L VIEW 
 
 OF LAMBERT'S "NOTES 
 ON INGERSOLL" 
 
 BY 
 HELEN M. LUCAS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE TRUTH SEEKER COMPANY 
 1909
 
 EXPLANATORY. 
 
 This was begun with the idea of proving to 
 Catholics that the real Ingersoll was very different 
 from the false one of the "Notes"; but Mr. Lam- 
 bert's method made it impossible to discuss the mat- 
 ter in such a way as to leave any chance of Catho- 
 lics' reading it without anger. So the plan of giv- 
 ing as true an exposition as possible of the "Notes" 
 for anyone to read who would was carried out as 
 the best that could be done in the case. A correct 
 idea of a man who has been misrepresented will 
 gradually spread among all kinds of people if num- 
 bers perform their duty to let the truth be known 
 by a word, quotation, newspaper article, letter, or 
 book as the occasion comes. This opinion is the 
 reason for offering you this View. 
 
 A friend advised me not to take the trouble to 
 write on this subject, because, she said, it had been 
 completely discussed at the time the Lambert book 
 was published. But that was not the case among 
 those I knew, and very few of those I meet now 
 know anything about it. 
 
 I hope better writers than I am will be induced 
 to help to give a more perfect understanding of 
 Lambert and Ingersoll.
 
 SUBJECT DIVISIONS 
 
 EXPLANATORY 4 
 
 INGERSOLL-BLACK DISCUSSION AND SOME OF 
 
 THE ENSUING TREATISES 5 
 
 ETERNITY OF THE UNIVERSE n 
 
 WORDS, LAW AND FORCE 13 
 
 CREATED UNIVERSE; SELF-EXISTENT UNIVERSE 18 
 EQUAL RIGHTS OF ALL TO EXPRESS THOTS ON 
 
 THE INFINITE 24 
 
 DESIGN ARGUMENT 28 
 
 LAMBERT EXPLAINS THAT SUFFERING Is NOT 
 DESIGNED; IT RESULTS FROM CRIME 
 
 CRIME THE RESULT OF LIBERTY 34 
 
 ASSERTIONS AND MIRACLES 43 
 
 THE COMMANDMENTS 48 
 
 LIBERTY 89 
 
 POLYGAMY, SLAVERY AND WAR, WITH PER- 
 SONALITIES FOR DESSERT 101 
 
 THE BIBLE SLAVERY in 
 
 RAPID RISE OF CHRISTIANITY PROOF OF ITS 
 
 DIVINE ORIGIN 117 
 
 FOUNDERS OF CHRISTIANITY 123 
 
 AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPELS MIRACLES.. 128 
 
 JOSEPHUS INSPIRED WITNESSES 138 
 
 GENEALOGY OF JESUS 149 
 
 DOCTRINES OF THE GOSPELS LAST WORDS OF 
 
 JESUS ON THE CROSS 154 
 
 GOSPELS SALVATION, INFIDELS 160 
 
 INFIDELS, ATHEISTS, REASON 169 
 
 THE ATONEMENT 175 
 
 NON-RESISTANCE 188 
 
 STANDARD OF RIGHT AND WRONG 191
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERTS NOTES. 
 
 
 
 The I nger soil-Black Discussion and Some of the 
 Ensuing Treatises. 
 
 In 1881 Mr. Allen Thorndyke Rice, editor of the 
 North American Review, asked Col. Robert G. 
 Ingersoll to write for the Review on the subject, 
 "Is All of the Bible Inspired?" and asked Judge 
 Jeremiah S. Black to write an answer. The articles 
 were written and published, and Mr. Ingersoll an- 
 swered Mr. Black, but Mr. Black refused to an- 
 swer Mr. Ingersoll. 
 
 The introduction to Mr. Lambert's "Notes on 
 Ingersoll" begins with the charge, which had been 
 already disproved, that Mr. Ingersoll prevented 
 the appearance of an answer from Mr. Black. 
 The denial of the editor of the Review is sufficient 
 answer to the charge. To the denial the editor 
 adds the explanation that he urged Mr. Black to 
 answer ; that Mr. Ingersoll was ignorant of any dis- 
 satisfaction on the part of Mr. Black until after 
 his own answer had appeared, and was anxious 
 that Mr. Black should rejoin. 
 
 Although no one was found to answer Ingersoll
 
 6 VIEW OF LAMBERTS NOTES. 
 
 Mr. G. P. Fisher wrote an article in favor of the 
 Christian religion, which was published in Febru- 
 ary, 1882. It began: "I comply with the request 
 of the North American Review that I should write 
 an article on the Christian religion. Not being am- 
 bitious to shine in the character of a malus haereti- 
 corum, I shall not enter the lists as a combatant in 
 the debate which has lately been waged in its 
 pages." In the last paragraph he says: "Should 
 anyone be moved to contradict statements in the 
 preceding article, I shall not, partly for the reason 
 stated at the outset, feel obliged to make reply. I 
 have no fear that candid readers will infer from 
 my silence that the propositions which have been 
 stated above admit of no further defense." "In- 
 gersoll As He Is" is my authority for the infor- 
 mation that he wrote with the stipulation that In- 
 gersoll should not be permitted to answer him. 
 
 We have the "Notes on Ingersoll," a dissertation 
 on the discussion of Ingersoll and Black, by Rev. 
 L. A. Lambert, a Catholic priest. In answer we 
 have an admirable book by Mr. B. W. Lacy, who 
 says on his title page he writes "by invitation of 
 Rev. Father Lambert." With easy good nature he 
 presently, in his introduction, quotes the invitation, 
 which ends: "We hold ourselves responsible to 
 him" (Ingersoll) "and to all the glib little whiffets 
 of his shallow school."
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 7 
 
 By way of answer to Mr. Lacy, Mr. Lambert 
 published a book, "Tactics of Infidels," which 
 should be answered fully, not characterized in a 
 single sentence here. 
 
 Of course, Mr. Ingersoll has never answered Mr. 
 Lambert, because the only course for a gentleman 
 to take was to pass on. If some one should accost 
 you on the street, shaking his fists in your face, 
 shouting opprobrious epithets, calling you "idiot," 
 "liar," "fool or dishonest, you may take your 
 choice," charging you with "egotism," "sophistry," 
 and "brazen audacity," saying you stop your "clat- 
 ter," and pause in your "ribaldry" (all of these and 
 more, quite as insulting, are in the short introduc- 
 tion to the "Notes"), would you not pass on? And 
 a "debate" of such a character in print would be 
 still more irrational, 
 
 Misleading insinuations and contemptuous epi- 
 thets, which occur so often in the "Notes," lead 
 readers who are barred by their religious rulers 
 from seeing the other side to suppose that Mr. In- 
 gersoll is an unintellectual buffoon. 
 
 Pointing out the difference between right and 
 wrong is not personal abuse. Criticizing admitted 
 atrocities is not "wounding and lacerating the 
 hearts and faith and feelings of those by whose 
 tolerance he is permitted to outrage the common
 
 8 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 sense and sentiment of Christendom," as Lambert 
 charges. 
 
 Showing reasons for thinking that barbarous pas- 
 sages of the Bible were the work of barbarous peo- 
 ple and not God-given rules for our guidance is 
 not considered by all a process of laceration of 
 hearts, but by some, at least, a work of humanity. 
 As for tolerance Catholics uphold the old Spanish 
 Inquisition. As for ridicule of religion I have 
 heard very religious people ridicule, and sometimes 
 misrepresent, other people's religion. The rule is to 
 hold only one's own religion sacred. 
 
 In trying to belittle Mr. Ingersoll the author 
 praises those others, from whom he wishes us to 
 think Mr. Ingersoll has copied; ascribing "intense 
 earnestness and masculine vigor" to "Tom" Paine, 
 "learning and wit" to Voltaire, "philosophical pen- 
 etration" to Hobbes and Bolingbroke, "analytical 
 faculty" to Herbert Spencer, "industry" to Tyndall 
 and Huxley, and "comprehensiveness and incisive 
 logic" to John Stuart Mill. This brings up the 
 question of how he would characterize Ingersoll if 
 he wished to write disparagingly of Hobbes or 
 any of the others mentioned above, and specify their 
 lacking attributes. "All these," wrote Mr. Lambert, 
 "are masters in their way, whom Mr. Ingersoll has 
 not succeeded in imitating or understanding. Want- 
 ing in originality he draws liberally from the wri-
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 9 
 
 tings of Paine, Voltaire, Bolingbroke, and others 
 for his points and arguments." 
 
 Points and arguments are very good things to 
 have in books. If Mr. Lambert had only put down 
 the names of the authors from which the points 
 and arguments were drawn when he quoted from 
 Ingersoll maybe we might stumble on an explana- 
 tion of how they could have been imitated without 
 being understood. Anyhow, points and arguments 
 are very much to be preferred to abusive personali- 
 ties. 
 
 Infidels, says the author, have said nothing new 
 since the time of Celsus, Porphyry and Julian, for- 
 getting that their arguments are often based on dis- 
 coveries made since the time of the old authors he 
 mentions. 
 
 Mr. Lambert says the "moral code of Moses is as 
 impervious to his attacks as are the pyramids of 
 Egypt," etc. It might be answered, it is not now in 
 force in civilized countries. People are now fined 
 and imprisoned for selling diseased meat to any- 
 body, foreign or native; and giving it to the 
 stranger within our gates is considered just as crim- 
 inal. It is hoped that witchcraft will never again be 
 punished by death. We may say the same of the 
 crime of disobedience of children, and Sabbath 
 breaking. Even the Jews, who still keep the Sab- 
 bath as a holy day, would pick up sticks if they
 
 io VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 needed them, tho, according to the Bible, God, ivhen 
 questioned particularly, pronounced the sentence of 
 stoning to death. Perhaps he neglected to prescribe 
 the penalty when giving the laws thru Moses ; any- 
 how the Jews did ask him what they should do with 
 the guilty Sabbath breaker. Slavery, which was 
 established and regulated in the Pentateuch, is now 
 abhorred by many people many good people, tho 
 the doctrine that it was a crime was started, Mr. 
 Black said in his debate with Ingersoll, by "the ad- 
 herents of a political faction of this country," who 
 were "not a very respectable portion" of the "civil- 
 ized world." Also, his faith and reason both as- 
 sured him "that the infallible God proceeded upon 
 good grounds when he authorized slavery in Ju- 
 dea." You see, Mr. Black gives reasons for think- 
 ing slavery right; we should honor him for that, 
 altho many of us do not think his reasons convinc- 
 ing. 
 
 Mr. Lambert. The Christian is not bound, at the 
 call of Mr. Ingersoll or anyone else, to reprint 
 proofs; that Mr. Ingersoll's ignorance of those ar- 
 guments is no reason why they should be repeated ; 
 that it is Mr. Ingersoll's article which is on trial, 
 and he proposes to consider that. 
 
 Comment. How can the article be dealt with 
 leaving out of consideration the subject of the ar- 
 ticle, which, of course, is the subject of the whole
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERTS NOTES. II 
 
 debate? Why write a book on any subject if rea- 
 soning is to have no place in it? He says that 
 proofs of what Mr. Ingersoll cannot believe are on 
 record and have never been answered by Mr. In- 
 gersoll's ancestors in Atheism and unbelief, from 
 Anaximander, Epicurus and Lucretius down to 
 d'Holbach, Leland, Cabanis, Hobbes, and Paine. 
 Such valuable proofs, and Mr. Lambert will not 
 give us even one ! 
 
 THE ETERNITY OF THE UNIVERSE. 
 
 Mr. Lambert begins chapter i by quoting Mr. 
 Ingersoll: "The universe, according to my idea, 
 always was and forever will be." 
 
 Lambert. "When you say, 'according to my 
 idea,' you leave the inference that the theory of an 
 eternal universe never entered the mind of man 
 until your brain acquired its full development. Of 
 course you did not intend to mislead or deceive, 
 you simply meant that your idea of the universe is 
 like most modern plays adapted from the French 
 or elsewhere. Your philosophy, like those plays, 
 wants the freshness and flavor of originality, and 
 suffers from bad translation. The old originals 
 from which you copy thot it incumbent on them 
 to give a reason, or, at least, a show of reason, 'for 
 their idea.' In this enlightened age you do not
 
 12 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 deem this necessary. It is sufficient for you to for- 
 mulate your 'idea.' To attempt to prove it would 
 be beneath you. Is this the reason why you do not 
 advance one single argument to prove the eternity 
 of matter? Have you got so far as to believe that 
 your 'idea' has the force of an argument, or that 
 the science of philosophy must be readjusted be- 
 cause you happen to have an 'idea' ?" 
 
 Comment. The first and second sentences of the 
 comment by this language critic contradict each 
 other, and the text quoted gives no grounds for 
 either sentence. "According to my idea" is the 
 same thing as "That is only what I think ; I may be 
 wrong." What follows shows that Ingersoll meant 
 the idea was not authoritative, for he goes on : "On 
 this subject nothing can be positively known." 
 
 He did advance argument in proof of his idea of 
 the eternity of matter: observation of Nature. 
 
 To this the author of the Notes opposes his idea, 
 without quotation marks, which means that his 
 ideas are really ideas. 
 
 Lambert. "That which is eternal is infinite. It 
 must be infinite because, if eternal, it can have 
 nothing to limit it. 
 
 "But that which is infinite must be infinite in 
 every way. If limited in any way, it would not be 
 infinite. 
 
 "Now matter is limited. It is composed of parts
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 13 
 
 and composition is limitation. It is subject to 
 change, and change involves limitation. Change 
 supposes succession, and there can be no succession 
 without a beginning, and, therefore, limitation. 
 Thus far we are borne out by reason, experience, 
 and common sense." 
 
 Then 
 
 "Matter is limited, and, therefore, finite; and if 
 finite in anything, finite in everything; and if finite 
 in everything, therefore not eternal." 
 
 Comment. It is supposed the author spread this 
 out so much because he considered it so weighty. 
 
 WORDS "LAW" AND "FORCE." 
 
 Ingersoll. "We know nothing of what we call 
 the laws of nature, except as we gather the idea of 
 law from the uniformity of phenomena springing 
 from like conditions. To make myself clear : Water 
 always runs down hill." 
 
 Lambert. "We acquire a knowledge of Nature 
 by observing the effects of the forces of nature ; but 
 we do not 'gather an idea of law' from a study of 
 those forces and their effects. The idea of law in 
 general is, and must be, prior to the idea of par- 
 ticular laws." (He illustrates by instancing a stone, 
 which, thrown up, comes down again.) "The mind 
 here does not 'gather an idea of law,' but begins in-
 
 14 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 stinctively" (he says instinctively) "to seek the law 
 in the case. To seek for a law presupposes the idea 
 of law, for we do not seek for that of which we 
 have no idea. 
 
 "To talk about 'gathering an idea of law from 
 phenomena' is unphilosophical. We conclude, or 
 deduce laws from phenomena, but we cannot 'gath- 
 er an idea' of law from anybody. To gather an 
 idea is like gathering a huckleberry or an Ingersoll. 
 It is not customary to gather a unit. You confound 
 idea with judgment or deduction." 
 
 Comment. Judgment or deduction gives you the 
 idea. In other words, you gather the idea by your 
 judgment of phenomena, or deduction from it. No 
 one confines all words to one meaning. Webster 
 defines gather: "To derive, as an inference; to 
 collect, as a conclusion, from circumstances that 
 suggest, or arguments that prove; to infer; to con- 
 clude." 
 
 Perhaps one is deficient in humor who fails to 
 see that a joke like gathering a huckleberry or an 
 Ingersoll is worth considerable sacrifice of sense, 
 time and point. 
 
 Lambert. Ingersoll is unfortunate in saying 
 water always runs down hill ; that running down hill 
 is an exception to the general action of water ; that 
 its general tendency is upward and outward; in- 
 stances steam, vapor, dew ; the effect of the equator
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 15 
 
 and mountains; the effect of the rotation of the 
 earth, and of the earth's being a spheroid. "You 
 saw somewhere a bit of water running down hill 
 and 'gathered the idea' that it always does so." 
 
 Comment. After this discourse a man whose 
 mind is on the argument of the question under dis- 
 cussion by Mr. Ingersoll and Mr. Black the eterni- 
 ty of the universe would be apt to say he under- 
 stood perfectly what Mr. Ingersoll meant by water 
 always runs down hill, but how can an extended 
 essay to show that it does not run down hill affect 
 the question at issue? 
 
 Compare Ingersoll's clear and concise statement 
 with the pages urging that water very seldom runs 
 down hill. Thru the "Notes" there are many pages 
 of language criticism, instead of arguments touch- 
 ing the subject of debate. 
 
 Lambert (continuing the subject of the water's 
 running down hill). "Your view was too narrow 
 and local. It wanted breadth and comprehensive- 
 ness. You misinterpret nature, as you misunder- 
 stood and misinterpreted Moses and revealed re- 
 ligion. You have proved yourself an incompetent 
 interpreter of nature, and you cannot be relied on 
 when you presume to criticise and condemn or deny 
 that which is above nature." 
 
 Comment. Suppose Ingersoll had written the 
 pages, partly quoted, partly summarized above;
 
 16 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 terms as polite as pedantic or wordy would never 
 have been applied to him by a critic like the wri- 
 ter of the "Notes." 
 
 There are four or five more pages, similar to the 
 lecture given above, to the effect that Ingersoll had 
 confounded law and force with some malignant 
 purpose in view, tho he doesn't hint what that pur- 
 pose is. On page 28 attention is called to some ital- 
 icized proposition which seems to me to be hard to 
 understand : 
 
 Lambert. "There is an inherent principle in the 
 forces of nature which causes them to act in the 
 same manner under the same circumstances. This 
 however, is not a law, but the nature of the forces 
 themselves. The laws of nature, then, as common- 
 ly understood, are the uniform action of natural 
 forces, expressed in words. When physicists speak 
 of the laws of nature, they refer to the forces of 
 which the laws are the verbal expression. They 
 suppose philosophers have sufficient intelligence to 
 understand this fact; and yet it appears that they 
 are sometimes mistaken. In all you say on this sub- 
 ject you confound law with force; whether this is 
 done intentionally or thru ignorance I need not stop 
 to consider." 
 
