouds. 
 
 " The man who, in view of gain, thinks of righteous- 
 ness; who, in view of danger, forgets life, and who re- 
 members an old agreement, however far back it extends, 
 such a man may be reckoned a complete man. 
 
 " Recompense injury with justice, and kindness with 
 kindness." 
 
 There is one word which may serve as rule of practice 
 for all one's life. Reciprocity is that word. 
 
 When the ancestors of the four Christian Congress- 
 men were barbarians, when they lived in caves, gnawed 
 bones, and worshiped dried snakes, the infamous Chi- 
 nese were reading these sublime sentences of Confucius. 
 When the forefathers of these Christian statesmen were 
 hunting toads to get the jewels out of their heads to be 
 used as charms, the wretched Chinese were calculating 
 eclipses and measuring the circumference of the earth. 
 When the progenitors of these representatives of the 
 "American system of religion" were burning women 
 charged with nursing devils, these people, " incapable of 
 being influenced by the exalted character of our civiliza- 
 tion," were building asylums for the insane. 
 
THE CHINESE GOD. 849 
 
 Neither should it be forgotten that, for thousands of 
 years, the Chinese have honestly practiced the great princi- 
 ple known as civil service reform a something that even 
 the administration of Mr. Hayes has reached only through 
 the proxy of promise. 
 
 If we wish to prevent the immigration of the Chinese, 
 let us reform our treaties with the vast empire from 
 whence they came. For thousands of years the Chinese 
 secluded themselves from the rest of the world. They 
 did not deem the Christian nations fit to associate with. 
 We forced ourselves upon them. We called, not with 
 cards, but with cannon. The English battered down the 
 door in the names of Opium and Christ. This infamy 
 was regarded as another triumph for the gospel. At last, 
 in self-defense, the Chinese allowed Christians to touch 
 their shores. Their wise men, their philosophers pro- 
 tested, and prophesied that time would show that Christ- 
 ians could not be trusted. This report proves that the 
 wise men were not only philosophers, but prophets. 
 
 Treat China as you would England. Keep a treaty 
 while it is in force. Change it if you will, according to 
 the laws of nations, but on no account excuse a breach 
 of national faith by pretending that we are dishonest for 
 God's sake. 
 
INGERSOLL'S LETTER. 
 
 IS SUICIDE A SIN? 
 
 (COLONEL INGERSOLL'S FIRST LETTER ) 
 
 I do not know whether self-killing is on the increase or 
 not. If it is, then there must be, on the average, more 
 trouble, more sorrow, more failure, and, consequently, 
 more people are driven to despair. In civilized life there 
 is a great struggle, great competition, and many fall. To 
 fail in a great city is like being wrecked at sea. In the 
 country a man has friends. He can get a little credit, a 
 little help, but in the city it is different. The man is lost 
 in the multitude. In the roar of the streets his cry is not 
 heard. Death becomes his only friend. Death promises 
 release from want, from hunger and pain, and so the 
 poor wretch lays down his burden, dashes it from his 
 shoulders and falls asleep. 
 
 To me all this seems very natural. The wonder is that so 
 many endure and suffer to the natural end, that so many 
 nurse the spark of life in huts and prisons, keep it and 
 
 850 
 
IS SUICIDE A SIN? 851 
 
 guard it through years of misery and want; support it by 
 beggary; by eating the crust found in the gutter, and to 
 whom it only gives days of weariness and nights of fear 
 and dread. Why should the man, sitting amid the wreck 
 of all he had, the loved ones dead, friends lost, seek to 
 lengthen, to preserve his life? What can the future have 
 for him? 
 
 Under many circumstances a man has the right to kill 
 himself. When life is of no value to him, when he can 
 be of no real assistance to others, why should a man con- 
 tinue? When he is of no benefit, when he is a burden to 
 those he loves, why should he remain? The old idea was 
 that * ' God " made us and placed us here for a purpose, and 
 that it was our duty to remain until He called us. The 
 world is outgrowing this absurdity. What pleasure can 
 it give 4< God" to see a man devoured by a cancer? To 
 see the quivering flesh slowly eaten? To see the nerves 
 throbbing with pain? Is this a festival for "God"? 
 Why should the poor wretch stay and suffer? A little 
 morphine would give him sleep the agony would be for- 
 gotten and he would pass unconsciously from happy 
 dreams to painless death. 
 
 If "God" determines all births and deaths, of what 
 use is medicine, and why should doctors defy, with pills 
 and powders, the decrees of " God" ? No one, except a 
 few insane, act now according to this childish supersti- 
 tion. Why should a man, surrounded by flames, in the 
 midst of a burning building, from which there is no 
 escape, hesitate to put a bullet through his brain or a 
 dagger in his heart? Would it give " God " pleasure to 
 see him burn? When did the man lose the right of 
 self-defense? 
 
852 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 So, when a man has committed some awful crime, why 
 should he stay and ruin his family and friends? Why 
 should he add to the injury? Why should he live, filling 
 his days and nights, and the days and 'nights of others, 
 with grief and pain, with agony and tears? 
 
 Why should a man sentenced to imprisonment for life 
 hesitate to still his heart? The grave is better than the 
 cell. Sleep is sweeter than the ache of toil. The dead 
 have no masters. 
 
 So the poor girl, betrayed and deserted, the door of 
 home closed against her, the faces of friends averted, no 
 hand that will help, no eye that will soften with pity, the 
 future an abyss filled with monstrous shapes of dread and 
 fear, her mind racked by fragments of thoughts like 
 clouds broken by storm, pursued, surrounded by the ser- 
 pents of remorse, flying from horrors too great to bear, 
 rushes with joy through the welcome door of death. 
 
 Undoubtedly there are many cases of perfectly justifia- 
 ble suicide cases in which not to end life would be a 
 mistake, sometimes almost a crime. 
 
 As to the necessity of death, each must decide for him- 
 self. And if a man honestly decides that death is best 
 best for him and others and acts upon the decision, 
 why should he be blamed? 
 
 Certainly the man who kills himself is not a physical 
 coward. He may have lacked moral courage, but not 
 physical. It may be said that some men fight duels be- 
 cause they are afraid to decline. They are between two 
 fires the chance of death and the certainty of dishonor, 
 and they take the chance of death. So the Christian 
 martyrs were, according to their belief, between two fires 
 the flames of the fagot that could burn but for a few 
 
IS SUICIDE A SIN? 853 
 
 moments and the fires of God, that were eternal. And 
 they chose the flames of the fagot. 
 
 Men who fear death to that degree that they will bear 
 all the pains and pangs that nerves can feel rather than 
 die, cannot afford to call the suicide a coward. It does 
 not seem to me that Brutus was a coward or that Seneca 
 was. Surely Antony had nothing left to live for. Cato 
 was not a craven. He acted on his judgment. So with 
 hundreds of others who felt that they had reached the 
 end that the journey was done, the voyage was over, 
 and, so feeling, stopped. It seems certain that the man 
 who commits suicide, who "does the thing that stops 
 all other deeds, that shackles accident and bolts up 
 change," is not lacking in physical courage. 
 
 If men had the courage they would not linger in prisons, 
 in almshouses, in hospitals, they would not bear the 
 pangs of incurable disease, the stains of dishonor, they 
 would not live in filth and want, in poverty and hunger, 
 neither would they wear the chain of slavery. All this 
 can be accounted for only by the fear of death or "of 
 something after." 
 
 Seneca, knowing that Nero intended to take his life, 
 had no fear. He knew that he could defeat the Emperor. 
 He knew that " at the bottom of every river, in the coil 
 of every rope, on the point of every dagger, Liberty sat 
 and smiled." He knew that it was his own fault if he 
 allowed himself to be tortured to death by his enemy. 
 He said, "There is this blessing, that while life has but 
 one entrance, it has exits innumerable, and as I choose 
 the house in which I live, the ship in which I will sail, so 
 will I choose the time and manner of my death." 
 
 To me this is not cowardly, but manly and noble. 
 