 Comment. The definition of the laws of nature 
 which is printed in italics the uniform action of 
 natural forces so far seems to me to show what
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 17 
 
 I have been thinking all along, that the two phrases, 
 laws of nature and uniform action of natural forces, 
 mean exactly the same thing; but if so, why all these 
 pages of criticism of the first phrase? Why this 
 charge of confounding the two for some dishonest 
 purpose, or, as appears on page 28, of confounding 
 them intentionally or thru ignorance? Particularly 
 hard to understand is the phrase which follows the 
 ones just compared expressed in words. How can 
 we express in words the uniform action of natural 
 law? Does he mean that "uniform action of natu- 
 ral forces" conies as near expressing the idea as we 
 can by words? If it is expressed in words in the 
 same sense in which the rest of the book is ex- 
 pressed in words, why put it in italics? Why say 
 expressed in words at all? Could it be the italics 
 were put there as an assurance that the thot is all 
 right that it does mean something, even if we 
 can't make out what it is? The hope arises that if 
 it had been expressed in large capitals we might 
 have seen the meaning at once. But now the fear 
 arises that trying to comprehend the idea of force 
 expressed in words is too strong for an ordinary 
 brain. 
 
 The next sentence says the same thing with only 
 a slight change in the wording : "When physicists 
 speak of the laws of nature, they refer to the forces 
 of which the laws are but the verbal expression."
 
 i8 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 You see it is the very same in meaning, but what 
 is the meaning? The next sentence, "They sup- 
 posed philosophers had sufficient intelligence to un- 
 derstand; but it appears that they are mistaken," 
 has not crushed out the desire to fathom Mr. 
 Lambert's Bunsbyan thots expressed in a flood 
 of words. 
 
 The closing words of chapter ii still further roil 
 the flood: "Your quibbles on the word 'law' have 
 been already exposed. Force is the cause of the 
 phenomena. The law is the mere statement of what 
 the force will do in any given case." 
 
 To see if my little intellect has quite ceased to 
 act I turn back to Ingersoll and read, "Law does not 
 cause the phenomenon, but the phenomenon causes 
 the idea of law in our minds." That seems quite 
 clear to me, and I take courage to go on to chapter 
 iii (i6th edition), which Mr. Lambert begins with 
 a quotation from Ingersoll. 
 
 CREATED UNIVERSE; OR, SELF-EXIST- 
 ENT UNIVERSE. 
 
 Ingersoll. "To put a God back of the universe 
 compels us to admit that there was a time when 
 nothing existed but this God ; that this God had lived 
 from eternity in an infinite vacuum, and in absolute 
 idleness. The mind of every thoughtful man is
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 19 
 
 forced to one of these two conclusions : either that 
 the universe is self-existent, or that it was created 
 by a self -existent being. To my mind, there are far 
 more difficulties in the second hypothesis than in the 
 first." 
 
 [In his answer Mr. Lambert separates this into 
 three parts. As the answer to the first half of the 
 first sentence is pretty long I will summarize part of 
 it:] 
 
 Lambert. "It compels us to admit nothing of the 
 kind. The eternal God can place an eternal act. 
 His creative act could, therefore, be coeternal with 
 his being. The end of the act, that is, creation, 
 could be coexistent with the eternal act, and, there- 
 fore, eternal." He says it could be so, Christianity 
 does not say that it is so, but reason teaches that it 
 could have been. But if it is not, Ingersoll's con- 
 clusion does not follow. "For, in this hypothesis as 
 time began with creation and is the measure of its 
 endurance, it follows that before creation was time 
 was not. Hence, God did not exist in time before 
 creation. God IS. To him there is neither past, 
 present, nor future, only eternity. God is alone be- 
 fore creation was." 
 
 Comment. That is a pretty ingenious way of say- 
 ing God could create himself and the universe at the 
 same time, but if he didn't he didn't exist before
 
 2O VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 
 
 creation. But there is the sentence, "God is 
 alone before creation was." 
 
 To one who was not educated in a theological 
 school of any kind it seems as if that last thot 
 knocked out the other two, or as if either of the 
 other two could knock out the last one. 
 
 And it seems as if the past, present, and future 
 make up eternity. 
 
 Lambert. "But granting that God is alone before 
 creation was, what follows?" Here he quotes the 
 last half of the first sentence of his text, and an- 
 swers, "If God lived in it it could not have been a 
 vacuum. A vacuum is that in which nothing is. In 
 the hypothesis that God is, he is something; he is 
 infinite, and an infinite vacuum is infinite nonsense. 
 But the word has a gross, material sense, and you 
 used it for a purpose." 
 
 Comment. Let us see about the infinite nonsense ; 
 what does the Bible say? It seems strange to me 
 that Mr. Lambert did not quote the story of crea- 
 tion from it, instead of taking so much pains to give 
 a different explanation. 
 
 Genesis has it: "In the beginning God created 
 the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without 
 form and void" (a vacuum) "and darkness was up- 
 on the face of the deep; and the spirit of God 
 moved upon the face of the waters." 
 
 As that was before creation the waters did not
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERTS NOTES. 21 
 
 have to be created; they were already (placed?) in 
 the vacuum ! Is it possible that the waters created 
 God? All that he had to do with them was to di- 
 vide them and put the firmament between them. 
 "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the 
 waters, and let it divide the waters from the 
 waters." This account says, "Let there be." It 
 does not say who accomplished the division; it is 
 supposed to come simply by the order, without any- 
 one to do it but God. Anyhow there is no question 
 about the making of the firmament. The Bible 
 says God made it and "divided the waters which 
 were under the firmament from the waters which 
 were above the firmament." A very strange thing 
 about it is that the account reads as if it were made 
 after it was put in the midst of the waters. Then 
 God said, "Let the waters be gathered together in 
 one place and let the day land appear." The prob- 
 lem of gathering them into one place without dis- 
 turbing the firmament which divided them into two 
 parts must have been a difficult one ; but everything 
 fs possible with God, and it was done. "On the 
 fifth day God said let there be lights (right here 
 my mind cleared up a little, and the conviction came 
 that of course God was talking to himself when he 
 said, "Let there be," etc. I don't se why I should 
 have been puzzled over that). He said, "Let there 
 be lights in the firmament." Of course there was
 
 22 VIEW OF LAMBERTS NOTES. 
 
 no danger that the waters under or above the fir- 
 mament would put out the lights. "The greater 
 light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the 
 night, and he made the stars also." Now that is 
 very interesting. It is a wonder that Mr. Lambert 
 did not let the inspired volume explain the creation, 
 especially as it was already written. Even the men- 
 tion of book, chapter, and verse would do, as Bibles 
 are accessible to every one. According to his belief 
 the Bible is the infallible word of God, of which he 
 is an infallible interpreter. 
 
 But, wait a minute. Perhaps it is as the infallible 
 interpreter that he explains that God can place an 
 eternal act, etc. No, that cannot be either, for he 
 does not settle the question in debate; he says only 
 that Ingersoll is wrong. The only affirmations cf 
 his own belief that he settles positively are that 
 "God did not exist in time before creation," and 
 "God is alone before creation was." How would 
 that sound without the words "in time"? But it 
 would not do to leave them out, for the author's 
 words must be given correctly. Notice, God did 
 not exist before creation, God did exist before crea- 
 tion. 
 
 "But the word vacuum has a gross material 
 sense, and you used it for a purpose," said Mr. 
 Lambert. 
 
 His meaning must be that Ingersoll used it in a
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 23 
 
 gross material sense for a bad purpose. According 
 to the dictionary and common usage, vacuum is 
 simply an empty space ; this leaves out all consider- 
 ations of arguments of scholars as to whether there 
 can be any empty space (vacuum) or not; it also 
 leaves out the seeming contradiction of the state- 
 ment that the earth before creation was void (vacu- 
 um), and yet had water in it, and also had the 
 spirit of God moving on the face of the waters. I 
 see no way of getting a hint of any kind of bad pur- 
 pose for which the word vacuum could be used. 
 The words "gross material sense" gives no light on 
 the subject. It seems as if Ingersoll used the word 
 just as Mr. Lambert's argument shows he used it, 
 meaning emptiness, tho Mr. Lambert thinks he is 
 wrong, for "in the hypothesis that God is he is 
 something." Well, we would never suppose that 
 Mr. Lambert took the gross material sense to mean 
 God, even if he had not shown that he believed In- 
 gersoll meant simply emptiness. 
 
 While weighing in my mind the relative merits of 
 two courses of action to get me out of the difficulty 
 of understanding how the word vacuum could be 
 used in a gross material sense : whether to advertise 
 for an explanation of this difficult passage, or to 
 write to Mr. Lambert admitting that I need instruc- 
 tion, any suggestion from others will be thankfully 
 received.
 
 24 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 In answer to the greater difficulty in the second 
 hypothesis, Mr. Lambert says that it is a pity Inger- 
 soll didn't take time and space to weigh those diffi- 
 culties. It seems to me his arguments preceding 
 and following the remark are exactly on those 
 points, while Mr. Lambert contents himself with re- 
 iterating, by way of answer, that our minds are 
 finite ; we cannot know God absolutely, but we know 
 with certainty that he is, and explaining the beliefs 
 of the Gnostics and Pantheists. 
 
 EQUAL RIGHTS OF ALL TO EXPRESS 
 THOTS ON THE INFINITE. 
 
 Ingersoll. "What we know of the infinite is al- 
 most infinitely limited, but little as we know, all 
 have an equal right to express their honest thot." 
 
 Lambert. "Has any man the right, common sense 
 being the judge, to talk about that of which his 
 knowledge is almost infinitely limited? All may 
 have an equal right to give their honest thot, but 
 none have the right to give their honest thot on all 
 subjects and under all circumstances. Common 
 sense and decency forbid it. The honesty of a thot 
 does not give weight or importance or truth to it. 
 If so, lunatics would be the best of reasoners, for 
 none are more honest in their thots than they. 
 Thot must be judged with reference to its truth,
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 25 
 
 and not with reference to the honesty of him who 
 thinks it. This ple*a of honesty in thinking is a 
 justification of every error and crime, for we must, 
 in the very nature of the case, take the thinker's 
 word for the honesty of his thot. Guiteau, if we 
 can believe him, expressed his honest thot by means 
 of an English bulldog revolver, and, if your theory 
 be true, he had a right to do it. 
 
 "The right to give an honest thot implies the right 
 to realize that thot in action and habit. If it means 
 less than this, it means the right to gabble like an 
 idiot. I assume that it is not this latter right you 
 claim. Then, in claiming the right to give your 
 honest thot, you claim to realize that thot in act and 
 practice, and cause it, as far as you can, to pene- 
 trate, and obtain in human society. If your claim 
 for liberty of thot means less than this, it is the 
 veriest delusion. 
 
 "I take it, then, that in claiming the right to give 
 your honest thot, you claim the right to promulgate 
 that thot, and to put it in practice in the affairs of 
 life. Now, in view of this claim of yours, I ask, 
 by what right you interfere with the slaveholder's 
 honest thot, or the Mormon's honest thot? Your 
 plea for the right of expressing honest thot is a 
 miserable pretense, or else by it you mean that those 
 only who agree with you have the right of express- 
 ing it in word or action. The doctrines of our
 
 26 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 loquacious liberals, when analyzed, will be found to 
 mean this and nothing more." 
 
 Comment. Does this mean that Mr. Ingersoll 
 has not the right to talk because his knowledge of 
 the infinite is limited, while it is different with his 
 critic? No; for he admits all have an equal right, 
 tho he limits it to certain subjects and certain times. 
 The correct inference might be that Ingersoll had no 
 right to express his thoughts on the creation of the 
 universe in a public debate; but carrying that out 
 might lead some people to believe that the other side 
 could be barred. Further along we find that it is 
 only the truth which can, by right, be spoken. Who 
 is to be the judge as to whether it is the truth or 
 not before it is expressed? Should it be privately 
 submitted to an opponent before it is published, and 
 suppressed if not true, in the opinion of the ex- 
 ponent of opposite views ? Would Mr. Lambert be 
 willing to submit his thots to this text and abide by 
 the judgment given? Perhaps he would say that 
 everything affecting faith and morals should be sub- 
 mitted to the decision of an infallible teacher ; al- 
 most everything has some bearing on morals and 
 the church has shown that many interesting sub- 
 jects are inimical to faith; witness, geography, as- 
 tronomy, chemistry, philosophy, history, literature, 
 and politics. 
 
 Here he expresses his thot that according to Mr.
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 27 
 
 Ingersoll's theory Guiteau had a right to express 
 his thot by means of an English bulldog revolver; 
 if not, it means to gabble like an idiot. Let us 
 shorten that for a clear view. Ingersoll's idea of 
 the right to express thots on the universe means 
 Guiteau had a right to shoot Garfield, or he gabbles 
 like an idiot, because the right to express thot im- 
 plies the right to realize it in action and habit. Sup- 
 posing that is an honest thot, admitting that its ele- 
 gance or inelegance does not affect the undeniable 
 right of expression, its truth is questionable, and if 
 it is not true Mr. Lambert's own rule would justify 
 its suppression. But let it stand (against him), for 
 liberals, loquacious or reticent, do not wish to , re- 
 strict thot even when expressed in the style of Mr. 
 Lambert. 
 
 Does my right to say God can place an eternal 
 act, or to say I cannot conceive an eternal act, carry 
 with it the right of assassination? Many people 
 would draw a line between an expression of opinion 
 on a self-existent or created universe and murder, 
 and would never see the slightest connection be- 
 tween expression of the opinion and such an act. 
 
 Let us hear how Mr. Lambert would realize any 
 opinion of the universe in action and habit. He 
 gives his opinion, without expressing it in action 
 and habit, that Ingersoll's "plea for the right of 
 expressing thot is a miserable pretense, or else by it
 
 28 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 you" (Ingersoll) "mean that only those who agree 
 with you have the right of expressing it in word or 
 action. The doctrines of our loquacious liberals, 
 when analyzed, will be found to mean precisely this 
 and nothing more." 
 
 In short, Mr. Lambert's argument seems to be: 
 People do not have the right to express thots on the 
 universe, for that right carries with it the right to 
 murder. Therefore, he has no right to give the 
 opinions he has been giving or any other opinions, 
 for he has no right to murder. What does he really 
 think on this subject? That no one has a right to 
 have thots? 
 
 Can onyone else interpret the expression of belief 
 that "all" have a right to express thot, to mean "only 
 those agreeing with me" have the right? 
 
 As for loquacious liberals, if there is one liberal 
 who fills pages with obscure, unmeaning, contradic- 
 tory dissertations, who writes paragraphs of scorn- 
 ful vituperation of a blameless character, leaving 
 the subject he pretends to discuss untouched, let 
 him be discountenanced by other liberals, and let 
 his friends try to lead him to better ways. 
 
 DESIGN ARGUMENT. 
 
 Lambert. "As Mr. Black did not advance this 
 argument I am at a loss to understand why it was
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 29 
 
 introduced by Mr. Ingersoll, unless it was to give us 
 a specimen of his ability in the way of metaphysical 
 skyrocketing." 
 
 Comment. Mr. Black did advance the argument 
 that the existence of God was proved by the design 
 of the universe. (See page 35 of the Ingersoll- 
 Black discussion.) 
 
 Quoting, "It will not do to say that the universe 
 was designed, and therefore there must be a de- 
 signer." This man who says in his introduction 
 this is not a subject to make merry over, and that the 
 orator of applause and laughter stops his clatter and 
 pauses in his ribaldry, breaks the quotation in 
 two to say, "Why not, if all have a right to give 
 their honest thot?" 
 
 Everyone will understand that this is a specimen 
 of Mr. Lambert's wit, which is not intended to be 
 a part of the argument; it is not expected that any- 
 one would take the meaning to be that the right to 
 speak any belief was denied, for it is plain that "it 
 will not do to say" is equivalent to "it is not suffi- 
 cient to say" without proof that there is a designer. 
 
 He then goes on to answer, certainly there must 
 be proofs, and they are found in works of theology 
 and philosophy; that it is Mr. Ingersoll's place to 
 answer those proofs, and not very cunningly leave 
 the inference that no such proofs exist; if Mr. In-
 
 3O VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 
 
 gersoll was ignorant of those proofs he should have 
 informed himself. 
 
 Now, tho Mr. Black said it would be a waste of 
 time and space to enumerate proofs that the uni- 
 verse was created by a preexistent and self-con- 
 scious Being, and he would assume that all would 
 have sense and reason enough to see that it could 
 not have been designed without a Designer, and 
 tho he did not give any proofs, Mr. Ingersoll did 
 answer what has been given by other authors as 
 proofs, beginning, however, with the above, which 
 is here quoted and commented on in such an extra- 
 ordinary manner. 
 
 What would be said of anyone who should an- 
 swer in any but a religious argument that it would 
 be a waste of time to give proofs? In anything 
 but religion no man would think of relying on mere 
 assertion to combat another's opinion, admitting 
 that he would attempt no proof. And Mr. Lambert 
 comes into the discussion reiterating the dogma un- 
 der discussion by way of answer to reasons for dis- 
 belief in the dogma. 
 
 He denies that Christians say so wonderful a 
 thing as man must have had a creator ; but they do 
 say it, and the theological books dealing with the 
 subject that I have so far seen give that as a rea- 
 son. But Mr. Lambert calls it childish nonsense. 
 He says the proof that all things were created is
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 31 
 
 not in their being wonderful, but that they exist. 
 Of course he does not mean that God does not ex- 
 ist. He says in another place that man is curious 
 and wonderful because he exists and is finite. He 
 says "the idea of a self -existent, eternal designer ex- 
 cludes the idea of a design prior to or independent 
 of him. This is so self-evident that it needs only to 
 be stated." There is the same assumption of the de- 
 signer. 
 
 To show that everything had to have a designer 
 but God he says : "The universe is the eternal idea 
 of God realized in time and space by the creative 
 act." That sentence is really wonderful. I pre- 
 sume the subjects of the priest not only look upon 
 it as wonderful but accept it as the statement of a 
 profound "Truth." I wonder if they pretend to 
 understand it? How many could remember that 
 as they could less ingenious contrivances ? 
 
 But I find I haven't given Ingersoll's words, 
 which are here criticized: 
 
 Ingersoll. "I know as little as any one else about 
 the plan of the universe; and as to the 'design' I 
 know just as little. It will not do to say that the 
 universe was designed, and therefore there must be 
 a designer. There must first be proof that it was 
 'designed.' It will not do to say that the universe 
 has a 'plan' and then assert that there must have 
 been an infinite maker. The idea that the design
 
 32 VIEW OF LAMBERTS NOTES. 
 
 must have had a beginning and that a designer need 
 not, is a simple expression of human ignorance. 
 We find a watch, and we say: 'So curious and 
 wonderful a thing must have had a maker/ We 
 find the watchmaker, and we say, 'So curious and 
 wonderful a thing as man must have had a maker.' 
 We find God, and then we say, 'He is so wonderful 
 that he must not have had a maker.' In other 
 words, all things a little wonderful must have been 
 created, but it is possible for something to be so 
 wonderful that it always existed. One would sup- 
 pose that just as the wonder increased the necessity 
 for a creator increased, because it is the wonder of 
 the thing that suggests the idea of creation. Is it 
 possible that a designer exists from all eternity 
 without design ? Was there no design in having an 
 infinite designer? For me it is hard to see the de- 
 sign in earthquakes and pestilences. It is somewhat 
 difficult to discern the design or the benevolence in 
 so making the world that billions of animals live 
 only on the agonies of others. The justice of 
 God is not visible to me in the history of this world. 
 When I think of the suffering and death, the pov- 
 erty and crime, of the cruelty and malice, of the 
 heartlessness of this 'design' and 'plan' wher 
 beak and claw and tooth tear and rend the quiver- 
 ing flesh of weakness and despair, I can not con-
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 33 
 
 vince myself that it is the result of infinite wisdom, 
 benevolence, and justice." 
 
 Lambert. In answer to the remark about the 
 plan of earthquakes, etc., Mr. Lambert, to illustrate 
 Mr. Ingersoll's egotism, tells a story of a boy whose 
 eye was hurt by a cinder from a passing locomotive. 
 He asks himself what design or plan a great corpo- 
 ration could have in throwing a cinder into his eye, 
 and represents the boy as saying it is difficult for 
 him to see design or benevolence in it. "Who will 
 say that boy was not a philosopher and an egotist, 
 or that a fortune does not await him when he is old 
 enough to take the lecture field?" 
 
 Comment. As the great corporation has never 
 been supposed to be infinite and to plan the uni- 
 verse you see how far he had to bring his anec- 
 dote to connect it with the subject and bring in 
 insulting insinuations. Not seeming to care that 
 he is now at work against the design argument 
 which he has been upholding he proceeds as ?f 
 Ingersoll were advocating the doctrine he Lam- 
 bert has, for the time, abandoned. He calls upon 
 Ingersoll to prove that God designed suffering be- 
 fore attributing it to him. "You should be just, 
 even to God." This follows immediately after his 
 quotation where Ingersoll argues that God could 
 not have designed suffering.
 
 34 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 
 
 LAMBERT EXPLAINS THAT SUFFERING 
 IS NOT DESIGNED, IT RESULTS 
 FROM CRIME CRIME THE RE- 
 SULT OF LIBERTY. 
 
 Lambert. "Crime is the result of human liberty 
 tho not a necessary result and suffering is the 
 result of crime." He illustrates his argument on 
 liberty and crime and suffering by saying ship- 
 wrecked mariners must not blame the captain when 
 the shipwreck is the result of disobedience to his 
 command. 
 
 Comment. As a rule shipwrecks are not the re- 
 sult of disobedience to the captain's commands, but 
 of the power of wind and wave entirely beyond 
 the control of anyone. 
 
 Lambert. "To those who see in man's nature 
 and destiny nothing higher than that of the grass- 
 hopper, or the potato bug . . . there must be some- 
 thing inexplicable in the sufferings of this life." 
 
 Comment. Here he is supposed to indicate In- 
 gersoll, as he is the subject of criticism, but the 
 designation is too unsuitable to give any concern 
 to the friends of the high-minded poet whose ob- 
 ject in life was progress and the happiness of others. 
 
 Suffering is inexplicable to those only who be- 
 lieve it was designed. Mr. Lambert would say that 
 God did not design it, but he says God designed the
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 35 
 
 universe; at any rate, that is the only thing to be 
 made out of the pages before us, not forgetting 
 the definition, "The universe is the eternal idea of 
 God realized in time and space by the creative act." 
 (Consulting the text every few words kept me 
 from ending that, "expressed in words.") 
 
 Universe is the whole thing, earth, sun, etc. 
 which must include the whole of the earth every- 
 thing on it, of course. If God did not design every- 
 thing, who did design the part that he did not? 
 Evil is especially indicated in Isaiah xlvi, 7, as 
 being the creation of God, and it is given in his 
 own words, "I create evil. I, the Lord, do these 
 things." The opinion that suffering is the result 
 of crime is not sustained, even in the one instance 
 given by Mr. Lambert. It is admitted that crime 
 is sometimes the cause of suffering to the guilty 
 one who commits the crime, but it is also the cause 
 of the suffering of the innocent as well as the 
 guilty. Besides crime there are unavoidable acci- 
 dents, and diseases contracted thro no fault of the 
 sufferers. 
 
 "Crime is the result of human liberty tho not 
 the necessary result and suffering is the result of 
 crime," says this Catholic theologian. "Evils that 
 are the results of man's perversions of liberty can 
 not be attributed to the design of God." 
 
 All this about crime's being the result of liberty,
 
 36 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 perversion of liberty, man's free agency, seems to 
 me to be the filling of space left by the absence of 
 reasons. Do people ever say of any particular 
 crime that it is the result of liberty? Say a man 
 shoots another because he is angry or wishes to 
 rob him, no one would ever think of calling the 
 crime the result of liberty, or of the perversion of 
 liberty, but of the ugly temper of the criminal ; the 
 loss of his liberty will be the result of the crime. 
 
 Mr. Lambert does not say God planned the good 
 and the Devil sometimes overcame the good with 
 evil, or that God's plan was upset in any way. We 
 gather the idea (think of an Ingersoll or a huckle- 
 berry and have a good, uproarious laugh) from 
 Mr. Lambert's arguments that the universe would 
 have gone on all right if that pestiferous quality, 
 liberty, had been left out of the plan. 
 
 Lambert (in chapter v, "pursuing" his victim 
 "with cold, relentless cruelty," as the preface has 
 it), starts out with the idea that the victim can 
 not see on account of "intellectual staphyloma"; 
 that he puts his judgment above God's and attempts 
 to assume his place; "men have been kindly, but 
 firmly consigned to insane asylums for such phil- 
 osophy" ; that he should doubt his powers of vision, 
 which is "difficult to a man of almost infinite self- 
 assertive capacity, but is wisdom"; accuses him of 
 attributing death, suffering, crime, cruelty and
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S WORKS. 37 
 
 malice to the plan; tells him "it is unphilosophical 
 to attribute to a plan objectionable features when 
 you confess ignorance of that plan." 
 
 Comment. The brief statement by Mr. Ingersoll 
 of his reasons for thinking that the belief in the 
 eternity of the Universe is more reasonable than 
 the belief that it was designed, was too plain to 
 be misunderstood by anyone. Does his cold, re- 
 lentless dissector (see preface) represent him as 
 arguing that God designed the misery of the world 
 and was therefore unjust, to give the impression 
 to the people of his church that he had advo- 
 cated the doctrine which his argument showed he 
 questioned and doubted did he so represent In- 
 gersoll as accusing God of cruelty and injustice, 
 thinking they would look at it as he guided them 
 in spite of Inger soil's words which Lambert him- 
 self quotes? It seems he did think they would, 
 and the chances are that he was right in so think- 
 ing. Ingersoll could not fail to be understood, but 
 the subjects of the church are barred from seeing 
 his writings unless given by an author who pub- 
 lishes them under the Imprimatur of the church. 
 It is not enough for the powers of the church that 
 they should be allowed to present their own case 
 in any way they choose, having their own argu- 
 ments or anything they might wish to have in 
 place of arguments side by side with the work
 
 38 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 they do not wish their subjects to accept, or even 
 before it ; they do not allow anything they suspect 
 might prove subversive of any of the dogmas or 
 practices of their religion to be submitted to the 
 judgment of their subjects. The sacred congre- 
 gation of the Holy Office is still at work. The 
 present "Father of his country" is more determined 
 than was his predecessor in Galileo's time to crush 
 liberty and to keep intelligence and progress away 
 from the world. 
 
 Mr. Black avoids the argument against design 
 of the cruelty and suffering of the world, saying, 
 "We have neither jurisdiction nor capacity to re- 
 judge the justice of God." Ingersoll notices this, 
 and answers : 
 
 Ingersoll. "In other words, we have no right to 
 think upon this subject, no right to examine the 
 questions most vitally affecting human kind. We 
 are simply to accept the ignorant statements of 
 the barbarian dead. This question cannot be 
 settled by saying that it would be a mere waste 
 of time and space to enumerate the proofs which 
 skow that the universe was created by a pre- 
 existent and self-conscious Being. The time and 
 space should have been 'wasted' and the proofs 
 should have been enumerated. These 'proofs' are 
 what the wisest and greatest are trying to find. 
 Logic is not satisfied with assertion. It cares noth-
 
 39 
 
 ing for the opinions of the 'great' nothing for the 
 prejudices of the many, and least of all for tht 
 superstitions of the dead. In the world of science 
 a fact is a legal tender; assertions and miracles 
 are spurious coins. We have the right to rejudge 
 the justice even of a god. No one should throw 
 away his reason the fruit of all experience. It is 
 the intellectual capital of the soul; the only light, 
 the only guide, and without it the brain becomes 
 the palace of an idiot king, attended by a retinue 
 of thieves and hypocrites." 
 
 Lambert. Stating a truth is not avoiding a 
 question; "you, however, avoid the question by 
 not admitting Black's proposition, or disproving 
 it. It is the hinge on which the whole argument 
 turns, and you should not have avoided it." He 
 then goes on with more than ten pages of com- 
 ment on Ingersoll's reasoning in disproof (which 
 is cool, as he just charged Ingersoll with avoiding 
 the question). He restates Mr. Black's proposi- 
 tion about rejudging the infinite; he says: "The 
 finite cannot be the measure of the infinite. God's 
 justice is infinite. The human mind is finite. Hence 
 the latter cannot be the measure of the former in 
 other words, wt have not the capacity, and, for a 
 stronger reason, not the jurisdiction to rejudge the 
 justice of God," and continues, "This is the clear 
 issue Mr. Black made with you, but instead of
 
 4O VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 meeting it squarely, as candor would dictate, you 
 ptoceed to avoid it by misstating it. Thus you 
 say : 'In other words, we have no right to think 
 upon this subject ' This is neatly done. But it 
 will not succeed. Mr. Black did not say we have 
 no right to think. He said we have no right to 
 judge, and it seems to me that any adult, whose in- 
 tellect is not below the average, will see a differ- 
 ence between thinking and judging. You honor the 
 truth in Mr. Black's proposition when you try to 
 torture it out of shape before you answer it." 
 
 Comment. Judge is a definition of think, accord- 
 ing to Webster. Can we judge, or decide that we 
 must not judge, without thinking? Mr. Ingersoll 
 expressed thots in the examination of the subject; 
 then Mr. Black spoke very decidedly to the effect 
 that we must let that subject alone. Mr. Lambert 
 seems to presume on his people's not thinking, ex- 
 amining or judging when he speaks. Torturing 
 the truth out of shape before answering it! Mr. 
 Lambert knows that he himself is doing that very 
 thing. What Mr. Ingersoll did was to state what 
 the proposition necessarily involved and that state- 
 ment was a convincing answer. If Mr. Black thot 
 we had neither the capacity nor jurisdiction 
 to judge (rejudge must mean judge), that was 
 what he thot a truth. Mr. Ingersoll, not looking 
 on it as a truth, stated its meaning in words show-
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 41 
 
 ing that if it were a truth it would suppress the 
 right of thinking and examining. No capacity 
 means we are not able to do anything with the sub- 
 ject. No jurisdiction means no right to do any- 
 thing with it. Is not the necessary conclusion then 
 that Mr. Black thinks we must let it alone? That 
 we have no right to think on the subject? No right 
 to examine the subject? Think and examine are 
 a little different in meaning, and therefore Mr. 
 Ingersoll used both words, as both meanings are 
 involved. 
 
 I am ashamed to go on so long about words that 
 all can understand for themselves if they read 
 them in the connection in which they are used, but 
 the author of the "Notes" prints whole pages which 
 lead one to think he was trained to argue with a 
 table-leg, and his whole concern seems to be to 
 create as much diversion as possible from points 
 of argument. 
 
 Finishing the sentence he began to quote "no 
 right to examine the questions vitally affecting hu- 
 man kind" he goes on in this characteristic 
 fashion : 
 
 Lambert. "There you are again. This is the 
 veriest kind of verbal thimble-rigging. Mr. Black 
 did not say we had no right to examine these 
 questions. He said we had no right to rejudge 
 the justice of God. You need not be told that
 
 42 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 
 
 there is a difference between examining and 
 judging. I cannot believe in view of your knowl- 
 edge of the English language that you change 
 these words without a purpose, even though you 
 hold that 'candor is the courage of the soul.' " 
 
 Comment. Next we have a paragraph, lengthy 
 in proportion to its contents. "We neither ac- 
 cept the statements of the barbarian dead, nor 
 the ignorant statements of the atheistic living; 
 the question between Mr. Black and Mr. Inger- 
 soll is whether the finite can judge the infinite." 
 
 The immediate question between those gentle- 
 man was, whether an infinite intelligence created 
 the evil in the universe. Mr. Black and Mr. Lam- 
 bert content themselves with the affirmation that 
 an infinite intelligence did; Mr. Lambert brings 
 forward the further information that liberty is 
 responsible for the evil, but as he declares that 
 the infinite created the whole universe perhaps 
 at the same time creating himself the first af- 
 firmation cannot be affected by the other one. 
 
 The branch of the subject put forth by Mr. 
 Black in place of an argument on the main ques- 
 tion was also considered, Mr. Black and Mr. 
 Lambert acting upon their right to judge that 
 Mr. Ingersoll had no right to judge.
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERTS NOTES. 43 
 
 ASSERTIONS AND MIRACLES. 
 
 Taking up "Logic is not satisfied with asser- 
 tion" the "Notes" proceed with much pomp to 
 correct the "blunder" of "confounding" logic and 
 reason. 
 
 Reasoning must be logical. There is no logic 
 in mere assertion. Ingersoll is right in spite of 
 the long lecture which the author calls "care- 
 ful analysis." 
 
 Ingersoll's sentence, "In the world of science 
 a fact is a legal tender," is referred to on page 
 56 as "meaningless verbiage." Was that char- 
 acterization suggested by this concise sentence 
 or by pages 50-54 of the "Notes," from which I 
 will copy a specimen? A note says it is from 
 Brownson's Quarterly Review. I don't know 
 whether Mr. Lambert is the author or not, but 
 the style seems to be according to his own heart : 
 
 "I allow you to doubt all things if you wish, 
 till you come to the point where doubt denies 
 itself. Doubt is an act of intelligence; only an 
 intelligent agent can doubt. It as much de- 
 mands intellect to doubt as it does to believe 
 to deny as to affirm. Universal doubt is, there- 
 fore, an impossibility, for doubt cannot, if it 
 would, doubt the intelligence that doubts, since 
 to doubt that would be to doubt itself. You can
 
 44 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 not doubt that you doubt, and then, if you doubt, 
 you know that you doubt, and there is one thing, 
 at least, you do not doubt, namely, that you 
 doubt. To doubt the intelligence that doubts, 
 would be to doubt that you doubt, for, without 
 intelligence, there can be no more doubt than 
 belief. Intelligence then, you must assert, for 
 without intelligence you cannot even deny in- 
 telligence, and the denial of intelligence by in- 
 telligence contradicts itself, and affirms intelli- 
 gence by the very act of denying it. Doubt, 
 then, as much as you will, you must still affirm 
 intelligence as the condition of doubting, or of 
 asserting the possibility of doubt, for what is 
 not, cannot act." The quotation takes up two 
 more pages of the "Notes." It follows two para- 
 graphs sustaining Mr. Black in not taking time 
 and space to give proofs, saying: "Mr. Black is 
 not justified by your ignorance" in doing so; 
 that the wisest and greatest, and "the world do 
 not agree with you," and more to the effect that 
 Mr. Ingersoll stands alone, in words we look 
 upon as mildly insulting for this author. 
 
 But, as Mr. Lambert is not shut off by the 
 North American Review as Mr. Black was (that 
 is what he says), he will "produce the argument 
 of a philosopher for the existence of God. I do 
 not deem it necessary, or logically called for,
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 45 
 
 just here, to do this; but as it may prove in- 
 structive to you I give it." Then follows the ar- 
 gument from Brownson's Review, of which a 
 specimen was given. Readers may not be 
 charmed with its appearance, but I do wish they 
 would read all of it, not only all of the argu- 
 ment but the whole of his book, "Notes on Inger- 
 soll." 
 
 In his "answer" to "In the world of science, 
 a fact is a legal tender," he says you must dem- 
 onstrate a fact, it must be established as such 
 before it is a legal tender; "What are facts?" 
 Ingersoll and Christians do not agree, says Lam- 
 bert. "What you intended, then, as a wise say- 
 ing has no practical sense in it. But for those 
 who like that sort of thing, it is about the sort 
 of thing they like." 
 
 Doubtless many think it not worth while to 
 take the trouble of noticing such trifling. By 
 way of apology I will copy two of the notices of 
 the "Notes" from Mr. Lacy's Appendix to his 
 reply : 
 
 "The author completely turns the tables on the 
 doughty Colonel. We commend the volume to 
 all who would see the assumptions and crudi- 
 ties and mistakes of Ingersoll turned inside out, 
 upside down, end for end, and over and over."
 
 46 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 Chicago Star and Covenant (leading Univer- 
 salist paper in the Western states). 
 
 "An earnest and keen reasoner. The pam- 
 phlet should have many readers." New York 
 Herald. 
 
 It may be that the writers of the above never 
 read the work they praise, but I believe there 
 are many who have been led to think it contains 
 an array of brilliant and unanswerable argu- 
 ments, many probably taking the word of others 
 for their opinions. 
 
 In answer to Mr. Black as to our having no 
 right to consider the question of design, Inger- 
 soll said, "No one should throw away kis rea- 
 son the fruit of all experience." Mr. Lambert 
 remarks for the benefit of that part of his audi- 
 ence which can hear his opponent's arguments 
 only as stated by the "Father," "Your purpose 
 here is to leave the impression that, to be a 
 Christian, a man must throw away his reason." 
 The indication of this purpose is in the words 
 of Mr. Lambert only. It is not shown anywhere 
 in the argument unless we get it from Mr. 
 Black's idea that we cannot "rejudge." No words 
 of Ingersoll's could be so construed. 
 
 Lambert says that when Ingersoll says reason 
 is the result of experience, and then says it is
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERTS NOTES. 47 
 
 the intellectual capital of the soul, the only light, 
 etc., he contradicts himself. 
 
 If he had said it is the capital of the soul and 
 this capital is derived from experience, it would 
 mean the same thing, and the expression would 
 have been no plainer to anybody . 
 
 Mr. Lambert's "But mind and reason are iden- 
 tical. Reason is the mind in action" (leaving out 
 the small criticism that they contradict each 
 other), provokes the thot: Must not reason on 
 religion; mind not in action on that subject. 
 