854 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 Under the Roman law persons found guilty of certain 
 offenses were not only destroyed, but their blood was pol- 
 luted, and their children became outcasts. If, however, 
 they died before conviction, their children were saved. 
 Many committed suicide to save their babes. Certainly 
 they were not cowards. Although guilty of great crimes, 
 they had enough of honor, of manhood, left to save 
 their innocent children. This was not cowardice. 
 
 Without doubt many suicides are caused by insanity. 
 Men lose their property. The fear of the future over- 
 powers them. Things lose proportion, they lose poise 
 and balance, and in a flash, a gleam of frenzy, kill them- 
 selves. The disappointed in love, broken in heart the 
 light fading from their lives seek the refuge of death. 
 
 Those who take their lives in painful, barbarous ways 
 who mangle their throats with broken glass, dash 
 themselves from towers and roofs, take poisons that tor- 
 ture like the rack such persons must be insane. But 
 those who take- v ,tbe facts into account, who weigh the 
 arguments for and against, and who decide that death is 
 best the only good and then resort to reasonable 
 means, may be, so far as I can see, in full possession of 
 their minds. 
 
 Life is not the same to all to some a blessing, to 
 some a curse, to some not much in any way. Some 
 leave it with unspeakable regret, some with the keenest 
 joy, and some with indifference. 
 
 Religion, or the decadence of religion, has a bearing 
 upon the number of suicides. The fear of "God," of 
 judgment, of eternal pain will stay the hand, and people 
 so believing will suffer here until relieved by natural 
 death. A belief in the eternal agony beyond the grave 
 
IS SUICIDE A SIN? 855 
 
 will cause such believers to suffer the pangs of this life. 
 When there is no fear of the future, when death is be- 
 lieved to be a dreamless sleep, men have less hesitation 
 about ending their lives. On the other hand, orthodox 
 religion has driven millions to insanity. It has caused 
 parents to murder their children and many thousands to 
 destroy themselves and others. 
 
 It seems probable that all real, genuine orthodox 
 believers who kill themselves must be insane, and to such 
 a degree that their belief is forgotten. " God " and hell 
 are out of their minds. 
 
 I am satisfied that many who commit suicide are in- 
 sane, many are in the twilight or dusk of insanity, and 
 many are perfectly sane. 
 
 The law we have in this State making it a crime to 
 attempt suicide is cruel and absurd and calculated to in- 
 crease the number of successful suicides. When a man 
 has suffered so much, when he has been so persecuted 
 and pursued by disaster that he seeks the rest and sleep 
 of death, why should the State add to the sufferings of 
 that man? A man seeking death, knowing that he will 
 be punished if he fails, will take extra pains and precau- 
 tions to make death certain. 
 
 This law was born of superstition, passed by thought- 
 lessness and enforced by ignorance and cruelty. 
 
 When the house of life becomes a prison, when the 
 horizon has shrunk and narrowed to a cell, and when the 
 convict longs for the liberty of death, why should the 
 effort to escape be regarded as a crime? 
 
 Of course, I regard life from a natural point of view. 
 I do not take gods, heavens or hells into account. My 
 horizon is the known, and my estimate of life is based 
 
856 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 upon what I know of life here in this world. People 
 should not suffer for the sake of supernatural beings or 
 for other worlds or the hopes and fears of some future 
 state. Our joys, our sufferings and our duties are here. 
 
 The law of New York about the attempt to commit 
 suicide and the law as to divorce are about equal. Both 
 are idiotic. Law cannot prevent suicide. Those who 
 have lost all fear of death, care nothing for law and its 
 penalties. Death is liberty, absolute and eternal. 
 
 We should remember that nothing happens but the 
 natural. Back of every suicide and every attempt to 
 commit suicide is the natural and efficient cause. Nothing 
 happens by chance. In this world the facts touch each 
 other. There is no space between no room for chance. 
 Given a certain heart and brain, certain conditions, and 
 suicide is the necessary result. If we wish to prevent 
 suicide we must change conditions. We must, by educa- 
 tion, by invention, by art, by civilization, add to the 
 value of the average life. We must cultivate the brain 
 and heart do away with false pride and false modesty. 
 We must become generous enough to help our fellows 
 without degrading them. We must make industry 
 useful work of all kinds honorable. We must mingle a 
 little affection with our charity a little fellowship. We 
 should allow those who have sinned to really reform. 
 We should not think only of what the wicked have done, 
 but we should think of what we have wanted to do. 
 People do not hate the sick. Why should they despise 
 the mentally weak the diseased in brain? 
 
 Our actions are the fruit, the result, of circumstances 
 of conditions and we do as we must. This great truth 
 should fill the heart with pity for the failures of our race. 
 
IS SUICIDE A SIN? 857 
 
 Sometimes I have wondered that Christians denounce 
 the suicide; that in old times they buried him where the 
 roads crossed, and drove a stake through his body. They 
 took his property from his children and gave it to the 
 State. 
 
 If Christians would only think, they would see tha 
 orthodox religion rests upon suicide that man was re- 
 deemed by suicide, and that without suicide the whole 
 world would have been lost. 
 
 If Christ were God, then he had the power to protect 
 himself from the Jews without hurting them. But instead 
 of using his power he allowed them to take his life. 
 
 If a strong man should allow a few little children to 
 hack him to death with knives when he could easily have 
 brushed them aside, would we not say that he committed 
 suicide? 
 
 There is no escape. If Christ were, in fact, God and 
 allowed the Jews to kill Him, then He consented to His 
 own death refused, though perfectly able, to defend and 
 protect Himself, and was, in fact, a suicide. 
 
 We cannot reform the world by law or by superstition. 
 As long as there shall be pain and failure, want and 
 sorrow, agony and crime, men and women will untie 
 life's knot and seeks the peace of death. 
 
 To the hopelessly imprisoned to the dishonored and 
 despised to those who have failed, who have no future, 
 no hope to the abandoned, the broken-hearted, to those 
 who are only remnants and fragments of men and women 
 how consoling, how enchanting is the thought of death! 
 
 And even to the most fortunate death at last is a wel- 
 come deliverer. Death is as natural and as merciful as 
 life. When we have journeyed long when we are weary 
 
858 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 when we wish for the twilight, for the dusk, for the 
 cool kisses of the night when the senses are dull when 
 the pulse is faint and low when the mists gather on the 
 mirror of memory when the past is almost forgotten, 
 the present hardly perceived when the future has but 
 empty hands death is as welcome as a strain of music. 
 
 After all, death is not so terrible as joyless life. Next 
 to eternal happiness is to sleep in the soft clasp of the 
 cool earth, disturbed by no dream, by no thought, by no 
 pain, by no fear, unconscious of all and forever. 
 
 The wonder is that so many live, that in spite of rags 
 and want, in spite of tenement and gutter, of filth and 
 pain, they limp and stagger and crawl beneath their 
 burdens to the natural end. The wonder is that so few 
 of the miserable are brave enough to die that so many 
 are terrified by the " something after death " by the 
 specters and phantoms of superstition. 
 
 Most people are in love with life. How they cling to 
 it in the arctic snows how they struggle in the waves 
 and currents of the sea how they linger in famine how 
 they fight disaster and despair! On the crumbling edge 
 of death they keep the flag flying and go down]at last full 
 of hope and courage. 
 
 But many have not such natures. They cannot bear 
 defeat. They are disheartened by disaster. They lie 
 down on the field of conflict and give the earth their 
 blood. 
 
 They are our unfortunate brothers and sisters. We 
 should not curse or blame we should pity. On their 
 pallid faces our tears should fall. 
 
 One of the best men I ever knew, with an affectionate 
 wife, a charming and loving daughter, committed suicide. 
 
IS SUICIDE A SIN. 859 
 
 He was a man of generous impulses. His heart was 
 loving and tender. He was conscientious, and so sensi- 
 tive that he blamed himself for having done what at the 
 time he thought wise and best. He was the victim of his 
 virtues. Let us be merciful in our judgments. 
 
 All we can say is that the good and the bad, the loving 
 and the malignant, the conscientious and the vicious, the 
 educated and the ignorant, actuated by many motives, 
 urged and pushed by circumstances and conditions 
 sometimes in the calm of judgment, sometimes in pas- 
 sion's storm and stress, sometimes in whirl and tempest 
 of insanity raise their hands against themselves and 
 desperately put out the light of life. 
 
 Those who attempt suicide should not be punished. If 
 they are insane they should, if possible be restored to 
 reason; if sane, they should be reasoned with, calmed 
 and assisted. 
 
INGEKSOLL'S LETTER 
 
 THE RIGHT TO ONE'S LIFE, 
 
 Colonel Ingersoll's Eloquent Reply - to 
 His Critics. 
 
 In the article written by me about suicide the ground 
 was taken that " under many circumstances a man has 
 the right to kill himself." 
 
 This has been attacked with great fury by clergymen, 
 editors and the writers of letters. These people con- 
 tend that the right of self-destruction does not and can 
 not exist. They insist that life is the gift of God, and 
 that He only has the right to end the days of men; that 
 it is our duty to bear the sorrows that He sends with 
 grateful patience. Some have denounced suicide as the 
 worst of crimes worse than the murder of another. 
 
 The first question, then, is: 
 
 Has a man under any circumstances the right to kill 
 himself? 
 
 A man is being slowly devoured by a cancer his agony 
 is intense his suffering all that nerves can feel. His life 
 
 860 
 
THE RIGHT TO ONE'S LIFE. 86 1 
 
 is slowly being taken. Is this the work of the good God? 
 Did the compassionate God create the cancer so that it 
 might feed on the quivering flesh of this victim? 
 
 This man, suffering agonies beyond the imagination to 
 Conceive, is of no use to himself. His life is but a suc- 
 cession of pangs. He is of no use to his wife, his chil- 
 dren, his friends or society. Day after day he is rendered 
 unconscious by drugs that numb the nerves and put the 
 brain to sleep. 
 
 Has he the right to render himself unconscious? Is it 
 proper for him to take refuge in sleep? 
 
 If there be a good God I cannot believe that He takes 
 pleasure in the sufferings of men that He gloats over 
 the agonies of His children. If there be a good God, 
 He will, to the extent of His power, lessen the evils of 
 life. 
 
 So I insist that the man being eaten by the cancer a 
 burden to himself and others, useless in every way has 
 the right to end his pain and pass through happy sleep 
 to dreamless rest. 
 
 But those who have answered me would say to this 
 man: " It is your duty to be devoured. The good God 
 wishes you to suffer. Your life is the gift of God. You 
 hold it in trust, and you have no right to end it. The 
 cancer is the creation of God and it is .your duty to fur- 
 nish it with food . " 
 
 Take another case: A man is on a burning ship; the 
 crew and the rest of the passengers have escaped gone 
 in the lifeboats and he is left alone. In the wide hori- 
 zon there is no sail, no sign of help. He cannot swim. 
 If he leaps into the sea he drowns, if he remains on the ship 
 he burns. In any event he can live but a few moments. 
 
862 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 Those who have answered me, those who insist that 
 under no circumstances a man has the right to take his 
 life, would say to this man -on the deck, " Remain where 
 you are. It is the desire of your loving, heavenly father 
 that you be clothed in flame that you slowly roast- 
 that your eyes be scorched to blindness and that you die 
 insane with pain. Your life is not your own, only the 
 agony is yours. " 
 
 I would say to this man: " Do as you wish. If you 
 prefer drowning to burning, leap into the sea. Between 
 inevitable evils you have the right of choice. You can 
 help no one, not even God, by allowing yourself to be 
 burned, and you can injure no one, not even God, by 
 choosing the easier death." 
 
 Let us suppose another case. 
 
 A man has been captured by savages in central Africa. 
 He is about to be tortured to death. His captors are 
 going to thrust splinters of pine into his flesh and then 
 set them on fire. He watches them as they make the 
 preparations. He knows what they are about to do and 
 what he is about to suffer. There is no hope of rescue, 
 of help. He has a vial of poison. He knows that he 
 can take it and in one moment pass beyond their power, 
 leaving to them only the dead body. 
 
 Is this man under obligation to keep his life because 
 God gave it until the savages by torture take it? Are 
 the savages the agents of the good God? Are they the 
 servants of the infinite? Is it the duty of this man to 
 allow them to wrap his body in a garment of flame? Has 
 he no right to defend himself? Is it the will of God that he 
 die by torture? What would any man of ordinary intelli- 
 gence do in a case like this? Is there room for discussion? 
 
THE RIGHT TO ONE'S LIFE. 863 
 
 If the man took the poison, shortened his life a few 
 moments, escaped the tortures of the savages, is it possi- 
 ble that he would in another world be tortured forever by 
 an infinite savage? 
 
 Suppose another case. In the good old days, when 
 the inquisition flourished, when men loved their enemies 
 and murdered their friends, many frightful and ingenious 
 ways were devised to touch the nerves of pain. 
 
 Those who loved God, who had been ''born twice," 
 would take a fellow-man who had been convicted of 
 "heresy," lay him upon the floor of a dungeon, secure 
 his arms and legs with chains, fasten him to the earth so 
 that he could not move, put an iron vessel, the opening 
 downward, on his stomach, place in the vessel several 
 rats, then tie it securely to his body. Then these wor- 
 shipers of God would wait until the rats, seeking food 
 and liberty, would gnaw through the body of the victim. 
 
 Now, if a man about to be subjected to this torture 
 had within his hand a dagger, would it excite the wrath 
 of the "good God," if with one quick stroke he found 
 the protection of death? 
 
 To this question there can be but one answer. 
 
 In the cases I have supposed it seems to me that each 
 person would have the right to destroy himself. It does 
 not seem possible that the man was under obligation to 
 be devoured by a cancer; to remain upon the ship and 
 perish in flame; to throw away the poison and be tortured 
 to death by savages; to drop the dagger and endure the 
 " mercies" of the church. 
 
 If, in the cases I have supposed, men would have the 
 right to take their lives, then I was right when I said 
 that ' ' under many circumstances a man has a right to 
 kill himself." 
 
864 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 Second, I denied that persons who killed themselves 
 were physical cowards. They may lack moral courage; 
 they may exaggerate their misfortunes, lose the sense of 
 proportion, but the man who plunges the dagger in his 
 heart, who sends the bullet through his brain, who leaps 
 from some roof and dashes himself against the stones 
 beneath, is not and cannot be a physical coward. 
 
 The basis of cowardice is the fear of injury or the fear of 
 death, and when that fear is not only gone, but in its place 
 is the desire to die, no matter by what means, it is im- 
 possible that cowardice should exist. The suicide wants 
 the very thing that a coward fears. He seeks the very 
 thing that cowardice endeavors to escape. 
 
 So the man, forced to a choice of evils, choosing the 
 less is not a coward, but a reasonable man. 
 
 It must be admitted that the suicide is honest with 
 himself. He is to bear the injury, if it be one. Certainly 
 there is no hypocrisy, and just as certainly there is no 
 physical cowardice. 
 
 Is the man who takes morphine rather than be eaten 
 to death by a cancer a coward? 
 
 Is the man who leaps into the sea rather than be 
 burned a coward? Is the man that takes poison rather 
 than be tortured to death by savages or " Christians " a 
 coward? 
 
 Third, I also took the position that some suicides 
 were sane; that they acted on their best judgment, and 
 that they were in full possession of their minds. 
 
 Now, if, under some circumstances, a man has the 
 right to take his life, and if, under such circumstances, 
 he does take his life, then it cannot be said that he was 
 insane. 
 
THE RIGHT TO ONE'S LIFE. 865 
 
 Most of the persons who have tried to answer me have 
 taken the ground that suicide is not only a crime, but 
 some of them have said that it is the greatest of crimes. 
 Now, if it be a crime, then the suicide must have been 
 sane. So all persons who denounce the suicide as a 
 criminal admit that he was sane. Under the law, an 
 insane person is incapable of committing a crime. All 
 the clergymen who have answered me, and who have 
 passionately asserted that suicide is a crime, have by 
 that assertion admitted that those who killed themselves 
 were sane. 
 