 He continues the paragraph, which ends the 
 chapter, in his usual style, thus: 
 
 Lambert. "A result is an effect, and an effect 
 cannot be prior to its cause. It follows, then, 
 from your own definition, that reason is not and 
 cannot be the only light or guide of the soul. 
 But even if you had not contradicted yourself 
 egregiously, your assertion that reason is the 
 only light, etc., cannot be accepted, for it is a 
 pitiable begging of the whole question at issue 
 a denial of revelation as a guide to reason, and 
 this you will see is the only point between you 
 and the Christian. Your statement thus cun- 
 ningly assumes as proved, that which you set 
 out to prove. This is one of the peculiarities of 
 your method in debate. It is on this account
 
 4o VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 
 
 that I am under the necessity of analyzing al- 
 most every assertion you make." 
 
 Comment. According to this, revelation is 
 the guide to reason. It is very strange that it 
 guided him so far away from the first chapter 
 of Genesis in the explanation of the universe; 
 and strange, too, in what different directions it 
 guides different people. 
 
 THE COMMANDMENTS. 
 
 In commenting on "Of course it is admitted 
 that most of the commandments are wise and 
 just," he asks if it is "candid to make a limita- 
 tion so indefinite as to leave you room to dodge? 
 Why not specify which, if any, are not wise and 
 just?" But the very next sentence to the one 
 criticized does specify the one against graven 
 images, and after it, in the same paragraph, a 
 part of the loth, placing woman on an exact 
 equality with other property, is specified. Mr. 
 Lambert fills a chapter in quoting and criticiz- 
 ing the two objections, beginning the last para- 
 graph thus: "You argue like a man who places 
 much confidence in the credulity or gullibility of 
 his readers, and imagines that while a few may 
 investigate and know the truth, the larger num- 
 ber will take his word for it and inquire no fur-
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 49 
 
 ther. This policy shows a good knowledge of 
 human nature, for the average man is not over- 
 burdened with the faculty of discrimination" ! 
 
 He says the one against graven images could 
 not be the "death of art unless it forbade art." 
 But Ingersoll spoke of the effect on art. Mr. 
 Lambert says Ingersoll suppressed the explana- 
 tion of the command that you must not worship 
 the graven images, but the command says you 
 must not make them, and says also afterwards 
 that you must not worship them. That many 
 of the early theologians thot that statues and 
 paintings were forbidden is shown by the fact 
 that religious zealots destroyed them for many 
 years. For centuries the Christians had much 
 trouble over this. 
 
 The Bible says God forbade the making of 
 images (Ex. xx, 4; Lev. xxvi, i ; Deut. xvi, 21-22). 
 In Exodus and Leviticus we have both com- 
 mands, in Deuteronomy it doesn't say anything 
 about worshiping. 
 
 This priest, who, when in his least bitterly 
 insulting moods, refers to Ingersoll's "conceit," 
 instructs the man he criticizes, saying, "I will 
 give you a definition of art, which will, if you 
 study it well, prevent you in future from show- 
 ing your ears to quiet, thotful men, who have
 
 50 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 gone somewhat deeper than you have into phi- 
 losophy and theology." 
 
 That a knowledge of philosophy and theology 
 is necessary to an understanding of the meaning 
 of the word art may be new to many. 
 
 Notice above that the conceit is imputed to 
 Ingersoll. 
 
 Lambert. "Poetry is an art and where can 
 we find more sublime specimens of it than in 
 the Psalms of David, the Book of Job, the ma- 
 jestic flights of Isaiah, and the soul-piercing 
 threnodies of Jeremiah? Here we have the high- 
 est genius and the highest art, and yet because 
 they did not daub lecherous pictures on canvas, 
 or cut naked Venuses out of stone, they were 
 not artists. The commandment was the death 
 of art! trash." 
 
 Comment. Ingersoll did mention painting and 
 sculpture, but Lambert's readers should know 
 that any indelicate suggestions were not made 
 by Ingersoll. What a revelation of character 
 does this priest present to people of the least 
 refinement who have had the happiness of see- 
 ing glorious pictures and beautiful, pure, statues. 
 
 Criticizing Mr. Ingersoll's objection to the 
 putting of woman on an exact equality with 
 other property, he says, because they are for- 
 bidden alike that does not place crimes on the
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 51 
 
 same plane, for the penalty may not be the same ; 
 that Ingersoll would not have been satisfied if 
 the commandment hadn't forbidden coveting an- 
 other's wife; says "You are like the Frenchman 
 who was to be hanged, neither a long nor a 
 short rope would suit him." (I presume the wri- 
 ter did not think it worth while to select an 
 illustration; he must keep a pile ready at hand, 
 and in this case took the one that happened to 
 be on top.) But he has another argument; he 
 tells Mr. Ingersoll that as a lawyer he ought to 
 know that the distinction between objects for- 
 bidden or protected by law is in the penalty; 
 that the law sends a fifty-cent thief to jail, and 
 the one-hundred-dollar thief to state's prison; 
 as the wife stealer had a heavier penalty than 
 the ox stealer it did not put them on an exact 
 equality. 
 
 But Mr. Lambert should see that the fifty- 
 cent thief and the one-hundred-dollar thief were 
 in the same category thieves. The wife and 
 the ox were both property, which was the ground 
 of the objection. 
 
 The rest of his argument on this point appears 
 to carry on the idea that Ingersoll does not stand 
 alone, for most people would be misled by his 
 arguments, as the average man is "apt to place 
 too much confidence in the ignorant statements
 
 52 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 
 
 of that monumental bore of modern times, the 
 roving lecturer admission fifty cents." 
 
 It is hoped that none of these average men 
 were so far misled as to provide only fifty cents 
 to buy a ticket for an Ingersoll lecture. Falsely 
 fixing the price so low does not belittle the lec- 
 turer. 
 
 Ingersoll. "A very curious thing about these 
 commandments is that their supposed author 
 violated nearly every one. From Sinai, accord- 
 ing to the account, he said: 'Thou shalt not 
 kill,' and yet ordered the murder of millions; 
 'Thou shalt not commit adultery/ and yet he gave 
 captive maidens to gratify the lust of captors; 
 'Thou shalt not steal,' and yet he gave to Jew- 
 ish marauders the flocks and herds of others; 
 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, nor 
 his wife,' and yet he allowed his chosen people 
 to destroy the homes of neighbors and to steal 
 their wives; 'Honor thy father and thy mother,' 
 and yet this same God had thousands of fathers 
 butchered, and with the sword of war killed 
 children yet unborn; 'Thou shalt not bear false 
 witness against thy neighbor,' and yet he sent 
 abroad 'lying spirits' to deceive his own proph- 
 ets, and in a hundred ways paid tribute to de- 
 ceit. So far as we know, Jehovah kept only one
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 53 
 
 of these commandments he worshiped no other 
 God." 
 
 Lambert (taking "He ordered the murder of 
 millions" for his text takes nearly seven pages 
 saying) : God has a right to remove at his will 
 those he has placed on the earth; death is only 
 passing from one department to another in the 
 same universe therefore a trifling circumstance ; 
 that the commandment forbade unjust killing 
 only; quotes from the Book of Wisdom, which 
 he says describes some of the sins of the people, 
 tho I do not find anything of that kind except 
 what he repeats in the last paragraph. He be- 
 gins the last paragraph of this part of the criti- 
 cism thus: "Here we find that these people, 
 whom you beslaver with your gushing sympa- 
 thy, were sorcerers, murderers of their own chil- 
 dren, offering them with their own hands in sac- 
 rifice to idols, and man-eaters." He ends this 
 paragraph with 
 
 "A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind." 
 About the Bible account of God's disposal of 
 captive maidens to their captors the priest refers 
 to the Colonel as making a "baseless assertion, 
 or an appeal to ignorance," and asks, "What will 
 honest men of common sense think of a phil- 
 osophy that has to be propped and bolstered by 
 such shameless misrepresentations of history?"
 
 54 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 
 
 The twenty-first chapter of Deuteronomy, 10- 
 14, shows it is exactly as Ingersoll said. 
 
 Lambert justifies the taking of flocks and herds 
 from their owners, and says, "Our government 
 confiscated millions of dollars' worth of prop- 
 erty during the late war, yet it never occurred 
 to anyone but a simian philosopher that such 
 confiscation was stealing. The cause that jus- 
 tifies the war justifies the confiscation." 
 
 Take particular notice of the phrase, "simian 
 philosopher." Also, notice that the justification 
 of those wars is not given; also, to Ingersoll's 
 assertion that the people who took the flocks 
 and herds were marauders he anwers that they 
 could not have had a better title because God 
 has a right to do as he pleases has a right to 
 be very bad. Many conscientious people who 
 believe that he could not do wrong believe that 
 the Bible misrepresents him. 
 
 Mr. Lambert denies that God sent lying spirits 
 to deceive his prophets. He admits there were 
 false prophets, but thinks God could not make 
 them impossible without destroying free will and 
 human liberty. "They were popular lecturers 
 in their day, and did not die without issue." He 
 says there were laws enacted condemning them. 
 Perhaps they were human laws. I have not 
 found them. He says he will give $100 to the
 
 55 
 
 poor if Ingersoll or his disciples will make good 
 the statement; says he is familiar with the texts 
 in Kings and Ezekiel and insinuates that In- 
 gersoll lies. 
 
 Ezekiel xiv, 9. "And if the prophet be de- 
 ceived when he hath spoken a thing, I, the Lord, 
 have deceived that prophet, and I will cut him 
 off from the midst of my people Israel, and ye 
 shall know that I am the Lord." This not only 
 shows Ingersoll's statement correct, but shows 
 the Bible charges God with punishing the proph- 
 et for being deceived by God "I will cut him 
 off," etc. 
 
 Kings xxii, 20-23. The Lord inquired who would 
 persuade Ahab to go to Ramoth-Gilead, where he 
 would be defeated and killed. A spirit answered 
 that he would. The Lord asked him how, and he 
 said, "I will go forth, and I will be a lying spirit 
 in the mouth of all his prophets, and he said, Thou 
 shalt persuade him and prevail also ; go forth and 
 do so. Now, therefore, behold the Lord hath put 
 a lying spirit in the mouth of all thy prophets, and 
 the Lord hath spoken evil concerning thee." 
 
 How can that be explained to mean anything else 
 than what it says? It is plain that Ingersoll was 
 right. 
 
 i Kings xxi tells us Ahab wished to get, by ex- 
 change or purchase, a vineyard near his house;
 
 56 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 but the owner refused to part with it. Ahab's wife 
 forged letters in her husband's name to compass 
 the death of the owner of the vineyard. When 
 Ahab heard of his death he went down to get the 
 vineyard; but the Lord sent Elijah to see Ahab 
 about it, seeming to think that he, instead of hit 
 wife, was the guilty person, and a charge of fol- 
 lowing idols was brot against him. When Ahab 
 heard this "he rent his clothes, put sackcloth upon 
 his flesh, and fasted, and lay in sackcloth, and 
 went softly"; whereupon the Lord went to Eli- 
 jah : "Seest thou how Ahab humbleth himself be- 
 fore me? Because he hath humbled himself be- 
 fore me I will not bring the evil in his days ; but 
 in his son's days will I bring the evil upon his 
 house." But, as we have seen, he sent the lying 
 spirit to betray him. 
 
 Notice that according to this account, God, be- 
 cause of the crime of Ahab's wife, will visit evil 
 on his family in his son's day. Many people, who 
 do not think they are re judging the justice of God, 
 do not believe he ever made any such promise. 
 
 Read 2 Thess. ii, n, in which we find that "God 
 shall send them strong delusions that they may 
 believe a lie, that they may all be damned"; in 
 Numbers xiv the Lord spoke unto Moses and 
 Aaron and warned them they should know his 
 breach of promise. The Lord told Moses he
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 57 
 
 would send him to Pharaoh to bring the Israel- 
 ites out of Egypt, but that he would harden Pha- 
 raoh's heart, so that he should not let them go till 
 he had visited dire plagues on them to show his 
 power; then when he, God, did allow them to go 
 they should spoil the Egyptians. Among the 
 things God is represented as doing to show his 
 power is killing all of the first born of the Egyp- 
 tians, and that night in which it is done is hon- 
 ored thus: Ex. xii, 42. "It is a night to be much 
 observed unto the Lord for bringing them out 
 from the land of Egypt; this is that night of the 
 Lord to be much observed of all the children of 
 Israel in their generation." 
 
 Exodus i tells that God dealt well with tht 
 women who lied to Pharoah. 
 
 i Samuel xvi says that when God wanted Da- 
 vid to supersede Saul (i Sam. xv, n, "he repented 
 that he had made Saul king over Israel"), he sent 
 Samuel to manage it, telling him to deceive Saul by 
 taking a heifer for sacrifice as a pretense. 
 
 Genesis xxvii gives an account of an infamous 
 trick which God rewards. 
 
 In Isaiah vi, 9-10, we find the command to de- 
 ceive the people, lest they understand and convert, 
 and be healed. This is better expressed in the 
 New Testament in the words of Jesus (Mark iv, 
 
 12).
 
 58 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 Ingersoll confined himself to very few words; 
 but perhaps he considered cumulative evidence un- 
 necessary to disprove the inspiration of these pas- 
 sages. 
 
 He quotes Mr. Black's justification of the in- 
 tolerance of the Old Testament on the grounds 
 that blasphemy and idolatry were treason. 
 
 Mr. Lambert. "If these positions of Mr. Black 
 are well taken, it is difficult to see how you can 
 escape their logical consequences. . . . You became 
 a colonel to assist the government to punish that 
 attack on its supreme authority, majesty and honor. 
 What new light has penetrated your skull that you 
 now defend treason in Judea? Is it because God, 
 against whom you seem to have a personal grudge, 
 was the direct ruler there? If you should carry 
 out your theories of toleration to their logical con- 
 clusion and realize them in overt acts in this coun- 
 try you would find yourself in due time dangling 
 from a gibbet. It does not seem to have occurred 
 to you that it was necessary to disprove Mr. Black's 
 statement, that idolatry was treason, before you 
 could drive him from his position. If you grant 
 that idolatry was treason against the Jewish state 
 you give away your case, and justify the punish- 
 ment which that state inflicted on the idolater. No 
 man with an atom of sense will attempt to deny 
 this. To meet Mr. Black squarely and logically
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 59 
 
 you should have proved that idolatry was not trea- 
 son, and if you could not do this, as most cer- 
 tainly you could not, you should have 'walked 
 up like a man,' and admitted that the Jews were 
 right, and not only right, but were bound to pun- 
 ish idolatry and blasphemy with death, as treason 
 is punished in all times and by all nations, whether 
 God is the immediate head of the government or 
 not." 
 
 Ingersoll had said (in answer to Mr. Black) : 
 "... according to Mr. Black, we should all have 
 liberty of conscience except when directly governed 
 by God. In that country where God is king, liberty 
 cannot exist. . . . Think of an infinite being who 
 is so cruel, so unjust that he will not allow one 
 of his own children the liberty of thot! Think 
 of an infinite God acting as the direct governor of 
 a people and yet not able to command their love! 
 Think of the author of all mercy imbruing his 
 hands in the blood of helpless men, women and 
 children, simply because he did not give them in- 
 telligence enough to understand his laws. An earth- 
 ly father who cannot govern by affection is not 
 fit to be a father; what, then, shall we say of an 
 infinite being who resorts to violence, to pestilence, 
 to disease, and famine, in the vain effort to obtain 
 even the respect of a savage? Read this passage, 
 red from the heart of cruelty: 'If thy brother, the
 
 60 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or 
 the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as 
 thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let 
 us go and serve other gods which thou hast not 
 known, thou nor thy fathers . . . thou shalt not 
 consent unto him, nor hearken unto him, neither 
 shalt thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, 
 neither shalt thou conceal him, but thou shalt sure- 
 ly kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him 
 to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of 
 all the people ; and thou shalt stone him with stones, 
 that he die.' . . . This is justified on the ground 
 that 'blasphemy was a breach of political allegiance, 
 and idolatry an act of overt treason/ We can un- 
 derstand how a human king stands in need of the 
 service of his people. We can understand how 
 the desertion of any of his soldiers weakens his 
 army; but were the king infinite in power, his 
 strength would still remain the same, and under 
 no conceivable circumstances could the enemy tri- 
 umph." 
 
 Mr. Lambert (in justification of the law for ston- 
 ing a wife to death if she should say, Let us wor- 
 ship the sun). "The traitor should be removed 
 from the body politic as you would remove a can- 
 cer from your jaw, your mawkish sentimentality 
 to the contrary notwithstanding." 
 
 "Religious toleration meant liberty of treason."
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 61 
 
 "There is a huge fallacy in all this cant about 
 freedom of thot, thinking as we please, etc. The 
 intellect I mean, of course, the sane intellect 
 is governed by motives and principles of reason, 
 not by the whims of the will. Will to think that 
 two and two make five, or that parallel lines will 
 meet, and see if your reason will tolerate it." 
 
 "The only liberty of thot which he [God] does 
 not allow is the liberty to think error, to meditate 
 evil, to plan crime. Do you insist on this kind of 
 thinking? If so, be wise and keep it carefully with- 
 in your thot, for if you reduce this liberty to act 
 it may lead to the penitentiary, where there are 
 many philosophers of liberty of thot." 
 
 "By liberty I, of course, mean the right to do 
 right. . . . There are individuals, of course, who 
 claim the liberty to do wrong, but they are com- 
 paratively few. Some of them have died suddenly 
 and prematurely by dislocation of the neck, and 
 some others are in the penitentiary. Poor encour- 
 agement for disciples of liberty and license and 
 heroes of freethot." 
 
 "You content yourself with giving a half page 
 of the softest and silliest kind of gush ..." 
 
 Comment. Anyone who is impolite enough might 
 retort that It is a pity light does not penetrate Mr. 
 Lambert's skull to show him the difference between 
 stoning people to death for religious opinions and
 
 02 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 
 
 going to war to keep our states united; for the 
 war of '61-65 was not to punish the slaveholder 
 for putting in practice his liberty of conscience, 
 as he so playfully represents it. 
 
 Lambert. "The slaveholder's conscience told him 
 that secession was right. As long as his conscience 
 was purely speculative, the government of the Uni- 
 ted States allowed him to amuse himself with it. 
 But when he formulated that conscience into overt 
 acts, such as firing on Fort Sumter, the govern- 
 ment sent Col. Ingersoll and other embryo Caesars 
 down to interview him and inform him that liberty 
 of conscience was a good thing in its way a some- 
 thing to keep his mind busy but if he was such 
 a consummate ass as to imagine that the United 
 States government intended him to practice that 
 liberty publicly he would have to readjust his ideas 
 about it on a more solid basis." 
 
 Comment. No Freethinker could take offense 
 at the joke about "disciples of liberty of license 
 and heroes of freethot," as "license" does not apply 
 to them and they are not hung or put in peniten- 
 tiaries, but the contemptuous suggestion will prob- 
 ably serve its purpose, for people who admire the 
 Lambert kind are not critical when their leaders 
 strive to please them. 
 