 They agree with me, and not only admit, but assert 
 that "some who have committed suicide were sane and 
 in the full possession of their minds." 
 
 It seems to me that these three propositions have been 
 demonstrated to be true: First, that under some cir- 
 cumstances a man has the right to take his life; second, 
 that the man who commits suicide is not a physical 
 coward; and, third, that some who have committed suicide 
 were at the time sane and in full possession of their 
 minds . 
 
 Fourth, I insisted, and still insist, that suicide was 
 and is the foundation of the Christian religion. 
 
 I still insist that if Christ were God He had the power 
 to protect Himself without injuring His assailants that 
 having that power it was His duty to use it, and that 
 failing to use it He consented to His own death and was 
 guilty of suicide. 
 
 To this the clergy answer that it was self-sacrifice for 
 the redemption of man, that He made an atonement for 
 the sins of believers. These ideas about redemption and 
 atonement are born of a belief in the "fall of man," on 
 
866 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 account of the sins of our " first parents," and of the 
 declaration that " without the shedding of blood there is 
 no remission of sin." The foundation has crumbled. No 
 intelligent person now believes in the l ( fall of man "- 
 that our first parents were perfect, and that their descend- 
 ants grew worse and worse, at least until the coming of 
 Christ. 
 
 Intelligent men now believe that ages and ages before 
 the dawn of history man was a poor, naked, cruel, ignor- 
 ant and degraded savage, whose language consisted of a 
 few sounds of terror, of hatred and delight; that he 
 devoured his fellow-man, having all the vices, but not all 
 the virtues of the beasts; that the journey from the den 
 to the home, the palace, has been long and painful, 
 through many centuries of suffering, of cruelty and war; 
 through many ages of discovery, invention, self-sacrifice 
 and thought. 
 
 Redemption and atonement are left without a fact on 
 which to rest. The idea that an infinite God, creator of 
 all worlds, came to this grain of sand, learred the trade 
 of a carpenter, discussed with Pharisees and scribes, and 
 allowed a few infuriated Hebrews to put Him to death 
 that He might atone for the sins of men and redeem a 
 few believers from the consequences of His own wrath, 
 can find no lodgement in a good and natural brain. 
 
 In no mythology can anything more monstrously un- 
 believable be found. 
 
 But if Christ were a man and attacked the religion of 
 His times because it was cruel and absured; if He endeav- 
 ored to found a religion of kindness, of good deeds, to 
 take the place of heartlessness and ceremony, and if, 
 rather than to deny what He believed to be right and 
 
THE RIGHT TO ONE'S LIFE. 867 
 
 true, He suffered death, then He was a noble man a 
 benefactor of His race. But if He were God there was 
 no need of this. The Jews did not wish to kill God. If 
 He had only made himself known, all knees would have 
 touched the ground. If He were God it required no 
 heroism to die. He knew that what we call death is but 
 the opening of the gates of eternal life. If He were 
 God, there was no self-sacrifice. He had no need to 
 suffer pain. He could have changed the crucifixion to a 
 
 joy- 
 Even the editors of religious weeklies see that there is 
 
 no escape from these conclusions from these arguments 
 and so, instead of attacking the arguments, they attack 
 the man who makes them. 
 
 Fifth, I denounced the law of New York that makes 
 an attempt to commit suicide a crime. 
 
 It seems to me that one who has suffered so much 
 that he passionately longs for death should be pitied, in- 
 stead of punished helped rather than imprisoned. 
 
 A despairing woman who had vainly sought for leave 
 to toil, a woman without home, without friends, without 
 bread, with clasped hands, with tear-filled eyes, with 
 broken words of prayer, in the darkness of night leaps 
 from the dock, hoping, longing for the tearless sleep of 
 death. She is rescued by a kind, courageous man, 
 handed over to the authorities, indicted, tried, convicted 
 clothed in a convict's garb and locked in a felon's cell. 
 
 To me this law seems barbarous and absurd, a law 
 that only savages would enforce. 
 
 Sixth, in this discussion a curious thing has happened. 
 For several centuries the clergy have declared that while 
 infidelity is a very good thing to live by, it is a bad 
 
868 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 support, a wretched consolation, in the hour of death. 
 They have, in spite of the truth, declared that all the 
 great unbelievers died trembling with fear, asking God 
 for mercy, surrounded by fiends, in the torments of 
 despair. Think of the thousands and thousands of clergy- 
 men who have described the last agonies of Voltaire, 
 who died as peacefully as a happy child smilingly passes 
 from play to slumber; the final anguish of Hume, who 
 fell into his last sleep as serenely, as a river, running be- 
 tween green and shaded banks, reaches the sea; the 
 despair of Thomas Paine, one of the bravest, one of the 
 noblest men, who met the night of death untroubled as a 
 star that meets the morning. 
 
 At the same time these ministers admitted that the 
 average murderer could meet death on the scaffold with 
 perfect serenity, and could smilingly ask the people who 
 had gathered to see him killed meet him in heaven. 
 
 But the honest man who had expressed his honest 
 thoughts against the creed of the church in power could 
 not die in peace. God would see to it that his last mo- 
 ments should be filled with the insanity of fear that 
 with his last breath he should utter the shriek of remorse, 
 the cry for pardon. 
 
 This has all changed, and now the clergy, in their 
 sermons answering me, declare that the atheists, the 
 free-thinkers, have no fear of death that to avoid some 
 little annoyance, a passing inconvenience, they gladly 
 and cheerfully put out the light of life. It is now said 
 that infidels believe that death is the end that it is a 
 dreamless sleep that it is without pain that therefore 
 they have no fear, care nothing for gods or heavens or 
 hells, nothing for the threats of the pulpit, nothing for 
 
THE RIGHT TO ONE'S LIFE. 869 
 
 the day of judgment, and that when life becomes a 
 burden they carelessly throw it down. 
 
 The infidels are so afraid of death that they commit 
 suicide. 
 
 This certainly is a great change, and I congratulate my- 
 self on having forced the clergy to contradict themselves. 
 
 Seventh, the clergy take the position that the athe- 
 ist, the unbeliever, has no standard of morality that he 
 can have no real conception of right and wrong. They 
 are of the opinion that it is impossible for one to be 
 moral or good unless he believes in some being far above 
 himself. 
 
 In this connection we might ask how God can be 
 moral or good unless he believes in some being superior 
 to himself. 
 
 What is morality? It is the best thing to do under the 
 circumstances. What is the best thing to do under the 
 circumstances? That which will increase the sum of 
 human happiness or lessen it the least. Happiness, in 
 its highest, noblest form, is the only good; that which 
 increases or preserves or creates happiness is moral 
 that which decreases it, or puts it in peril, is immoral. 
 
 It is not hard for an atheist for an unbeliever to 
 keep his hands out of the fire. He knows that burning 
 his hands will not increase his well-being, and he is 
 moral enough to keep them out of the flames. 
 
 So it may be said that each man acts according to his 
 intelligence so far as what he considers his own good is 
 concerned. Sometimes he is swayed by passion, by 
 prejudice, by ignorance, but when he is really intelligent, 
 master of himself, he does what he believes is best for 
 him. If he is intelligent enough he knows that what is 
 
8/o INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 really good for him is good for others for all the world. 
 
 It is impossible for me to see why any belief in the 
 supernatural is necessary to have a keen perception of 
 right and wrong. Every man who has the capacity to 
 suffer and enjoy, and has imagination enough to give the 
 same capacity to others, has within himself the natural 
 basis of all morality. The idea of morality was born 
 here, in this world, of the experience, the intelligence of 
 mankind. Morality is not of supernatural origin. It did 
 not fall from the clouds, and it needs no belief in the 
 supernatural, no supernatural promises or threats, no 
 supernatural heavens or hells to give it force and life. 
 Subjects who are governed by the threats and promises 
 of a king are merely slaves. They are not governed by 
 the ideal, by noble views of right and wrong. They are 
 obedient cowards, controlled by fear, or beggars governed 
 by rewards, by alms. 
 
 Right and wrong exist in the nature of things. Murder 
 was just as criminal before as after the promulgation of 
 the ten commandments. 
 
 Eighth, many of the clergy, some editors and some 
 writers of letters who have answered me have said that 
 suicide is the worst of crimes, that a man had better 
 murder somebody else than himself. One clergyman 
 gives as a reason for this statement that the suicide dies 
 in an act of sin, and therefore he had better kill another 
 person. Probably he would commit a less crime if he 
 would murder his wife or mother. 
 
 I do not see that it is any worse to die than to live in 
 sin. To say that it is not as 'wicked to murder another 
 as yourself seems absurd. The man about to kill him- 
 self wishes to die. Why is it better for him to kill 
 
 lother man, who wishes to live? 
 
THE RIGHT TO ONE'S LIFE. 8/1 
 
 To my mind it seems clear that you had better injure 
 yourself than another. Better be a spendthrift than a 
 thief. Better throw away your own money than steal 
 the money of another. Better kill yourself if you wish to 
 die than murder one whose life is full of joy. 
 
 The clergy tell us that God is everywhere, and that it 
 is one of the greatest possible crimes to rush into His 
 presence. It is wonderful how much they know about 
 God and how little about their fellow-men. Wonderful 
 the amount of their information about other worlds and 
 how limited their knowledge is of this. 
 
 There may or may not be an infinite being. I neither 
 affirm nor deny. I am honest enough to say that I do 
 not know. I am candid enough to admit that the ques- 
 tion is beyond the limitations of my mind. Yet I think 
 I know as much on that subject as any human being 
 knows or ever knew, and that is nothing. 
 
 I do not say that there is not another world, another 
 life; neither do I say that there is. I say that I do not 
 know. It seems to me that every sane and honest man 
 must say the same. But if there is an infinitely good 
 God and another world, then the infinitely good God will 
 be just as good to us in that world as He is in this. If 
 this infinitely good God loves His children in this world, 
 He will love them in another. If He loves a man when 
 he is alive, He will not hate him the instant he is dead. 
 
 If we are the children of an infinitely wise and power- 
 ful God, He knew exactlv what we would do the 
 temptations that we could and could not withstand 
 knew exactly the effect that everything would have upon 
 us, knew under what circumstances we would take our 
 lives and produced such circumstances himself. It is 
 
872 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 perfectly apparent that there are many people incapable 
 by nature of bearing the burdens of life, incapable of 
 preserving their mental poise in stress and strain of dis- 
 aster, disease and loss, and who by failure, by misfortune 
 and want, are driven to despair and insanity, in whose 
 darkened minds there comes like a flash of lightning in 
 the night, the thought of death, a thought so strong, so 
 vivid, that all fear is lost, all ties broken, all duties, all 
 obligations, all hopes forgotten, and naught remains ex- 
 cept a fierce and wild desire to die. Thousands and 
 thousands become moody, melancholy, brood upon loss 
 of money, of position, of friends, until reason abdicates, 
 and frenzy takes possession of the s"oul. If there be an 
 infinitely wise and powerful God, all this was known to 
 Him from the beginning, and He so created things, estab- 
 lished relations, put in operation causes and effects that 
 all that has happened was the necessary result of his own 
 acts. 
 
 Ninth, nearly all who have tried to answer what I 
 said have been exceeding careful to misquote me, and 
 then answer something that I never uttered. They have 
 declared that I have advised people who were in trouble, 
 somewhat annoyed, to kill themselves; that I have told 
 men who have lost their money, who had failed in busi- 
 ness, who were not good in health, to kill themselves at 
 once, without taking into consideration any duty that 
 they owed to wives, children, friends, or society. 
 
 No man has a right to leave his wife to fight the battle 
 alone if he is able to help. No man has a right to desert 
 his children if he can possibly be of use. As long as he 
 can add to the comfort of those he loves, as long as he 
 can stand between wife and misery, between child and 
 
8/3 
 
 want, as long as he can be of use, it is his duty to re- 
 main. 
 
 1 believe in the cheerful view, in looking at the sunny 
 side of things, in bearing with fortitude the evils of life, 
 in struggling against adversity, in finding the fuel of 
 laughter even in disaster, in having confidence in to- 
 ne orrow, in finding the pearl of joy among the flints and 
 shards, and in changing by the alchemy of patience even 
 evil things to good. I believe in the gospel of cheerful- 
 ness, of courage and good-nature. 
 
 Of the future I have no fear. My fate is the fate of 
 the world, of all that live. My anxieties are about this 
 life, this world. About the phantoms called gods and 
 their impossible hells, I have no care, no fear. 
 
 The existence of God I neither affirm nor deny. I 
 wait. The immortality of the soul I neither affirm nor 
 deny. I hope, hope for all of the children of men. I 
 have never denied the existence of another world, nor 
 the immortality of the soul. For many years I have said 
 that the idea of immortality, that like a sea has ebbed 
 and flowed in the human heart, with its countless waves 
 of hope and fear beating against the shores and rocks of 
 time and fate, was not born of any book, nor of any 
 creed, nor of any religion. It was born of human affec- 
 tion, and it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the 
 mists and clouds of doubt and darkness as long as love 
 kisses the lips of death. 
 
 What I deny is the immortality of pain, the eternity 
 of torture. 
 
 After, all the instinct of self-preservation is strong. 
 People do not kill themselves on the advice of friends or 
 enemies. All wish to be happy, to enjoy life; all wish 
 
874 INGERSOLL'S LECTURES. 
 
 for food and roof and raiment, for friends, and as long 
 as life gives joy the idea of self-destruction never enters 
 the human mind. 
 
 The oppressors, the tyrants, those who trample on the 
 rights of others, the robbers of the poor, those who put 
 wages below the living point, the ministers who make 
 people insane by preaching the dogma of eternal pain; 
 these are the .men who drive the weak, the suffering and 
 the helpless down to death. 
 
 It will not do to say that "God" has appointed a 
 time for each to die. Of this there is, and there can be, 
 no evidence. There is no evidence that any god takes 
 any interest in the affairs of men that any sides with 
 the right or helps the weak, protects the innocent or 
 rescues the oppressed. Even the clergy admit that their 
 God, through all ages, has allowed his friends, his wor- 
 shipers, to be imprisoned, tortured and murdered by His 
 enemies. Such is the protection of God. Billions of 
 prayers have been uttered; has one been answered? Who 
 sends plague, pestilence and famine? Who bids the 
 earthquake devour and the volcano to overwhelm? 
 
 Tenth, again I say that it is wonderful to me that 
 so many men, so many women endure and carry their 
 burdens to the natural end; that so many, in spite of 
 "age, ache and penury," guard with trembling hands 
 the spark of life; that prisoners for life toil and suffer to 
 the last; that the helpless wretches in poor-houses and 
 asylums cling to life; that the exiles in Siberia, loaded 
 with chains, sca/red ivith the knout, live on; that the 
 incurables, whose every breath is a pang, and for whom 
 the future has only pain, should fear the merciful touch 
 and clasp of death. 
 
THE RIGHT TO ONE'S LIFE. 8/5 
 
 It is but a few steps at most from the cradle to the 
 grave; a short journey. The suicide hastens, shortens 
 the path, loses the afternoon, the twilight, the dusk of 
 life's day; loses what he does not want, what he cannot 
 bear. In the tempest of despair, in the blind fury of 
 madness or in the calm of thought and choice the 
 beleaguered soul finds the serenity of death. 
 
 Let us leave the dead where nature leaves them. We 
 know nothing of any realm that lies beyond the horizon 
 of the known, beyond the end of life. Let us be honest 
 with ourselves and others. Let us pity the suffering, 
 the despairing, the men and women hunted and pursued 
 by grief and shame, by misery and want, by chance and 
 fate until their only friend is death. 
 
FOR THE DEAF. 
 