 Thinking as we please cannot describe freethot 
 On the contrary, it is their critics who argue as
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 63 
 
 if we could think as we please, which must be 
 what they think it is right to believe; this leaves 
 out all individual thot and leaves the government 
 of belief to the authority of others. Freethot 
 reasoning is looked on as criminal by those who 
 think belief should be governed by authority. They 
 speak on the supposition that people can believe 
 anything- they are told to believe. Says Mr. Lam- 
 bert: "The intellect ... is governed by principles 
 of reason, not by the whims of the will. Will that 
 two and two make five," etc. I do not see what 
 "whims of the will" can mean in the case of 
 thot. We might will that we might govern our 
 minds by not allowing ourselves to examine a ques- 
 tion, and think that by shutting out evidence we 
 might lead ourselves to believe as we wish; but 
 it does not seem to me that whatever we might ad- 
 vocate under such circumstances could really be 
 our belief, if we feared evidence would change it. 
 There are those who allow the expression of their 
 thot to be governed by the will of other people; 
 who give up to others the right of investigating 
 other people's thots on certain subjects. Sometimes 
 they freely give up their right to think on those 
 subjects; sometimes they think they have no right 
 to think, and in such a case they do believe, ac- 
 cepting belief from the authority of others, and 
 not allowing themselves to reason. But when we
 
 64 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 have the reasons for and against beliefs, we do 
 not will what to believe, we accept what seems 
 reasonable to us. When the advocates of any par- 
 ticular beliefs prevent, as far as possible, any pres- 
 entation of an opposing belief it is a confession of 
 the weakness of the cause they advocate. When 
 they allow those under their authority to see op- 
 posing arguments only as "reviewed" by themselves 
 we may be sure they have no adequate answers 
 for those arguments, and that they fear to give 
 those under their authority the opposing arguments 
 as they have really been made. Those who give 
 up their right to inform themselves of the thot of 
 the world can be kept in the belief that two and 
 one are one, if a mystery of religion is concerned, 
 and make a merit of believing tho they can not 
 understand it. 
 
 Who but Mr. Lambert would speak of common 
 criminals as philosophers of freethot, or phil- 
 osophers of any kind, and why does he write such 
 a thing? Does he expect his readers to believe 
 that Ingersoll, Darwin, Spencer, the Mills, Pro- 
 fessors Draper and Oswald, A. D. White, and peo- 
 ple of that kind go to penitentiaries? It seems 
 plain that this review of Ingersoll is written to 
 spread the idea that the beautiful, moral life of his 
 subject was really one of shame and dishonor. 
 
 No; Ingersoll does not mean by religious liberty
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 65 
 
 the right to commit treason. Does anybody be- 
 lieve that Mr. Lambert thot he meant that? If 
 he were writing for those who are expected to get 
 anything like a correct idea of Ingersoll he would 
 probably base his criticisms on inferences drawn 
 naturally from the author's simple, plain and clear 
 language, if he criticized him at all. If he favored 
 the reading by religious people of the debate be- 
 tween Ingersoll and Black it would show that there 
 was a probability of his wanting to be fair. When 
 will a religious representative in a debate publish 
 his own arguments and those of his opponents at 
 his own expense, and in the same book? That is 
 what Ingersoll did. What shall we say of the man 
 who tries to keep people from reading the argu- 
 ment of his adversary? 
 
 What should be said of the man, even if he were 
 fair enough to not misrepresent his opponent's 
 position, who continually applied to him opprobrious 
 epithets without any reason? This man, who is 
 described by his biographer in the preface of the 
 volume now under consideration as of "quiet, 
 gentlemanly and courteous ways, while his scholar- 
 ly attainments, good judgment in matters, both 
 public and private, and his genuine Christian char- 
 acter command the respect of all," characterizes 
 Mr. Ingersoll's protests against intolerance as
 
 66 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 "your mawkish sentimentalism," and "softest and 
 silliest kind of gush." 
 
 He quotes "such a God would know the mists 
 and clouds, the darkness enveloping the human 
 mind"; and remarks: "Some pages back you ex- 
 alt the human mind, and claim for it the right to 
 rejudge the justice of God, and now you deplore 
 the clouds and mists and darkness which enshroud 
 it." 
 
 Exercising the mind drives away clouds, mists 
 and darkness. Accepting everything, no matter 
 how unreasonable, without thot dulls the intellect, 
 and allows the clouds to thicken around us. 
 
 He recommends Ingersoll to "hear the words of 
 God and obey them, and not misuse the little light 
 it [the mind] has left in denying his existence, 
 or making him the subject of his blasphemous 
 jests." 
 
 This is misleading. In all of Ingersoll's earnest 
 and dignified argument there is no jest, blasphe- 
 mous or any other kind. His accuser makes some 
 efforts which could hardly be called jests, because 
 of their malice. It seems to me malapert sayings 
 would be the most appropriate phrase by which 
 to designate them. 
 
 He repeats in substance what Mr. Black said 
 about the manner of carrying on war with an op- 
 posing force; that they were justified in doing "as
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 67 
 
 their enemies did. In your treatment of hostile 
 barbarians, you not only may lawfully, but must 
 necessarily, adopt their mode of warfare. If they 
 come to conquer you they may be conquered by 
 you; if they give no quarter they are entitled to 
 none ; if the death of the whole population be their 
 purpose, you may defeat it by exterminating theirs." 
 (By the way, all this is quite irrelevant, for the wars 
 instanced by Ingersoll were aggressive, for the ex- 
 termination of the people, and the conquest of their 
 country.) He says Ingersoll affects to believe that 
 Black means certain atrocities, which he mentions. 
 Why should he say affects, when those atrocities 
 were the subject of the article which Mr. Black 
 is supposed to be answering? It would be nat- 
 urally supposed Mr. Black meant the same thing 
 unless he announces the introduction of something 
 else. 
 
 Mr. Lambert criticizes Ingersoll for trotting out 
 infants in his writings and lectures. 
 
 Lambert. "You trot them out on all occasions, 
 and in all conditions of deshabille. Those infants 
 waddle and crawl and so forth, thru your articles 
 so promiscuously as to remind one of a foundling 
 asylum, with yourself as peripatetic dry nurse in 
 ordinary. By the way, were you not once a 
 colonel of infantry? An old soldier loves to dwell 
 on the reminiscences of the past. But heaven help
 
 68 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 you if those infants ever live to take revenge for 
 your worse than Herodian cruelty. When you 
 want to reason with men on great questions, you 
 should send the children to the nursery with or- 
 ders to have them well supplied with what the old 
 Dutch women used to call bread and milk 'poul- 
 tice.' This will keep them in good condition until 
 you want to trot them out again in your next lec- 
 ture on Christianity." 
 
 Comment. His humor has an elephantine grace, 
 and his puns the mellowness of a ripe old age. He 
 repeats the quotation, "If they kill the infants in 
 our cradles, must we brain theirs?" and goes on, 
 "Here they are again yes, by all means, brain 
 them, tear them limb from limb, salt them, ship 
 them to the Cannibal Islands, make them read your 
 article on the Christian religion, or your lecture 
 on 'Skulls' do anything with them to keep them 
 from muddling your brains when you are reason- 
 ing with men on subjects that require all your at- 
 tention." 
 
 After this unmeaning entr'acte look back at the 
 sane and touching protest against barbarity in war- 
 fare. 
 
 Ingersoll. "If they [the American Indians] take 
 our captives, bind them to trees, and if their squaws 
 fill their quivering flesh with sharpened faggots 
 and set them on fire, that they may die clothed
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 69 
 
 with flame, must our wives, our mothers, and our 
 daughters follow the fiendish example?" 
 
 Lambert. No, we must use quicker and cheaper 
 methods, that the burden of the taxpayer may not 
 be increased; if, we suppose, a hundred of our 
 captives are to be bound to undergo the death tor- 
 ture, and by braining one of their infants we could 
 cause them to desist, then we see what Mr. Black 
 meant by adopting their mode of warfare. 
 
 Comment. Not at all; there was no question 
 of preventing further cruelty. Ingersoll pointed 
 out the atrocious inhumanity of the wars of the 
 Old Testament. Black tried to justify them by 
 saying we must adopt the mode of warfare of our 
 enemies, apparently losing sight of the moral view 
 presented by Ingersoll and not noticing they were 
 purely aggressive and by command of Jehovah. 
 Lambert holds up the hands of Mr. Black with the 
 cool hardihood of a brutal murderer, ignoring all 
 humane considerations. His supposed reason for 
 braining the babe is impossible, for the torturing 
 could not take place unless the captives were com- 
 pletely in the power of their enemies, and the 
 friends of the captives would not be where they 
 could brain Indian babes any more than they could 
 free the victims. 
 
 Ingersoll. "Is this the conclusion of the most 
 enlightened Christianity?"
 
 7O VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 
 
 Lambert. "Yes, sir, and the conclusion of 
 the most enlightened common sense, too. Life 
 is practical, it is neither poetry nor effeminate 
 philosophy. The passions of human nature, 
 civilized or barbarous, make stern alternatives 
 necessary, and lugubrious cant will not change 
 man's nature or the necessities that arise 
 from it. If those fiendish squaws had lived in 
 Palestine in the days of Jesus and had been put 
 to the sword by the Jews, you would have accused 
 the latter of murder and made God the abettor 
 of the crime. Much depends on the point of view 
 from which we look at a thing." 
 
 Comment. Mr. Lambert seems to understand 
 that much depends on whether we look at a thing 
 at all or allow our attention to be diverted to 
 something else which has been substituted for the 
 question in debate. 
 
 At any time when there were not supposed to 
 be any exigencies for giving an incorrect represent- 
 ation of an Agnostic author to those who are not 
 intelligent enough or fair enough to read the work 
 for themselves, no one would think of such a thing 
 as writing as tf civilized people should become 
 savages to force their enemies to civilized war- 
 fare; no one would think of justifying savagery 
 even, much less holding it up as an example of
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 71 
 
 moral teaching. They know that barbarity cannot 
 under any circumstances be a civilizing force. 
 
 Can anyone who believes in a just God who is a 
 loving father to all his creatures read Deuteronomy 
 xx, 10-17, and still believe he is truly represented 
 there? 
 
 "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 
 and 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. 
 
 "And if it will make no peace with thee, but 
 will make war against thee, then shalt thou be- 
 siege 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; and the women, and 
 the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in 
 the city, even all the spoil thereof, thou shalt 
 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 these nations. 
 
 "But Of the cities of these people, which the Lord
 
 72 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou 
 shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: 
 "But thou shalt utterly destroy them." 
 The author of the "Notes" accuses Mr. Ingersoll 
 of misrepresentation of Mr. Black, "which," he 
 says, "it is hard to imagine to have been accidental 
 or unintentional," and gives examples of some 
 things Mr. Black said in other places to prove his 
 accusation. "It is not true that Mr. Black justifies 
 wars of extermination because the American peo- 
 ple fought for the integrity of their government." 
 Then why did he mention the last in connection 
 with the first? He couldn't consistently do it, any- 
 how, for he does not justify the federal union, 
 at least without slavery the abolitionists, who 
 were "not a very respectable portion of the civil- 
 ized world" succeeded, "I need not say by what 
 means, or with what effect upon the country." If 
 that does not mean that the war was wrong and 
 one of the outcomes (the end of slavery) bad in 
 moral effect, what does it mean? "Subordination 
 of inferiors to superiors is the groundwork of hu- 
 man society." "The improvement of our race 
 . . . must come from obedience to some master, 
 better and wiser than ourselves." Mr. Black would 
 probably like to choose his master, and that was 
 not possible under slavery. I never knew who was
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 73 
 
 his master, whether he had his choice of masters, 
 or whether his subjection was willing. 
 
 Mr. Black wrote, "I do not say the war was either 
 better or worse for his [Ingersoll's] participation 
 and approval. But if his own conduct (in going 
 out 'a-coloneling'), for which he expresses neither 
 penitence or shame, was right, it was right on 
 grounds which make it an inexcusable outrage to 
 call the children of Israel savage criminals for 
 carrying on wars of aggression to save the life of 
 their government." Does not this make it plain 
 that Ingersoll did not misrepresent Mr. Black ? Mr. 
 Black continues: "These inconsistencies are the 
 necessary consequences of having no rule of 
 action, and no guide for the conscience. When a 
 man throws away the golden metewand which God 
 has provided, and takes the elastic cord of feeling 
 for his measure of righteousness, you cannot tell 
 from day to day what he will think or do." 
 
 We have just seen, in the extracts from the Bible, 
 the golden metewand which Mr. Black declares to 
 be God's ; now let us consider the conscience, which 
 Mr. Black pronounces an elastic cord of feeling, 
 as shown in Mr. Ingersoll's defense of the war in 
 which he had a part. 
 
 Ingersoll. "Mr. Black justifies the wars of ex- 
 termination and conquest because the American 
 people fought for the integrity of their own coun-
 
 74 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 try ; fought to do away with the infamous institu- 
 tion of slavery; fought to preserve the jewels of 
 liberty for themselves and their children. Is it 
 possible that his mind is so clouded by political 
 and religious prejudice, by the recollections of an 
 unfortunate administration, that he sees no differ- 
 ence between a war of extermination and one of 
 self-preservation? that he sees no choice between 
 the murder of helpless age, of weeping women, and 
 sleeping babes, and the defense of liberty and na- 
 tionality ? 
 
 "The soldiers of the Republic did not wage a war 
 of extermination. They did not seek to enslave 
 their fellow men. They did not murder trembling 
 age. They did not sheathe their swords in wom- 
 en's breasts. They gave the old men bread, and 
 let the mothers rock their babes in peace. They 
 fought to save the world's great hope to free a 
 race and put the humblest hut beneath the canopy 
 of liberty and law. 
 
 "Claiming neither praise nor dispraise for the 
 part taken by me in the civil war, for the purposes 
 of this argument, it is sufficient to say that my 
 record, poor and barren as it is, should be com- 
 pared with his. 
 
 "Never for an instant did I suppose that any re- 
 spectable American citizen could be found willing 
 at this day to defend the institution of slavery ; and
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 75 
 
 never was I more astonished than when I found 
 Mr. Black denying that civilized countries passion- 
 ately assert that slavery is and always was a hideous 
 crime. I was amazed when he declared that 'the 
 doctrine that slavery is a crime under all circum- 
 stances and at all times was first started by the 
 adherents of a political faction in this country less 
 than forty years ago.' He tells us that 'they 
 denounced God and Christ for not agreeing with 
 them' but that 'they did not constitute the civil- 
 ized world; nor were they, if the truth must be 
 told, a very respectable portion of it. Politically 
 they were successful ; I need not say by what means, 
 or with what effect upon the morals of the coun- 
 try.' 
 
 "Slavery held both branches of Congress, filled 
 the chair of the Executive, sat upon the supreme 
 bench, had in its hands all rewards, all offices ; knelt 
 in the pew, occupied the pulpit, stole human beings 
 in the name of God, robbed the trundle-bed for 
 love of Christ; incited mobs, led ignorance, ruled 
 colleges, sat in the chairs of professors, dominated 
 the public press, closed the lips of free speech, and 
 polluted with its leprous hand every source and 
 spring of power. The abolitionists attacked this 
 monster. They were the bravest, grandest men of 
 their country and their century. Denounced by 
 thieves, hated by hypocrites, mobbed by cowards,
 
 76 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 slandered by priests, shunned by politicians, ab- 
 horred by the seekers of office these men of whom 
 the world was not worthy, in spite of all opposi- 
 tion, in spite of poverty and want, conquered in- 
 numerable obstacles, never faltering for one mo- 
 ment, never dismayed accepting defeat with a 
 smile of infinite hope knowing they were right 
 insisted and persisted until every chain was 
 broken, until slave-pens became schoolhouses, and 
 three millions of slaves became free men, women 
 and children. They did not measure with 'the gold- 
 en metewand of God,' but with 'the elastic cord 
 of human feeling.' They were men the latchets 
 of whose shoes no believer in human slavery was 
 ever worthy to unloose, and yet we are told by 
 this modern defender of the slavery of Jehovah 
 that they were not even respectable; and this 
 slander is justified, because the writer is assured 
 'that the infallible God proceeded upon good 
 grounds when he authorized slavery in Judea." 
 
 "Not satisfied with having slavery in this world, 
 Mr. Black assures us that it will last thru all eter- 
 nity, and that forever and forever inferiors must 
 be subordinated to superiors. Who is the superior 
 man? According to Mr. Black he is superior who 
 lives upon the unpaid labor of the inferior. With 
 me, the superior man is the one who uses his 
 superiority in bettering the condition of the inferi-
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 77 
 
 or. The superior man is strength for the weak, 
 eyes for the blind, brains for the simple; he is the 
 one who helps carry the burden that nature has 
 put upon the inferior. Any man who helps an- 
 other to gain and retain his liberty is superior to 
 any infallible God who authorized slavery in Judea. 
 For my part I would rather be a slave than a mas- 
 ter. It is better to be robbed than a robber. I 
 would rather be stolen from than be a thief. 
 
 "According to Mr. Black, there will be slavery 
 in heaven, and fast by the throne of God will be 
 the auction-block, and the streets of the new Jerusa- 
 lem will be adorned with the whipping-post, while 
 the music of the harp will be supplemented by 
 the crack of the driver's whip. If some good Re- 
 publican would catch Mr. Black, 'incorporate him 
 into his family, tame him, teach him to think, and 
 give him a knowledge of the true principles of 
 human liberty and government, he would confer 
 upon him a most beneficent boon.' [This last sen- 
 tence quoted from Black's excuse for slavery, page 
 43 of the discussion.] 
 
 "Slavery includes all other crimes. It is the joint 
 product of the kidnapper, pirate, thief, murderer, 
 and hypocrite. It degrades labor and corrupts lei- 
 sure. To lacerate the naked back, to sell wives, 
 to steal babes, to breed blood-hounds, to debauch 
 your own soul this is slavery. This is what Je-
 
 78 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 hovah authorized in Judea. This is what Mr. Black 
 believes in still. He 'measures with the golden 
 metewand of God.' I abhor slavery. With me 
 liberty is not merely a means it is an end. With- 
 out that word all other words are empty sounds. 
 
 "Mr. Black is too late with his protest against 
 the freedom of his fellowman. Liberty is making 
 the tour of the world. Russia has emancipated 
 her serfs; the slave trade is prosecuted only by 
 thieves and pirates; Spain feels upon her cheek 
 the burning blush of shame; Brazil with proud 
 and happy eyes is looking for the dawn of free- 
 dom's day; the people of the South rejoice that 
 slavery is no more, and every good and honest man 
 (excepting Mr. Black), of every land and clime, 
 hopes that the limbs of men will never feel again 
 the weary weight of chains." 
 
 Ingersoll had said a war of conquest was simply 
 murder. Mr. Black answers that Ingersoll him- 
 self went a-coloneling in a war of conquest. To 
 this Ingersoll responds that the war for the Union 
 was one in defense of liberty and nationality; that 
 the soldiers of the Republic did not wage a war 
 of extermination, and more to the effect that it 
 was not carried on in a barbarous manner; where- 
 upon Mr. Lambert declares that Ingersoll misrep- 
 resented Mr. Black, and that it is hard to think 
 he did not do it on purpose; that as he does not
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 79 
 
 seem to understand Mr. Black's argument he, Mr. 
 Lambert, will put it in more simple form! 
 
 Lambert. " 'A war of conquest is simply mur- 
 der.' But the war with the South was a war of 
 conquest. Therefore, the war against the South 
 was simply murder. Now Mr. Ingersoll partici- 
 pated in that war, therefore Mr. Ingersoll was a 
 party to the crime of murder. This was your op- 
 ponent's argument in logical form. You evidently 
 saw its force. You could not extricate yourself 
 except by misrepresentation, and you did not hesi- 
 tate a moment. Therefore you said: 'Mr. Black 
 justifies wars of extermination and conquest, be- 
 cause the American people fought for the integrity 
 of their own country.' " 
 
 Comment. Observe, Ingersoll did not under- 
 stand, so he would state it simply. Ingersoll did 
 understand, and therefore misrepresented to get 
 out of the trap, etc. 
 
 Of course, Mr. Black's statement was perfectly 
 plain and easy for anyone to understand, but Mr. 
 Lambert wished to befuddle his readers with many 
 words, altho they did not make any change in the 
 appearance of the first statement; and to further 
 confuse the ideas of adherents by many more words 
 to the effect that Ingersoll tried to escape from 
 Black's conclusion, when he really answered by 
 his contention that the war in which he engaged
 
 8o VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 was not a war of conquest, but one for liberty and 
 union. 
 
 But hear Mr. Lambert to the end of his rig- 
 marole. 
 
 Lambert. "You perpetrated this misrepresenta- 
 tion to make a way to escape from the trap in 
 which you were caught and to afford you a field 
 for a little sentimental gush about 'slavery' and 
 the 'jewels of liberty,' hoping, with the instinct 
 of the cuttle-fish, you might get away in the mud- 
 diness you had created. But, my dear sir, it will 
 not do, for society is not entirely made up of fools. 
 Our war with the South was a war of conquest, for 
 a war of conquest is a war to conquer" [Hear ye!] 
 "and that is what we meant when we sent armies 
 to the South. If conquest is murder then you are 
 guilty of murder in proportion to your importance 
 in that war. But you have said a war of conquest 
 is simply murder. Then, according to the adaman- 
 tine rules of logic, you are simply a murderer. 
 That is where your opponent landed you. 
 
 "You justify the war with the South by saying 
 it was to maintain the integrity of the country. 
 The justification is complete ; but what follows from 
 it? Why, it follows that wars of conquest are 
 sometimes justifiable, which is the very thing you 
 denied when you said that 'a war of conquest is 
 simply murder.' When you said that your mind
 
 - VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 81 
 
 was on the Jew, you wanted to lay down a prin- 
 ciple that would surely condemn him and his God, 
 and you did not see that you were making a mur- 
 derer of yourself. Ex parte philosophy is a poor 
 philosophy. You are a student of the infidel 
 philosophers of the last and present centuries, but 
 you have not caught their genius nor comprehended 
 their bulk. You take their points here and there 
 and depend for the rest on your wit and faculty 
 of drollery. Men laugh with you or at you, but, 
 after all, life is a serious affair, and when the play 
 is over the clown is the first to be forgotten." 
 
 Comment. The first part of this is based on the 
 assumption that it was admitted that the Civil War 
 was one of conquest; but Ingersoll did not admit 
 it. Who does? Certainly no one, unless he is de- 
 termined to agree with the priest in everything, no 
 matter how absurd, that he might say in his efforts 
 to make an appearance of discrediting an Agnos- 
 tic. 
 
 What is meant by not comprehending the bulk 
 of the philosophers? 
 
 Those who read Mr. Ingersoll's argument know 
 that he made no reference, even indirectly, to the 
 Jews. He kept strictly to his subject. 
 
 Ex parte philosophy is not Ingersoll's. He 
 wished every one to read all the arguments of his 
 adversaries as well as his own. Liberals have no
 
 82 VIEW- OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 Index Expurgatorius, nor have they any priests to 
 present erroneously whatever they fear to have the 
 people see as it is. 
 
 Again he represents Ingersoll as a clown. Judge 
 for yourself of the language and ideas to which 
 he refers as given by their author. It is plain that 
 the being calling him a clown was pretty sure that 
 his readers never read Ingersoll's fervent and 
 solemn protest against inhumanity. The tender- 
 ness of Ingersoll's nature which glows thru his 
 writings would be a revelation to readers of Lam- 
 bert who have depended on his exposition of the 
 great Agnostic, who is great because of his sym- 
 pathetic, benevolent heart. Yet on the very next 
 page, in comments following the ones last quoted, 
 Mr. Lambert quotes Ingersoll, "Not satisfied with 
 having slavery in this world, Mr. Black assures 
 us that it will last thru eternity," and says: 
 
 Lambert. "There is but one reply to this. It 
 consists of a vigorous English word of three let- 
 ters. It is sufficient to say that Mr. Black never 
 assured us of anything from which such an in- 
 ference could be drawn. On what principle do 
 you justify this gross misrepresentation? Certain- 
 ly not that divine law which forbids you to bear 
 false witness against your neighbor. If you had 
 said the above under oath would it not have been 
 perjury? Did you say it in view of the fact that
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 83 
 
 you had made arrangements to prevent your op- 
 ponent from replying to you?" 
 
 Comment. The assertion which led to the use 
 of rough epithets is justified by Mr. Black's words, 
 which Lambert does not give. In speaking of 
 slavery he said: "All improvement of our race, 
 in this world and the next, must come from obedi- 
 ence to some master better and wiser than our- 
 selves." 
 
 The false accusation that Ingersoll prevented Mr. 
 Black from replying has been exposed. 
 
 Quoting, "Who is the superior man?" he says: 
 "He who does not lie, or misrepresent, or blas- 
 pheme his Maker, is morally superior to him who 
 does." 
 
 Besides this vile insinuation, which is without 
 excuse, Lambert accuses Ingersoll three times on 
 one page of lying, when anyone can see by read- 
 ing what Mr. Black did say that Ingersoll was 
 correct. 
 
 He quotes some of what Ingersoll szfys about 
 the superior man and goes on with some of his 
 "analyzing," which appears very learned to those 
 who look up to him as the infallible representa- 
 tive of Almighty God. He would teach us that 
 doing good to others is a sign of superiority, but 
 not the reason of it. 
 
 Is not the one who does good superior because
 
 84 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 he does good, just as we would naturally under- 
 stand Ingersoll to mean? 
 
 He says, when Ingersoll says "the superior man 
 is one who uses his superiority in bettering the 
 condition of the inferior," he admits "the fact of 
 inferiority and superiority, and therefore subordina- 
 tion." Not so; Col. Ingersoll and many others do 
 better the condition of those who may be inferior 
 in the way of talents or opportunities, but that does 
 not prove there is subordination about it, in any 
 sense. In some cases there is subordination in 
 one sense, as when a farmer hires a man to help 
 him he gives directions as to what he wants done, 
 but that is different from the subordination of the 
 man who is owned by another. The teacher is 
 superior to his pupils in the way of education, and 
 they work under his direction, but we do not draw 
 the inference from this that slavery is right. 
 
 Mr. Lambert. The superiority comes before the 
 good act; if superiority were the act of the will 
 all men could be superior by willing it. "Your defi- 
 nition, then, like most of your definitions, means 
 nothing when analyzed." 
 
 Comment. If a man does not make good use 
 of his superior talents or advantages he is not a 
 superior man. Actions go with the character and 
 advantages making him superior. Mr. Lambert is 
 great on definitions and analyzing. I look on what
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 85 
 
 Mr. Ingersoll said as giving his idea of the quali- 
 ties constituting a superior man, and don't believe 
 anyone but Lambert would think of analyzing them 
 as definitions. 
 
 He goes on in the same style of criticism about 
 eyes to the blind, etc., and ends paragraphs in simi- 
 lar style, like this: "I note these small points to 
 show that you are not an adept in the proper use 
 of words and that your definitions are untrust- 
 worthy." 
 
 Has the reader forgotten what the argument is 
 about after going over all this multiplication of 
 words about words? We must remember that In- 
 gersoll's argument about the superior man was in 
 answer to that of Mr. Black in favor of slavery, 
 while these pages of Mr. Lambert's about words 
 do not touch the question of the debate. 
 
 He quotes, "I would rather be a slave than the 
 master," which means, of course, as the sentence 
 itself and the rest of the paragraph show, that he 
 would rather be wronged than to wrong another. 
 But Mr. Lambert makes it the occasion of a ser- 
 mon in which he works in the implication that such 
 a preference shows "an intellectual imbecile or a 
 consummate hypocrite," and preaches manliness 
 as opposed to "the instincts of a slave." He says 
 he would rather be the master, for he could free 
 the slave. "Perhaps, in view of the proneness
 
 86 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 of man to domineer and play the tyrant it were 
 better to be neither the slave nor the master." 
 
 Most good people would say that without any 
 perhaps. If the master frees the slave, then, of 
 course, there is no master nor slave. The valuable 
 part of that sermon is that it is short ; but it should 
 be preserved to show the temper of the preacher. 
 
 Lambert. (In answer to Ingersoll's mention of 
 those who help others to gain or retain liberty.) 
 "Then why do you not advocate the throwing open 
 of our prison doors that the murderers and thieves 
 cruelly shut up there may gain and retain the liberty 
 they sigh for ? Ah ! that would be dangerous. Well 
 then, it is not always right to help others gain and 
 retain their liberty. It is hard for you to say any- 
 thing without saying too much or too little. You 
 are fond of making general propositions, but they 
 are dangerous tools and should be handled with 
 care." 
 
 Comment. Who would tell the marines or any 
 other people that any writer could find a publisher 
 for any book in which a thing like that last para- 
 graph could appear, without the appearance first 
 of the fact that it is by a Christian who professes 
 to answer an Agnostic? Would any person in any 
 other kind of work intimate that it is dangerous 
 and foolish to advocate liberty as opposed to slavery 
 because murderers and thieves are confined in pris-
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 87 
 
 on ? Would this writer say in so many plain words 
 that slavery is right and profess in so many plain 
 words to believe that our confining thieves and 
 murderers in penitentiaries proves that slavery is 
 necessary to good government ? 
 
 If art is praised this writer's thots turn to in- 
 decent pictures; if liberty is mentioned he imme- 
 diately remembers criminals and will have nothing 
 of liberty. The subject was slavery and not mur- 
 der. 
 
 Ingersoll goes on, "Slavery includes all other 
 crimes," and Lambert answers with more of his 
 contemptuous criticisms on language. He reminds 
 me of the old epigram about language's being the 
 means by which we conceal our thots ; but it seems 
 to me the author of the "Notes" uses it to take the 
 place of thots ; feeling that something must be said 
 when thots are lacking. 
 
 Assuming that Ingersoll should confine his wri- 
 tings on slavery to a dictionary definition of it, and 
 basing insulting remarks on his description of some 
 of its evils, he closes the chapter with a paragraph 
 which could be expected of this man alone this 
 man who is described as genial, gentlemanly and 
 courteous by the Rev. Patrick Cronin, the writer 
 of the preface to the "Notes." Here is the paragraph 
 in which he comments on "To lacerate the naked 
 back," etc.:
 
 88 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 Lambert. "No, it is poetry, poor poetry, of 
 course, but nevertheless poetry, for it is the prod- 
 uct of the imagination. You do not seem to 
 understand the meaning of the word. Consult 
 Webster's Dictionary or your law books, or any 
 books that pretend to give definitions of things, 
 and you will find that the definition of slavery given 
 by you is not found in any of them. You may find 
 something like it in the frothy ravings of lunatics, 
 or the rhapsodies of poets, but when pure reason 
 is appealed to we must not quote the mouthings 
 of lunatics and poets. To lacerate the naked back 
 is a cruelty or a punishment incident to, but not 
 confined to the condition of slavery. To breed 
 blood-hounds is no more wrong than to breed 
 canary birds or poodles, and as to debauching your 
 soul, that is done with facility where slavery is un- 
 known except in name. Then slavery is none of 
 these, altho all of them may be incident to that 
 abnormal relation between capital and labor." 
 
 Comment. It is right to make a correction of 
 my own comments on the above. It is not right 
 to say that he alone was capable of writing as he 
 did. I was thinking of his book and it is the only 
 one of the kind I have seen. But there are more 
 of that kind of people. Their number may be es- 
 timated according to the opportunities for know- 
 ing them.
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 89 
 
 The paragraph last quoted brings the thot that 
 if the writer would confine himself to copying dic- 
 tionary definitions it would be better for his world ; 
 for he does have an influence. Let readers judge 
 whether or not it is for truth, honor and justice. 
 
 LIBERTY. 
 
 Ingersoll. "With me, liberty is not merely a 
 means it is an end." 
 
 Lambert. "This is too vague. We are all in 
 favor of liberty, as we understand it, but we do 
 not agree as to what it ought to be. It is a foolish 
 loss of time to caw over the word until we have a 
 common idea or understanding of the thing. Do 
 you mean by the word the liberty Guiteau exer- 
 cised, or that of the Nihilists, or of the Mormons, 
 or that of the thief, the robber, or the murderer? 
 All these appeal to liberty as vociferously as you 
 do. Do you not see that the word liberty must 
 be defined and limited in other words, that it must 
 become a known quantity before it can become a 
 legitimate object of debate? If there is anything 
 thoroughly detested and abhorred by logicians it 
 is a word, or the use of a word, that has no fixed, 
 clear and clean-cut meaning to it. You use the 
 word 'liberty' with what Shakespeare would call 
 'damnable iteration' and in all your multifarious
 
 90 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 uses of it you have never, so far as I have seen, 
 given a definition of it. 'And without that word 
 all other words are empty sounds.' And that 
 word without a definition a clear and fixed mean- 
 ing, intelligible and comprehensible to all in com- 
 mon, is the emptiest and most misleading sound 
 that ever echoed in time and space. It is a pet 
 word of lunatics, fools and philosophers, so-called. 
 It is like a piece of gum elastic, short or long, ac- 
 cording to the will of him who fingers it. 'O 
 liberty!' said Madame Roland, as she was carted 
 to the guillotine, 'What crimes are committed in thy 
 name!' The Christian loves liberty as well as you 
 do. He would soar from planet to planet, and 
 from star to star, and drink in the immensity of 
 the universe. He would dive into the center of our 
 world and know its secrets. He would penetrate 
 to the ultimate molecule of matter and know its 
 essence. He would introvert himself and know 
 the mystery of his own being, but the liberty to 
 do these things evades his grasp as the ever-reced- 
 ing rainbow eludes the grasp of the innocent child 
 who hopes to bathe his dimpled hands in its rays 
 by crossing over a field or two. The physical and 
 the moral law stand watch on the limits of liberty 
 and cry 'halt' when we even think to go beyond 
 our sphere." 
 
 Comment. About three hundred more words on
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. QI 
 
 liberty follows this. Lack of space makes it neces- 
 sary to state the idea in a few words: 
 
 Lambert. There are three laws equally binding 
 on man, physical, intellectual and moral. "The 
 two former bind him in such a way that he has 
 no liberty whatever, and therefore he is, in no 
 way, responsible for their results." He is respon- 
 sible to the moral law only, "for it is thru and by 
 this law, only, that he can possibly antagonize 
 God's will as intellect against intellect. Man, then, 
 is no more free in the moral order than he is in 
 the physical or intellectual order. The difference is 
 only this: he has it in his power to confuse the 
 moral order, to make discord," and to do this is 
 to sin. 
 
 Comment. Reduced to its lowest terms that 
 would be Man is never free. If I had given the 
 whole paragraph, the emptiness would have been 
 the same. 
 
 To take these comments on liberty and consider 
 them categorically: When two people are arguing 
 on slavery must the advocate of liberty copy Web- 
 ster's definition of liberty to go with the word 
 whenever he uses it, in order to make himself un- 
 derstood? Would anybody ever think he meant 
 the liberty to commit crime? Would anybody who 
 wished to enter honestly into a discussion of slavery 
 ever think of any connection between the advocacy
 
 92 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 
 
 of liberty and the advocacy of crime? "Pet word 
 of lunatics, fools and philosophers, so-called" ! Is 
 liberty the bug-bear of this author or is he only 
 pretending? It is most likely he feels that some- 
 thing should be said to make "some of the people" 
 think Ingersoll has been answered. 
 
 I am sure Madame Roland would never have 
 made that remark if she had known it would have 
 been used forever and forever as if it were an 
 argument against liberty by those who hate and 
 fear the word, and condition expressed by it. 
 
 We come now to the first and only drop into 
 poetry (this is using his "definition" of poetry, 
 though it would not be mine) to be found in the 
 "Notes," about the Christian's loving liberty, want- 
 ing to soar and dive, and drink in the universe, and 
 turn himself inwards but that would be "going be- 
 yond our sphere." Second thot here comes in 
 and suggests that it is not worth while to halt for 
 this poetry. 
 
 For the page or so on which he works up to the 
 conclusion that man cannot be free in any way, 
 can only confuse the moral order, and that is to 
 sin Well, if he really arrives at that conclusion, 
 no wonder he hates liberty. 
 
 He again sets up liberty as his target when he 
 comes to the subject of polygamy. He quotes In- 
 gersoll in praise of liberty and demands to know
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 93 
 
 why, then, he objects to polygamy? Besides, he 
 says, there is no principle outside of revelation 
 which forbids it, and it is inconsistent for Ingersoll 
 to find it a disgusting practice. I wonder how 
 many would admit that if it were not for the Bible 
 they might all be polygamists ? The most of us feel 
 as if there were something revolting about the prac- 
 tice itself. Mr. Lambert says the sentiment or 
 judgment against polygamy is the result of the 
 Christian religion and Ingersoll has no right to use 
 its weapons in combating it. Ingersoll and Black 
 were arguing on the Old Testament (tho there is 
 nothing in the New forbidding polygamy. It says 
 a bishop shall have one wife. I do not know whether 
 that is generally construed to mean he shall be 
 married, or shall have only one wife). They were 
 arguing about the ten commandments and laws of 
 the Pentateuch. Mr. Ingersoll had an idea that 
 it would have been better if polygamy had been 
 forbidden. 
 