 THE AUDIPHONE 
 
 An Instrument that Enables Deaf Persons to Hear Or- 
 dinary Conversation Readily through the itif cllnm 
 of the Xetli, and Many of those Born Deaf and 
 Dumb to Hear and Learn to Speak. 
 
 INVENTEB BY RICHARD S. RHODES, CHICAGO. 
 
 Medal Awarded at the World's Columbian Expo- 
 sition, Chicago, 
 
 The Audiphone is a new instrument made of a peculiar composi- 
 tion, ppsessing the property of gathering the faintest sounds (some- 
 what similar to a telephone diaphragm), and conveying them to the 
 auditory nerve, through the medium of the teeth. The external tar 
 has nothing whatever to do in hearing with this wonderful instru- 
 ment. 
 
 Thousands are in use by those who would not do without them for 
 any consideration. It has enabled doctors and lawyers to resume 
 practice, teachers to resume teaching, mothers to hear the voices of 
 their children, thousands to hear their minister, attend concerts and 
 theatres, and engage in general conversation. Music is heard per- 
 fectly with it when without it not a note could be distinguished. It is 
 convenient to carry and to use. Ordinary conversation can be heard 
 with ease. In most cases deafness is not detected. 
 
 Full instructions will be sent with each instrument. The Audi- 
 phone is patented throughout the civilized world. 
 
 Conversational, small size, - - $3 oo 
 
 Conversational, medium size, 3 oo 
 
 Concert size, - - - - 5 oo 
 
 Trial instruments, good and serviceable, - - i 50 
 
 The Audiphone will be sent to any address, on receipt of price, by 
 
 RHODES & M C CLURE PUBLISHING CO,, 
 
 -ugpaa.ts fox t3a.e "World., 
 
 93 ^RTaelLixLetoa. St., 
 
TEACHING THE DEAF TO 
 SPEAK. 
 
 THE TEETH THE BEST MEDIUM AND THE AUDIPHONE THE 
 
 BEST INSTRUMENT FOR CONVEYING SOUNDS TO 
 
 THE DEAF, AND IN TEACHING THE PARTLY 
 
 DEAF AND DUMB TO SPEAK. 
 
 ADDRESS DELIVERED BY R. S. RHODES, OF 
 
 CHICAGO, BEFORE THE FOURTEENTH CONVENTION 
 
 OF AMERICAN TEACHERS OF THE DEAF, AT 
 
 FLINT, MICHIGAN. 
 
 MR. PRESIDENT AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: 
 
 I would like to relate some of the causes which led to 
 my presence with you to-day. 
 
 About sixteen years ago I devised this instrument, the 
 audiphone, which greatly assisted me in hearing, and 
 discovered that many who had not learned to speak were 
 not so deaf as myself. I reasoned that an instrument in 
 the hands of one who had not learned to speak would 
 act the same as when in the hands of one who had 
 learned to speak, and that the mere fact of one not being 
 able to speak would in no wise affect the action of the 
 instrument. To ascertain if or not my simple reasoning 
 was correct, I borrowed a deaf-mute, a boy about twelve 
 years old, and took him to my farm. We arrived there 
 in the evening, and during the evening I experimented to 
 
 17 
 
1 8 THE AUDIPHONE. 
 
 see if he could distinguish some of the vowel sounds, My 
 experiments in this direction were quite satisfactory. 
 Early in the morning I provided him with an audiphone 
 and took him by the hand for a walk about the farm. 
 We soon came across a flock of turkeys. We approached 
 closely, the boy with his audiphone adjusted to his teeth, 
 and when the gobbler spoke in his peculiar voice, the boy 
 was convulsed with laughter, and jumping for joy con- 
 tinued to follow the fowl with his audiphone properly 
 adjusted, and at every remark of the gobbler the boy was 
 delighted. I was myself delighted, and began to think 
 my reasoning was correct. 
 
 We next visited the barn. I led him into a stall beside 
 a horse munching his oats, and to my delight he could 
 hear the grinding of the horse's teeth when the audiphone 
 was adjusted, and neither of us could without. In the 
 stable yard was a cow lowing for its calf, which he plainly 
 showed he could hear, and when I led him to the cow- 
 barn where the calf was confined, he could hear it reply 
 to the cow, and by signs showed that he understood their 
 language, and that he knew the one was calling for the 
 other. We then visited the pig-sty where the porkers 
 poked their noses near to us. He could hear them with 
 the audiphone adjusted, and enjoyed their talk, and 
 understood that they wanted more to eat. I gave him 
 some corn to throw over to them, and he signed that that 
 was what they wanted, and that now they were satisfied. 
 He soon, however, broke away from me and pursued the 
 gobbler and manifested more satisfaction in listening to 
 its voice than to mine, and the vowel sounds as com- 
 pared to it were of slight importance to him, and for the 
 three days he was at my farm that poor turkey gobbler 
 had but little rest.* 
 
HEARING THROUGH THE TEETH. 1 9 
 
 With these and other experiments I was satisfied that 
 he could hear, and that there were many like him; so I 
 took my grip and audiphones and visited most of the 
 institutions for the deaf in this country. In all institu- 
 tions I found many who could hear well, and presented 
 the instrument with which this hearing could be improved 
 and brought within the scope of the human voice. But 
 at one institution I was astonished; I found a bright girl 
 with perfect hearing being educated to the sign language. 
 She could repeat words after me parrot-like, but had no 
 knowledge of their value in sentences. I inquired why 
 she was in the institution for the deaf, and by examining 
 the records we learned she was the child of deaf-mute 
 parents, and had been brought up by them in the country, 
 and although her hearing was perfect, she had not heard 
 spoken language enough to acquire it, and I was informed 
 by the superintendent of the institution that she pre- 
 ferred signs to speech. I was astonished that a child 
 with no knowledge of the value of speech should be per- 
 mitted to elect to be educated by signs instead of speech, 
 ind to be so educated in a state institution. This cir- 
 cumstance convinced me more than ever that there was 
 a great work to be done in redeeming the partly deaf 
 children from the slavery of silence, and I was more 
 firmly resolved than ever that I would devote the re- 
 mainder of my life to this cause. 
 
 I have had learned scientists tell me that I could not 
 hear through my teeth. It would take more scientists 
 than ever were born to convince me that I did not hear 
 Ay sainted mother's and beloved father's dying voice 
 with this instrument, when I could not have heard it 
 without. 
 
2O THE AUDIPHONE. 
 
 It would take more scientists than ever were born to 
 convince me that I did not hear the voice of the Rev. 
 James B. McClure, one who has been dear to me for the 
 last twenty years, and accompanied rne on most of my 
 visits to institutions spoken of above, and who has en- 
 couraged me in my labors for the deaf all these years, say, 
 as I held his hand on his dying bed only Monday last, 
 and took my final leave from him (and let me say, I 
 know of no cause but this that would have induced me 
 to leave him then), " Go to Flint; do all the good you 
 can. God bless your labors for the deaf! We shall 
 never meet again on earth. Meet me above. Good-by!" 
 
 And, Mr. President, when I am laid at rest, it will be 
 with gratitude to you and with greater resignation for the 
 active part you have taken in the interest of these partly 
 deaf children in having a section for aural work admitted 
 to this national convention, for in this act you have con- 
 tributed to placing this work on a firm foundation, which 
 is sure to result in the greatest good to this class. 
 