 I did think it was my duty to copy for you Mr. 
 Lambert's thots on this subject, but they are too- 
 extraordinary, and I cannot bring myself to send 
 such things to the printer. True, they were printed 
 once, but much is allowed to the church. 
 
 Ingersoll. "Certainly Jehovah had time to in- 
 struct Moses as to the infamy of polygamy." 
 
 Lambert, "There is no sense in this, except on
 
 94 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 
 
 the assumption that you know more about the sub- 
 ject than Jehovah that your crude notions of vir- 
 tue and propriety should govern his actions. 
 
 "Rousseau, an Infidel like yourself, but an 
 honester and abler man, has given a description 
 of the class of philosophers to which you belong, 
 and it is highly worthy of attention just here." 
 
 Comment. It is a long string of denunciations 
 of philosophers, which he ascribes to "Rousseau, 
 as quoted by Gandolphy in his defense of the An- 
 cient Faith." It is not apropos of anything, as it 
 has nothing to do with the Bible, polygamy or In- 
 fidels, unless it might be the assertions that philos- 
 ophers pretend to be skeptics, and "among believers, 
 he" (the philosopher) "is an Atheist, among Athe- 
 ists he is a believer." Thruout the "Notes" philoso- 
 phers and Infidels are treated as being the same. 
 Whether Rousseau is a philosopher or not, I do 
 not know, but he is not an Infidel. Popular Biog- 
 raphy, 1832, by Peter Parley gives this: "It was 
 not till 1750 that he manifested his splendid liter- 
 ary talents. In that year he gained the prize given 
 by the academy of Dijon for his celebrated Essay, 
 in answer to the question, 'Whether the progress 
 of the sciences and arts has contributed to corrupt 
 or purify manners.' He maintained that the effect 
 had been injurious. From this period his pen be- 
 came fertile and popular." These last two sen-
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 95 
 
 tences go far to prove he remained a good Catho- 
 lic. The Social Contract is named among his works 
 in this sketch, but not noticed in any other way. 
 Johnson's Cyclopedia treats him as a very bad man, 
 and that may be where Mr. Lambert gets his ideas, 
 tho the subject of religion is not mentioned. The 
 New International Cyclopedia has a more complete 
 sketch of him. From it I take this: It tells of 
 his Catholic education; says that he visited Geneva, 
 gave up Catholicism and thus was allowed to as- 
 sume his rights as a citizen. (It looks plain that 
 he became a Calvinist in name only.) Went away 
 with the intention of returning, but Voltaire was 
 there, "and Jean Jacques concluded that they could 
 not live near each other in so small a place." After 
 his letter on Providence, addressed to Voltaire in 
 reply to his poem on the Lisbon earthquake, he 
 had written as his declaration of war against not 
 only Voltaire, but all his associates, the Lettre a 
 d'Alembert contra les Spectacles, in which he con- 
 demns the stage as a school of immorality. 
 
 Probably Mr. Lambert thinks that political and 
 religious unorthodoxy are so closely connected that 
 it is necessary to "slay them all" without adding to 
 the order, in this case, "God will know his own." 
 
 Ingersoll. "Where will we find, in the Old Tes- 
 tament, the rights of wife, mother, and daughter 
 defined?"
 
 96 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 Lambert. "They are found in the warp and 
 woof of the whole book. But, before particular- 
 izing, it is necessary to know what you mean by 
 these rights, and if your notions on the subject 
 are correct. What you may affirm as right I may 
 deny. Until those rights are determined rightly 
 and independently of your or my sentiments or 
 feelings, the question of what the Bible says on 
 the subject cannot be intelligently discussed." 
 
 Ingersoll. "Even in the New Testament she 
 (woman) is told to learn in silence and all sub- 
 jection." 
 
 Lambert. "Most excellent advice for man, wom- 
 an, or child. How can you learn otherwise ? Would 
 you have the learner pert and impertinent?" 
 
 Comment. So the rights of woman are defined 
 in the warp and woof of the whole book. Why 
 should not we be favored with a few of the ref- 
 erences which must be so numerous, if found in 
 the whole warp and woof? But not a single one 
 is cited. 
 
 "It is necessary to know what you mean by 
 rights," and "it depends on what you mean by 
 rights," or "liberty," or whatever is the subject 
 considered, has a familiar sound. It is also used 
 by the Catholic laity when they cannot answer; 
 then if the person with whom they are conversing 
 does not think it worth while to pursue the dis-
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 97 
 
 cussion their first evasion is all that is necessary; 
 if he should explain what he means by the word 
 then they can bring up some other thots which they 
 try to connect with some other conversation, or they 
 can call up some imaginary case, making it fit as 
 well as possible. 
 
 As Mr. Lambert did not particularize we may 
 presume that he discovered what was meant by 
 rights, and that Mr. Ingersoll's notions were cor- 
 rect. The Bible does not say man, woman and 
 child should learn in silence, it says woman. 
 
 So far Mr. Lambert has answered neither of the 
 quotations ; but he now explains the Christian idea : 
 There must be a superior in the marriage relation, 
 but the wife is not subject to the husband as a 
 child is to his father, or a slave to his master, but 
 as the church obeys Christ. 
 
 He is in accord with the Bible in that last, but 
 it is understood that Christ is absolute ruler, so, 
 if that meant anything her subjection would be 
 more complete than in the two other cases. He 
 quotes from the Bible, giving chapter and verse, 
 but supplying the places of some of it with dotted 
 lines. I will italicize the portions he omitted; I 
 will also give Eph. v, 22-23, P ar * f which he did 
 not quote. His first quotation seems to me per- 
 fectly colorless, but I will put it all in. 
 
 "But yet neither is the man without the worn-
 
 98 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 an; nor the woman without the man in the Lord. 
 For as the woman is of the man, so also is the 
 man by the woman; but all things of God (i Cor. 
 xi, 12). Again: Wives submit yourselves unto 
 your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the hus- 
 band is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the 
 head of the church; and he is the savior of the 
 body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto 
 Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands 
 in everything. Husbands, love your wives, as 
 Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for 
 it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the 
 washing of the water by the word. That he might 
 present it to himself a glorious church not having 
 spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should 
 be holy and without blemish. So also ought men 
 to love their wives as their own bodies. He that 
 loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever 
 hateth his own flesh ; but nourisheth and cherisheth 
 it, as also Christ doth the church. Because we are, 
 members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. 
 For this cause shall a man leave his father and 
 mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall 
 be two of one flesh. This is a great mystery; but 
 I speak concerning Christ and the church. Never- 
 theless, let every one of you in particular love his 
 wife as himself ; and the wife see that she reverence 
 her husband."
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 99 
 
 "These are the doctrines that have liberated wom- 
 an," adds the priest, and this ends the paragraph 
 and the exposition of the Christian idea of the 
 rights of woman. 
 
 Before I noticed the omitted texts I thot what 
 a surprisingly meager showing of texts proving 
 doctrines that have liberated woman, compared with 
 the overwhelming array on the other side! The 
 temptation to marshal that array is strong, but 
 time is limited. Besides it does not seem neces- 
 sary since the parts omitted by the author of the 
 "Notes" have been supplied. 
 
 He quotes, "In no country in the world have 
 women less liberty than in the Holy Land," and 
 again says, "It depends upon what you mean by 
 liberty," continuing in a way to show that he takes 
 it in the sense of dissoluteness. If he could drop 
 the word liberty from the language as he tries to 
 keep the thing itself from the world, how it would 
 simplify matters for him! As it is, the only thing 
 he can do is to try to attach some bad meaning to 
 the word. 
 
 Ingersoll. "Under the domination of the Chris- 
 tian church woman was the merest slave for at 
 least a thousand years. It was claimed that thru 
 woman the race had fallen, and that her loving 
 kiss had poisoned all the springs of life." 
 
 Lambert. Of the first sentence he says: "This
 
 ioo VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 is too general and indefinite." General statements 
 can be met only by general denials, and calls for 
 proofs; Christianity raised woman and put her 
 at the side of man; the fall was thru Adam; and 
 the last part he answered with the single word, 
 "Fudge!" 
 
 Comment. That last answer is short, and better 
 than his usual device a deluge of obscuring words. 
 It does take such a long time to read them, and 
 they must be troublesome to write, tho they do fill 
 up when he cannot afford to answer in good faith. 
 
 By way of answer to Mr. Ingersoll's summary 
 of the qualities of Mr. Black's God, and request 
 that he would have the kindness to state a few 
 of his objections to the devil, Mr. Lambert, affect- 
 ing not to see the point, writes this: "He is the 
 prince of liars, full of sophistry and deceit, mis- 
 leading and unreliable a purveyor of Dead Sea 
 apples." 
 
 Just below we have more undignified and irrel- 
 evant comments about the Jews kicking out the 
 Canaanites on the toe of their sandals. Ingersoll's 
 question was about persecuting for opinion's sake 
 heathen philosophers who taught that all men were 
 brothers, equally entitled to liberty and life. 
 
 After a page in which he says man "became a 
 victim not of evolution but devilution" ; that God 
 knew his revelation would be abused (not answer-
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. IOI 
 
 ing the charge that it had been a "breastwork be- 
 hind which tyranny and hypocrisy would crouch"), 
 but wouldn't deny it to man because he knew "the 
 hypocrite would deny it and blaspheme," and that 
 it would be "misrepresented by hypocrites called 
 Infidels" (why was it not worth while to point 
 out the "misrepresentations" instead of continually 
 making unproved charges?). After this page ap- 
 pears another example of foolish trifling, on page 
 121, on the text "He knew that he taught the Jew- 
 ish people little of importance." (This follows, "If 
 Jehovah was in fact God, he knew," etc.) 
 
 Lambert. "You only imagine that you know 
 this. You must not confound your knowledge with 
 that of Jehovah. How do you know that he knew ? 
 You evidently do not need to pray the old Scotch 
 dominie's prayer, 'O Lord, gie us a gude conceit o' 
 ourselV " 
 
 Comment. His own opinion as to whether or 
 not Jehovah knew is not here divulged, and the 
 paragraph seems to be thrown in for an exhibition 
 of smartness. 
 
 POLYGAMY, SLAVERY AND WAR, WITH 
 PERSONALITIES FOR DESSERT. 
 
 IngersolL "I here take occasion to thank Mr. 
 Black for having admitted that Jehovah gave no
 
 IO2 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 commandment against the practice of polygamy, 
 that he established slavery, waged wars of exter- 
 mination, and persecuted for opinion's sake even 
 unto death." 
 
 Lambert. "First. You must have been in a very 
 gushing humor when you so formally thanked your 
 opponent for admitting what no Christian ever 
 dreamt of denying. Your opponent said that 'if 
 you were a statesman instead of a mere politician 
 you would see good and sufficient reasons for the 
 forbearance to legislate directly' [there was no 
 legislation direct or indirect] 'on this subject 
 (polygamy), and that it would be improper for 
 him to set them forth' in an article intended for 
 the general reader. Not being a statesman, a moral- 
 ist, or a physician, you, of course, do not see those 
 things to which your opponent delicately directs 
 your attention." 
 
 Comment. This is very puzzling. What can be 
 the justification of polygamy which it would be 
 indelicate for Mr. Black and Mr. Lambert to give 
 which a statesman, a moralist, and physician 
 could see, but which Mr. Ingersoll and the rest 
 of us cannot see? admitting, for the sake of in- 
 formation only, that we are not moralists. If the 
 writer of pages 105-108 of the "Notes" might 
 be suspected of sincerity I should never think of 
 making the inquiry.
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. IO3 
 
 Lambert. "Second. When you say Mr. Black 
 admitted that Jehovah established slavery you say 
 what is not true. It is the height of unwisdom 
 to make a statement that is so easily refuted. Your 
 thanks were premature, as Mr. Black never, at 
 least in the article you reply to, admitted anything 
 of the kind. He said: 'Jehovah permitted his 
 chosen people to hold the captives they took in 
 war or purchased from the heathen as servants for 
 life.' That is he permitted the Jews to follow the 
 customs of the times in this matter. Is this an 
 admission that Jehovah established slavery? Like 
 a lawyer more 'cute' than cunning and able, you 
 change the word permitted to established. You do 
 not need to be told that there is a difference be- 
 tween permit and establish. It is unbecoming in 
 the great apostle of 'candor' and 'honor bright' to 
 thus misrepresent his antagonist, and it must bring 
 a blush of shame even to your cheek to be caught 
 in such petty chicanery." 
 
 Comment. Both disputants meant the Bible 
 laws, and it may be found by reading that book 
 that established is the correct word. Mr. Black 
 did say authorized, but that word does not make 
 any change in the meaning. If the law distinctly 
 authorizes slavery by deciding authoritatively who 
 may be held as slaves, and by regulating the insti- 
 tution like this : "Notwithstanding if he continue"
 
 IO4 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 
 
 (to live) "a day or two" (after the smiting with a 
 rod) "he" (the master) "shall not be punished; for 
 he is his money" undoubtedly that is estab- 
 lishing slavery. In another place Mr. Black did 
 say, "Jehovah permitted his chosen people to hold 
 the captives they took in war or purchased from 
 the heathen as servants for life." Permitting the 
 enslavement of captives and the buying of slaves 
 from the "heathen" was certainly establishing 
 slavery. As an act of Jehovah authorizing, permit- 
 ting, and establishing, are the same. The last sen- 
 tence of Mr. Lambert's criticism supplies an ex- 
 cellent word to describe his method of word jug- 
 gling in place of fair discussion chicanery. 
 
 In his "Third" about wars of extermination, he 
 takes up his definition plan again instead of an- 
 swering. He says exterminate is from ex and 
 tirminus and means to drive from the border, to 
 expel, to drive out. While it is true about the 
 derivation of the word, it is not true that by com- 
 mon usage it is defined in that sense. It is used 
 according to Webster's definition "to utterly des- 
 troy"; and if we did not know it before, would 
 not Jehovah's command to leave alive nothing that 
 breathes show that it did not mean to drive out? 
 
 Continuing the denial in detail of the specifica- 
 tions he had admitted all together he charges mis- 
 representation of Mr. Black when Ingersoll said
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 105 
 
 that he admitted that Jehovah persecuted for opin- 
 ion's sake, even unto death ; and "God as God holds 
 his intelligent creatures responsible for every thot, 
 but God as the temporal monarch of Judea inflict- 
 ed punishment only for overt acts." What were 
 those overt acts to be punished with death by the 
 command of Jehovah? Praising another religion? 
 Engaging in some unfashionable form of worship? 
 If no one was punished for opinion's sake it must 
 have been for the expression of opinion. But this 
 is what Mr. Black wrote which Mr. Lambert said 
 was misrepresented, "But things were wholly dif- 
 ferent under the Jewish theocracy" [different from 
 a country like ours] "where God was the per- 
 sonal head of the state. There blasphemy was a 
 breach of political allegiance ; idolatry was an overt 
 act of treason; to worship the gods of the hostile 
 heathen was deserting to the enemy and giving him 
 aid and comfort. These are crimes which every 
 independent community has always punished with 
 the utmost rigor. In our own very recent history 
 they were repressed at the cost of more lives than 
 Judea ever contained at any one time." 
 
 Comment. This shows that Ingersoll did not 
 misrepresent as charged. 
 
 Though Jehovah is not the temporal ruler of 
 this state, we have blasphemy and idolatry here. 
 The expression of one man's religious opinions
 
 io6 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 may be very shocking to some other man of dif- 
 ferent views; that is blasphemy. The earnest 
 prayer of one is an astonishing exhibition of idola- 
 try to another. What a state of affairs if certain 
 of these opinions and modes of worship were called 
 treason for which the penalty is death! 
 
 Altho Mr. Lambert says on page 121 that Mr. 
 Ingersoll thanked Mr. Black for admitting what no 
 Christian ever dreamt of denying, he again charges 
 on page 123 misrepresentation in saying that Mr. 
 Black admits what most theologians deny, for, says 
 Mr. Lambert, the admissions were never made by 
 him; he says that Mr. Black admits the truth, but 
 not what Ingersoll states; that Mr. Black is not a 
 theologian; "he has made some admissions, not of 
 fact but of principle, which he should not have 
 made; and taken certain positions which he cannot 
 hold successfully; and, singular as it may seem to 
 him and you, those positions are the very ones 
 which are not Christian." (The very next sentence 
 in the same paragraph is remarkable. The subject 
 was polygamy, slavery, wars of extermination, and 
 persecution for opinion's sake.) "One instance 
 will suffice. Mr. Black says that the creation was 
 a miracle. Theologians do not agree with him in 
 this." 
 
 Let us put those things close together for a 
 plainer view. Black admitted these things which
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 107 
 
 no Christian denies ; he does not admit them ; those 
 admissions "for which you credit him at the ex- 
 pense of theologians" were never made by him ; he 
 made admissions which he should not have made, 
 and has taken positions which he cannot hold suc- 
 cessfully, and these positions are not Christian ; one 
 instance will suffice: He says the creation was a 
 miracle. This was written and published, and is 
 to be found on pages 121-124 of the "Notes." 
 The chapter is concluded with these gems : 
 Lambert. "Now as to the theologians, at whom 
 you take your fling over Mr. Black's shoulders, I 
 will say this of them : If they were guilty of as much 
 puttying and patching, misrepresentation, low trick- 
 ery, cunning, deceit, flattering of popular passions 
 and errors, as you have perpetrated in this one 
 article of yours, I would be disposed to look upon 
 them as sharpers of the meanest order who were 
 inspired, not by the genius of Christianity, but of 
 infidelity. 
 
 "You deem it no offense against decency to ac- 
 cuse theologians of intention to perpetrate and per- 
 petuate fraud, to call them hypocrites, etc., and yet 
 if they turn on you and call you a speculator whe 
 turns falsehood into dollars, a fraud, and a liar, 
 you begin to whimper about the Master who tells 
 them to turn the other cheek. You are a brave 
 man. You challenge to mortal combat, and on the
 
 io8 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 field you seriously tell your antagonist that he can- 
 not, and must not, according to his principles, blow 
 your brains out ; while you claim to shoot him thru 
 the heart if you can. There is no epithet in your 
 vocabulary low or venomous enough to fling at 
 priests and theologians, but when a 'policeman,' 
 like Mr. Black, ventures to catalog you, you are 
 up in indignation, and whine and whimper about 
 decency and the etiquette of debate." 
 
 Comment. When Ingersoll says theologians gen- 
 erally try to fix up the record, but Mr. Black is 
 honest enough to admit it as it is that could neve* 
 be called whipping them over his shoulders; but 
 if Ingersoll had meant to criticize them and feared 
 to do it, so charged him with fault, when people 
 knew the criticism applied to them, that would be 
 whipping them over his shoulders. Of course, tho, 
 everybody knows that and knows Ingersoll's lan- 
 guage was straightforward. 
 