 You have heard our friend, the inventor of the tele- 
 phone, say that in his experiments for a device to im- 
 prove the hearing of the deaf, (as he was not qualified 
 by deafness,) he did not succeed, but invented the tele- 
 phone instead, which has lined his pocket with gold. 
 From what I know of the gentleman, I believe he would 
 willingly part with all the gold he has received for the 
 use of this wonderful invention, had he succeeded in his 
 efforts in devising an instrument which would have 
 emancipated even twenty per cent, of the deaf in the in- 
 stitutions from the slavery of silence. I have often 
 wished that he might have invented the audiphone and 
 
HEARING THROUGH THE TEETH. 21 
 
 received as much benefit by its use as I, for then he 
 would have used the gold he derives from the telephone 
 in carrying the boon to the deaf; but when I consider 
 that in wishing this I must wish him deaf, and as it would 
 not be right for me to wish him this great affliction, there- 
 fore since I am deaf, and I invented the audiphone, I 
 would rather wish that I might have invented the tele- 
 phone also; in which case I assure the deaf that I would 
 have used my gold as freely in their behalf as would he. 
 [The speaker then explained the use of the audiometer 
 in measuring the degree of hearing one may possess. 
 Then, at his request, a gentleman from the audience, a 
 superintendent of one of our large institutions, took a 
 position about five feet from the speaker, and was asked 
 to speak loud enough for Mr. Rhodes to hear when he did 
 not have the audiphone in use, and by shouting at the top 
 of his voice, Mr. Rhodes was able to hear only two or 
 three "o" sounds, but could not distinguish a word. 
 With the audiphone adjusted to his teeth, still looking 
 away from the speaker, he was able to understand ordinary 
 tones, and repeated sentences after him; and, when look- 
 ing at him and using his eye and audiphone, the speaker 
 lowering his voice nearly as much as possible and 
 yet articulating, Mr. Rhodes distinctly heard every 
 word and repeated sentences after him, thus showing the 
 value of the audiphone and eye combined, although Mr. 
 Rhodes had never received instructions in lip reading. 
 The gentleman stated that he had tested Mr. Rhodes' 
 hearing with the audiometer when he was at his institu- 
 tion in 1894, and found he possessed seven per cent, in 
 his left ear and nothing in his right.] 
 
PUBLISHED BY 
 
 RHODES & McCLURE PUBLISHING CO., 
 
 93 WASHINGTON ST., CHICAGO. 
 
 All handsomely bound in the best English and American cloths, with full Silver- 
 embossed side and back stamp; uniform in style of binding. Together making 
 a handsome library, or, separately, making handsome center-table volumes. 
 
 PRICE, $1.00 EACH. SENT POST-PAID. 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S STORIES AND SPEECHES; in one 
 volume, complete. New (1897) edition, handsomely illustrated; 
 containing the many witty, pointed and unequaled stories as told 
 by Mr. Lincoln, including Early life stories, Professional life 
 stories, Whife House and War stories; also presenting the full 
 text of the popular Speeches of Mr. Lincoln on the great ques- 
 tions of the age, including his "First Political Speech," "Rail- 
 Splitting Speech," " Great Debate with Douglas," and his Won- 
 derful Speech at Gettysburg, etc., etc.; and including his two 
 great Inaugurals, \\ii\\ many grand illustrations. An instructive 
 and valuable book; 477 pages. 
 
 MOODY'S ANECDOTES; 210 pages, exclusive of 
 engravings. Containing several hundred interesting 
 stories, told by the great evangelist, D. L. Moody, 
 in h ; s wonderful work in Europe and America 
 Hundreds of thousands of copies have been sold. 
 Illustrated with excellent engravings of Messrs. 
 Moody, Sankey, Whittle and Bliss, and thiny-two 
 full-pnge engravings from Gustave Dore, making 
 an artistic and handsome volume. " A book of an- 
 ecdotes which have thrilled hundreds of thou- 
 sands." Pittsburg Banner. 
 
 MOODY'S GOSPEL SERMONS. As delivered by the great Evangel- 
 ist, Dwight Lyman Moody, in his revival work in Gre ,t Britain 
 and America. Together with a biography of Mr. Moody and his 
 co-laborer, Ira David Sankey. Including, also, a short history of the 
 Great Revival. Each sermon is illustrated with a handsome, full-page 
 engraving from Gustave Dore. The book also contains an engraving of 
 D. L. Moody, Ira D. Sankey, Mr. Moody Preaching in the Royal Opera 
 House, Haymarket, London, Chicago Tabernacle (erected for Mr. 
 Moody's services) and "I Am the Way." A handsome and attractive vol- 
 ume of 443 p-ges. 
 
 MOODY'S LATEST SERMONS. As delivered by the great Evangel- 
 ist, Dwight Lyman Moody. Handsomely illustrated with twenty- 
 four full-page engravings from Gustave Dore. 335 pages. 
 
 MOODY'S CHILD STORIES. As related by Dwight Lyman Moody 
 in his revival work. Handsomely illustrated with sixteen full-page 
 engravings from Gustave Dore and 106 illustrations from J. Stuart 
 Littlejohn. A book adapted to children, but interesting to adults. A 
 handsome volume, Should be in everv family. 237 pages. 
 
Standard Publications, $1 each, bound in Cloth. 
 
 EVILS OF THE CITIES: By T. DeWitt Talmage, D. D.; 530 pages. 
 The author, in company with the pi\ per detectives, visited many of 
 the most vile and wicked places in New York City and Brooklyn, osten- 
 sibly looking for a thief, but in reality taking notes for a series of 
 discourses published in this volume, which contains a full and graphic 
 de^C' iption of what he saw and the lessons drawn therefrom. The Doctor 
 has al^o extei ded his observations to the "Summer Resorts," "Watering 
 Places," Races, etc., etc., all of which are popularized from his standpoint 
 in this volume. Handsomely illustrated and decidedly interesting. 
 
 TALMAGE IN THE HOLY LAND: 322 pages. The 
 Palestine Sermons of T. DeWitt Talmage, delivered during 
 his tour of the Holy Land. Including graphic descriptions 
 of Sacred Places, Vivid Delineations of Gospel Truths, 
 interesting local reminiscences, etc., etc., by his visit to the 
 many places made sacred by the personal presence of Jesus 
 and the great pens of Biblical characters and writers. 
 Copiously illustrated. 
 
 SIN: A series of popular discourses delivered by T. DeWitt 
 Talmage, D. D., and illustrated with 136 engravings by 
 H. De Lay; 411 pages. 
 
 XT cN BILL'S POPULAR SERMONS: 373 pages. Delivered in Lon- 
 1 1 con and America by the Rev. John McNeill, one of the ablest and 
 most p< pular of living divines, and known on both continents as " TKE 
 SCOTCH SPURGEON" of Europe, of \\hom D. L. Moody has said: " He is 
 the greatest preacher in the world." A most clear, vivid, earnest and 
 life-like presentation of Gospel Truth; sincerely and decidedly spiritual. 
 A most edifying, instructive and entertaining volume for young and old. 
 
 EDISON AND HIS INVENTIONS: 278 pages. Containing 
 full illustrated explanations of the new and wonderful Pho- 
 nograph, Telephone, Electric Light, and all his principal 
 inventions, in Edison's own language, generally, including 
 many incidents, anecdotes and interesting particulars connect- 
 ed with the earlier and later life of the world-renowned 
 inventor, trgether with a full Electrical Dictionary, explain- 
 ing all of the new electrical terms; making a very entertain- 
 ing and valuable book of the life and works of Edison. 
 Profusely illustrated. 
 
 GEMS OF TRUTH AND BEAUTY. A choice selection 
 of wise, eloquent extracts from Talmage, Beecher, Moody 
 Spurgeon, Guthrie and Parker, forming a volume that 
 keenly interests. A good gift and center table book- 
 300 pages, Illustrated. 
 
Standard Publications, $1 each, bound in Cloth. 
 
 TEN YEARS A COW BOY. A full and vivid de- 
 scription of frontier life, including romance, advent- 
 ure and all the varied experiences incident to a life 
 on the plains as cow boy, stock owner, rancher, etc., 
 together with articles on cattle and sheep raising, 
 how to make money, description of the plains, etc., 
 etc. Illustrated with 100 full-page engravings, and 
 contains reading matter 471 pages. 
 
 WILD LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. By C. H. Simpson, a resident 
 detective, living in this country. Giving a full and graphic account 
 of his thrilling adventures among the Indians and outlaws of Mon- 
 tanaincluding hunting, hair-breadth escapes, captivity, punishment and 
 difficulties of all kinds met with in this wild and lawless country. Illus- 
 trated by 30 full page engravings, by G. S. Littlejohn, and contains read- 
 ing matter 264 pages. 
 