 Anyone who reads Ingersoll will find the malevo- 
 lent adjectives in this paragraph entirely inappro- 
 priate to him. In my opinion the outcome, in any 
 court, of a trial for calling him a fraud and a liar 
 would be disastrous for this priest, unless some 
 one should be able to rake up some old statute for 
 the benefit of clergy. 
 
 This is what Lambert calls whimpering: "For a 
 man who is a 'Christian policeman' and has taken
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. IOQ 
 
 upon himself to defend the Christian religion; for 
 one who follows the Master who said that when 
 smitten on one cheek you must turn the other, and 
 who again and again enforced the idea that you 
 must overcome evil with good, it is hardly con- 
 sistent to declare that a civilized nation must of 
 necessity adopt the warfare of savages." I know 
 of no one but Mr. Lambert who calls Ingersoll "a 
 speculator who turns falsehood into dollars." In- 
 gersoll was not answering any personality. He re- 
 fused to answer personal insult, except references 
 which I shall quote, but kept directly on with the 
 argument. 
 
 Mr. Black said his duty was analogous to that 
 of a policeman, so the reference to a policeman 
 was not an expression of contempt for anybody 
 policeman or judge. 
 
 Ingersoll. "Mr. Black should have answered my 
 arguments instead of calling me 'blasphemous' and 
 'scurrilous.' In the discussion of these questions I 
 have nothing to do with the reputation of my op- 
 ponent." 
 
 Comment. I will give another extract showing 
 what Ingersoll said concerning disparaging epithets 
 and his protest against personalities. These will 
 show the ostensible grounds for the imputation in 
 the last paragraph of chapter xiv. To answer what 
 Lambert said about challenging to mortal combat I
 
 no VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 will begin back a little ways. Bear in mind this 
 answer of Ingersoll to Black is the very thing Lam- 
 bert is professing to answer. 
 
 Ingersoll. "Not until the article, 'Is All of the 
 Bible Inspired?' was written did I know who was 
 expected to answer. I make this explanation for 
 the purpose of dissipating the impression that Mr. 
 Black had been challenged by me. To have struck 
 his shield with my lance might have given birth to 
 the impression that I was somewhat doubtful as 
 to the correctness of my position. I naturally ex- 
 pected an answer from some professional theo- 
 logian, and was surprised to find that a reply had 
 been written by a 'policeman' who imagined that 
 he had answered my arguments by simply telling 
 me that my statements were false. It is somewhat 
 unfortunate that in a discussion like this anyone 
 should resort to the slightest personal detraction. 
 The theme is great enough to engage the highest 
 faculties of the human mind, and in the investi- 
 gation of such a subject, vituperation is singularly 
 and vulgarly out of place. Arguments cannot be 
 answered with insults. It is unfortunate that the 
 intellectual arena should be entered by a 'police- 
 man' who has more confidence in concussion than 
 discussion. Kindness is strength, good nature is 
 often mistaken for virtue, and good health some- 
 times passes for genius. Anger blows out the lamp
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. in 
 
 of the mind. In the examination of a great and 
 important question, every one should be serene, 
 slow-pulsed and calm. Intelligence is not the foun- 
 dation of arrogance. Insolence is not logic. Epi- 
 thets are the arguments of malice. Candor is the 
 courage of the soul. Leaving the objectionable por- 
 tions of Mr. Black's reply, feeling that so grand a 
 subject should not be blown and tainted with ma- 
 licious words, I proceed to answer as best I may 
 the arguments he has urged." 
 
 THE BIBLE SLA VERY. 
 
 Chapter xv begins with the accusation that In- 
 gersoll "assumes to determine what is monstrous, 
 miraculous, impossible and immoral," speaks of 
 "an Infidel offering his crude notions as ultimate 
 principles or axioms," and says that is deciding in 
 his own favor playing counsel and judge at the 
 same time. 
 
 Comment. The assumption that every right- 
 minded being would determine that assassination 
 and many other crimes were monstrous, etc., would 
 be fully warranted. Does Mr. Lambert "assume 
 to determine" otherwise? In these two rather long 
 paragraphs of his not a single argument appears; 
 and the same is true of the two very long para- 
 graphs at the end of the last chapter.
 
 112 VIEW OF LAMBERTS NOTES. 
 
 Mr. Black wrote: "I do not enumerate in detail 
 the positive proofs which support the authenticity 
 of the Hebrew Bible, tho they are at hand in great 
 abundance, because the evidence in support of the 
 new dispensation will establish the verity of the 
 old the two being so connected together that if 
 one is true the other cannot be false." In his an- 
 swer Ingersoll begins his argument on that point 
 by saying : "Mr. Black comes to the conclusion that 
 the Hebrew Bible is in exact harmony with the 
 New Testament, and that the two are 'connected 
 together'; and, 'that if one is true the other can- 
 not be false.' " The volunteer champion quotes 
 the first part of the paragraph, and says, "Mr. 
 Black comes to no such conclusion"; tho it is true 
 they are so closely connected together, etc. He 
 says this is very different from what Ingersoll rep- 
 resents. 
 
 There is a great sameness about these rude and 
 unreasonable contradictions, but they should all 
 be answered. But, imagine some one in your par- 
 lor, who, whenever someone makes a remark, 
 bristles up and shouts vehemently, "It is no such 
 thing." "It is nothing of the kind." "It is a lie." 
 "That is only your conceit." "You rave like a 
 lunatic." 
 
 To return to this volunteer in the war against 
 Ingersoll. You will notice that in the sentence now
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERTS NOTES. 113 
 
 under discussion, in the part where Ingersoll does 
 not give the direct quotation, he gives Mr. Black's 
 idea exactly. The volunteer does not expect his 
 readers to know the arguments of Mr. Black and 
 Mr. Ingersoll, except as they are presented by him. 
 
 Ingersoll. "It hardly seems possible to me that 
 there is a right-minded, sane man, except Mr. 
 Black, who believes that a God of infinite kind- 
 ness and justice ever commanded one nation to ex- 
 terminate another." 
 
 Lambert. "It no doubt appears strange and 
 hardly possible to you, after your prodigal use of 
 deceit and sophistry, that anyone should believe 
 anything at all. When God commands one nation 
 to exterminate another the Christian believes that 
 there is a very serious reason for it. He believes 
 that God knows more than he, and does not think 
 that to be a philosopher it is necessary to exhaust 
 the resources of his lachrymal glands on every 
 guilty wretch and law-breaker whom the God of 
 Justice sees proper to lash or exterminate. God 
 makes instruments of nations to punish nations." 
 
 Comment. It is characteristic of Mr. Lambert 
 to pick out guilty wretches and law-breakers, as 
 if they were the only ones who suffered, when the 
 subject was the extermination of all the people of 
 a nation. The subject of the Ingersoll-Black de- 
 bate was, Is All of the Bible Inspired? Among
 
 H4 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 the reasons given for believing the bad passages 
 were not was the one that in it God was represented 
 as commanding wars of conquest and extermina- 
 tion. "When the Lord thy God shall drive them 
 before thee, thou shalt smite them, and utterly 
 destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with 
 them, nor show mercy unto them." The question 
 is asked whether it is possible that a being of in- 
 finite goodness and wisdom said this: "I will heap 
 mischief upon them; I will send mine arrows 
 among them; they shall be burned with hunger, 
 and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter 
 destruction. I will send the tooth of beasts upon 
 them, with the poison of serpents of the dust. The 
 sword without, the terror within, shall destroy both 
 the young man and the virgin, the suckling also, 
 with the man of gray hairs." 
 
 Ingersoll's comment on this is what the priest 
 calls "exhausting the resources of his lachrymal 
 glands on every guilty wretch and law-breaker." 
 Does he choose his insolent and sneering expres- 
 sions, or does he shake them up and draw? 
 
 Lambert devotes the next two pages to denying 
 that Mr. Black made any effort to prove that God 
 established slavery in Judea ; to saying that In- 
 gersoll blundered in his haste and failed to un- 
 derstand Black when he said that the doctrine that 
 slavery was a crime under all circumstances was
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERTS NOTES. 115 
 
 started, etc., less than forty years ago; that Black 
 took it for granted that Ingersoll "knew the dif- 
 ference between what is wrong in itself and what 
 is wrong by circumstance." "Your opponent was 
 too good a historian to say that the anti-slavery 
 movement began only forty years ago. Since the 
 advent of Christianity slavery has been considered 
 a social and circumstantial evil, an improper rela- 
 tion between labor and capital, but it was never 
 considered by men of healthy brains an evil per se, 
 an evil in its nature and essence. This is what 
 Mr. Black meant by 'all circumstances,' but you 
 were in such a hurry you could not see it. This 
 distinction takes all the pith from your eloquence 
 on this point." Christianity, he says, began the anti- 
 slavery movement; its Councils tried to abolish it 
 or to mitigate its severities. As Black did not say 
 the movement began forty years ago, but the doc- 
 trine that it was wrong under all circumstances 
 began then, "your argument loses its wind." Chris- 
 tianity antagonized slavery by legislation; he gives 
 the names and dates of "some of the Councils 
 which legislated to protect the slave." "Pope Greg- 
 ory XVI. in 1839 published apostolic letters against 
 the slave trade." Anti-slavery is a Christian thot. 
 Comment. In all these pages of Mr. Lambert's 
 I do not find any information as to the circum- 
 stances which make slavery right in his opinion.
 
 n6 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 He seemed to consent to whatever Mr. Black said 
 on the subject, and Mr. Black thot it right to make 
 slaves of captives (if it is right, according to the 
 Bible, I suppose he would think it right forever), 
 and to buy them of the heathen. I suppose that 
 means the Gentiles, tho it may take in all not of 
 the Jewish religion. Those are the only circum- 
 stances given in which slavery is right, as far as 
 learned from the two apologists. When Jehovah's 
 people warred among themselves they could not 
 make slaves of their captives, for they were com- 
 manded to "save alive nothing that breathed." Here 
 we have a case in which slavery was wrong. I 
 wish Mr. Black, Mr. Lambert, or any of those 
 Protestants and Catholics who were united by the 
 "Notes," and took Mr. Lambert "cordially by the 
 hand as a vigorous and successful defender of 
 Christianity," would enumerate the times and cir- 
 cumstances in which slavery is right. The Bible 
 tells us, by implication, of the case where it is 
 wrong, for captives men, women and children and 
 all animals must be killed. Now if some of the 
 cordially united sectarians would only risk sustain- 
 ing Ingersoll to that extent and' try to think of 
 some other cases in which it may be wrong, tho 
 it is never wrong in itself!
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 117 
 
 RISE OF CHRISTIANITY PROOF OF ITS 
 DIVINE ORIGIN. 
 
 Mr. Black said: "I do not enumerate in detail 
 the positive proofs which support the authority of 
 the Hebrew Bible, tho they are at hand in great 
 abundance, because the evidence in support of the 
 new dispensation will establish the verity of the 
 old the two being so closely connected together 
 that if one is true the other cannot be false." 
 
 I can find nothing in Mr. Black's essay which 
 seems to be intended to prove the authenticity of 
 the Old Testament. He does try to show that the 
 God delineated in the Old Testament is moral and 
 excusable for his acts, tho they would at this day 
 be pronounced infamous by all people. That argu- 
 ment is expected to show that the Bible might be 
 written by the inspiration of God, but it does not 
 seem to be anything that would be understood as 
 an argument for its authenticity. If inspiration 
 were shown by ascribed goodness, Tobit would 
 stand a better chance of being inspired than Joshua. 
 
 Mr. Black carries on his argument for the 
 "truth" of the New Testament and Christianity 
 together. Beginning with the early difficulties and 
 rapid rise of Christianity he ends this phase of the 
 argument thus : "Is it Mr. Ingersoll's idea that this 
 happened by chance, like the creation of the world ?"
 
 n8 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 (Mr. Black is not my theme, except so far as it 
 is necessary to speak of him for an understanding 
 of Mr. Lambert, so I pass that sentence by.) "If 
 not, there are but two other ways to account for 
 it; either the evidence by which the apostles were 
 able to prove the supernatural origin was over- 
 whelming and irresistible, or else its propagation 
 was provided for and carried on by the direct aid 
 of the Divine Being himself. Between these two 
 infidelity may make its own choice." 
 
 Mr. Ingersoll brings forward the rapid rise of 
 the anti-slavery sentiment, giving a short summary 
 of what it had accomplished in less than forty 
 years, and asks if that happened by chance, or 
 proved that it was of supernatural origin, or pro- 
 vided for and carried on by the direct aid of the 
 Divine Being himself? He says the same argu- 
 ment applies to all religions, and says that accord- 
 ing to Mr. Black's position Mohammed was most 
 certainly the prophet of God. "Years before Gau- 
 tama died his religion was established and his dis- 
 ciples numbered by millions," and, "more than one- 
 third of the human race are today the followers 
 of Gautama." A Brahmin could use the same 
 arguments as Mr. Black. "Egypt, the mysterious 
 mother of mankind, with her pyramids built thirty- 
 four hundred years before Christ, was once the 
 first in all the earth, and gave to us our trinity,
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S , NOTES. 119 
 
 and our symbol of the cross. Could not a priest 
 of Isis and Osiris have used your arguments to 
 prove that his religion was divine, and could he 
 not have closed by saying, "From the facts estab- 
 lished by this evidence it follows irresistibly that 
 our religion conies from God ?" 
 
 It is said that a snapping turtle never puts his 
 head out of his shell without snapping at some- 
 thing. 
 
 Mr. Lambert snaps again; denies that Mr. Black 
 took the position that the rapid rise of Christian- 
 ity demonstrated its divine character, "altho you 
 labor to make your readers believe that he did. 
 Theologians do not teach that rapidity of rise and 
 spread, taken alone, is evidence of the divine 
 character of Christianity. Hence, your several 
 pages devoted to show the unsoundness of that 
 position are so much waste paper. It is a loss of 
 time as well to overthrow a position that no one 
 holds that has no existence, except in your vivid 
 imagination." He quotes from Mr. Black, show- 
 ing it was just as Ingersoll said; then he goes on 
 to say this was the statement of facts, but Mr. 
 Black goes on to speak of "the circumstances un- 
 der which this rapid rise took place." 
 
 Comment. Yes, and so did Mr. Ingersoll speak 
 of those circumstances. When I came to "cir- 
 cumstances" as the excuse for all that blustering
 
 I2O VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 
 
 denial I remembered little Davy who in his dream 
 was walking thru the woods when he came upon 
 a number of little people, one of them with a gun. 
 The one with the gun would load it, and the others 
 would gather around him and watch the loading. 
 Whenever it was ready to be fired the others would 
 all run away and hide themselves behind trees and 
 bushes until the gun was fired. Every time it was 
 fired the ball would roll gently out and fall at the 
 feet of the gunner. After this had been done sev- 
 eral times Davy went up to the marksman and 
 asked how it was that the ball always rolled down 
 to his feet? The gunner answered, "That is be- 
 cause it is loaded with tooth powder." 
 
 Mr. Lambert often loads with tooth powder, but 
 I never saw anyone run and hide. 
 
 He grants, for argument's sake, he says, that 
 other religions rose as rapidly, but did they arise 
 under like circumstances, and did they meet and 
 overcome like obstacles? 
 
 Whether the obstacles were exactly alike or not 
 does not affect the argument. The rapid rise of 
 Christianity was Mr. Black's argument, which Mr. 
 Ingersoll answered. Mr. Lambert's coming in 
 afterwards with the perfectly inconsiderable objec- 
 tion that the obstacles to the rise of Christianity 
 and other religions were not alike merits no at- 
 tention.
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 121 
 
 Mr. Ingersoll gave some of those met and over- 
 come by Mohammed, and also gave account of 
 the "circumstances" and remarkable success of all 
 the religions he mentioned. He said Black's argu- 
 ment in its simplest form is, all that succeeds is 
 inspired. Besides the numbers of adherents he 
 mentioned the "circumstance" that Mohammed was 
 not crucified; he was a conquerer. 
 
 So far Mr. Lambert has quoted one sentence 
 only of Mr. Ingersoll's on this point. "It will not 
 do to take the ground that the rapid rise and 
 spread of a religion demonstrates its divine charac- 
 ter." He gives Mr. Black's in full, altho it shows 
 that he gives the rapid rise and success in over- 
 coming obstacles alone as proof of the t verity of 
 Christianity. Not that he stops with this argu- 
 ment, but he is being answered on every point as 
 he advances it, and this alone is here offered as 
 proof. Without once stopping to ask what Mr. 
 Black means by verity; without substituting other 
 words as more suitable than obstacle or chance; 
 without any language carping, he comments thus: 
 "This, Mr. Ingersoll, is your adversary's argument 
 in full, and the reader will see why you twist it 
 out of shape before you attempt to answer it, and 
 why you notice one part and ignore the other." If 
 the Rev. Patrick Cronin had called this "untruth- 
 ful in statement, illogical in reasoning, dishonest
 
 122 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 in inference, vile in innuendo, and malevolent in 
 purpose," what unprejudiced person who had read 
 the whole debate would contradict him? 
 
 The next thing he takes up is an argument of 
 Ingersoll's on which he has already passed judg- 
 ment (that the Mohammedan could just as effect- 
 ually use Mr. Black's argument against an Infidel; 
 that it would be equally applicable to all the re- 
 ligions of the world), and says the Mohammedan, 
 the Brahmin, or the priest of Isis or Osiris could 
 not ; because, said Mr. Lambert, "the rise and spread 
 of these false religions have nothing in common 
 with the rise and spread of Christianity, except, 
 perhaps, rapidity, and that is not given by Mr. 
 Black as a proof of the divine origin of Chris- 
 tianity. You evidently set about answering his 
 argument before you got hold of its full force and 
 meaning." 
 
 He does not get up any explanation of what he 
 wishes us to consider the meaning of Mr. Black's 
 plain words td be. He evidently depends on the 
 willingness of his adherents to give up their rea- 
 soning faculties entirely. This is shown by his 
 putting Mr. Black's argument before them and 
 affect that it is not as they see it. Perhaps he de- 
 pends on his statement that Ingersoll did not un- 
 derstand to leave the impression that they could
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 123 
 
 not understand and must not doubt the word of a 
 holy man. 
 
 Lambert. "Your efforts to make the argument 
 fit Buddhism, Brahminism and Mohammedanism 
 can succeed only by the way of misrepresenting it, 
 which, by the way, you have not hesitated to do." 
 
 Comment. This "misrepresentation" can not be 
 proved, and Mr. Lambert contents himself with the 
 unsupported assertion. 
 
 FOUNDERS OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Perhaps the consideration of the last point of the 
 argument should have been begun by a longer quo- 