 A YANKEE'S ADVENTURES IN SOUTH AFRICA. (In the dia- 
 mond country.) By C. H. Simpson. Giving the varied experiences, 
 adventures, dangers and narrow escapes of a Yankee seeking his 
 fortune in this wild country, which by undaunted courage, perseverance, 
 suffering, fighting and adventures of various sorts is requited at last by 
 the ownership of the largest diamond taken out of the Kimberly mines 
 up to that time, and with the heart and hand of the fairest daughter of a 
 diamond kin^. Containing 30 full-page illustrations by H. DeLay and 
 reading matter 220 pages. 
 
 WIT. Contains sketches from Mark Twain, witticisms 
 from F. H. Carruth, Donglas Jerrold, M. Quad, Op e 
 Reid, Mrs. Partington, Eli Perkins, O'Malley, Bill 
 Nye, Artemus Ward, Abe Lincoln, Burdette, Daniel 
 Webster, Victor Hugo, Brother Gardner, Clinton 
 Scollard, Tom Hood, L. R. Catlin, Josh. Billings, 
 Chauncey Depew and all humorous writers of mod- 
 ern times. Illustrated with 75 full page engravings, 
 by H. DeLay, and contains reading matter 407 pages. 
 
 BENONI AND SERAPTA. A Story of the Time of the Great Con- 
 stantine, Founder of the Christian Faith. By Douglas Vernon. A 
 religious novel showing a Parsee's constancy and faith through 
 many persecutions, trials and difficulties, placed in his way by priests, 
 nobles and queens of his time and his final triumph over all obstacles. 
 Being an interesting novel, intended to show the state of the religious 
 feelings and unscrupulous intrigues of those professing religion at the 
 time of the foundation of the Christian faith. Illustrated with 33 full- 
 page engravings, by H. DeLay, and contains reading matter 389 pages. 
 
s 
 
 Standard Publications, $1 each, bound in Cloth. 
 
 SAM JONES' GOSPEL SERMONS: 346 pages, 
 exclusive of engravings. Sam Jones is pronounced 
 "one of the most sensational preachers in the world, 
 and yet among the most effective." His sermons are 
 characterized by clearness, point and great common 
 sense, including "hits" that ring like guns. Printed 
 in large type, and illustrated with engravings of Sam 
 Jones and Sam Small, and with nineteen full-page 
 engravings from Gustave Dore. 
 
 AM JONES' LATEST SERMONS. The favor with which Sam 
 Jones' Gospel Sermc ns has been received by the public has induced 
 us to issue this book of his Latest Sermons. Each rermon is illustrated 
 with a full-page illustration from Gustave Dore's Bible Gallery. The 
 book is bound unifoimly with his Gorpel Sermons, and contains, besides 
 illustrations, reading matter. of 350 pages. 
 
 SAM JONES' ANECDOTES; 300 pages. An exceedingly interesting 
 and entertaining volume, containing the many telling and effective 
 stories told by Mr. Jones in his sermons. They strike in all directions 
 and always impart good moral lessons that can not be misunderstood. 
 Adapted for the young and old. A book which everybody can enjoy. 
 
 MISTAKES OF INGERSOLL; and his Answers 
 complete; n._wly revised popular (1897) edition; 
 illustrated, 482 pages. Containing the full 
 replies of Prof. Swing, Judge Black, J. Munro 
 Gibson, D. D., Chaplain n McCabe, Bishop 
 Cheney, Dr. Thomas, Dr. Maclauglan, Dr. 
 Goodwin and other eminent scholars to Inger. 
 
 soil's Lectures on the "Mistakes of Moses,'- 
 
 Skulls," "What Shall We Do to be Saved?" and " Thomas Paine," 
 to which are appended in full these Ingersoll lectures and his replies A' 
 fair presentation of the full discussion. 
 
 GREAT SPEECHES OF COL. R. G. INGERSOLL; complete; 
 newly revised (1897) edition; 409 pages. Containing the many 
 eloquent, timely, practical speeches of this most gifted o.ator and states- 
 man, including his recent matchless "Eulogy on Abraham Lincoln," 
 " Speech on the Declaration of Independence," "To the Farmers on 
 Farming," Funeral Oration at his Brother's Grave, etc., etc. Fully 
 and handsomely illustrated. 
 
 WIT, WISDOM AND ELOQUENCE OF COL. R. G. INGERSOLL; 
 newly revised popular (1897) edition, illustrated; 336 pages. Con- 
 taining the remarkable Witticisms, terse, pungent ?nd sarcastic sayings, 
 and eloquent extracts on popular themes, from Ingersoll's Speeches; a 
 very entertaining volume. 
 
 'THE FIRST MORTGAGE; 310 pages. A truthful, instructive, pleis- 
 1 ing and poetical presentation of Biblical stories, history and gospel 
 truth; fully and handsomely illustrated from the world-renowned artist, 
 Gustave Dore, by E. U. Cook, the whole forming an exceedingly inter- 
 esting and entertaining poetical Bible. One of the handsomest volumes 
 ever issued in Chicago. 
 
Standard Publications, $1.00 each, Cloth-bound. 
 
 MELODIES FOR THE LITTLE ONES 
 AT HOME. 320 pages. " This hand- 
 somely illustrated book has ben com- 
 piled and arranged by one who is best 
 able to tell what is good for the instruc- 
 tion and amusement of the children" 
 A MOTHER. Many of the rhymes are 
 original, but a large number are old 
 favorites that will interest the old folk 
 as reminiscences of their childhood 
 days. The illustrations are numerous 
 and include illustrations from GUSTAVE 
 DORE of nearly every story in the Bible 
 interesting to children. 
 
 They are idols of home and of households; 
 
 They are Angels of God in disguise. 
 
 His sunlight still sleeps in their tresses; 
 
 His glory still gleams in their eyes. 
 
 GEMS OF POETRY. 407 pages. Finely illustrated. Contains a very 
 choice and varied selection of our most popular, beautiful and time- 
 honored poems, written by the poets of all ages and climes. A 
 magnificent gift book for a friend; a splendid book for the holidays; ap- 
 propriate for a birthday or wedding present; a fine center-table book, in- 
 teresting to all. 
 
 COL. R. G. INGERSOLL'S LECTURES COMPLETE. 426 pages. 
 Including his ''Answers to the Clergy," his lectures on "Gods," 
 "Ghosts," "Hell," "Individuality," "Humboldt," "Which 
 Way," "The Great Infidels," "Talmagian Theology," "At a Child's 
 Grave," " Ingersoll's Oration at His Brother's Grave," " Mistakes of 
 Moses," "Skulls and Replies," and "What Shall We Do to Be Saved?" 
 
 COL. R. G. INGERSOLL'S LATEST LECTURES. 450 pages. In- 
 cluding his lectures on "Thomas Paine," "Liberty of Man, Woman 
 and Child," "Orthodoxy," "Blasphemy," "Some Reasons Why," 
 "Intellectual Development," " Human Rights," " Talmagian Theology," 
 "Religious Intolerance," "Hereafter," "Review of His Reviewers," 
 "How the Gods Grow," "The Religion of Our Day," " Heretics and 
 Heresies," "TheBible," "Voltaire," " Myth and Miracle." Including, 
 also, Ingersoll's letters on "The Chinese God," "Is Suicide a Sin ?" 
 "The Right to One's Life." 
 
 Price, sent by mail, post-paid, bound in cloth with silver trimmings. $i oo 
 
 ADDRESS 
 RHODES & M'CLURE PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
 
 93 WASHINGTON ST., CHICAGO 
 

GENERAL LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the 
 
 date to which renewed. 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 130ct'54BP 
 
 NOV 13 1954 ^' 
 
 1 
 
 1954 fll 
 
 JUL2 1955 
 
 SEP 61951 
 
 LU REC , D 
 
 ': 
 
 L.CI 
 
 OCT8 195C; 
 
 21-100m-l, '54 (1887sl6) 476 
 
 81960 
 
 J 
 
 1 1 1982 
 
YC 30135 
 
 --\ 
 
 U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES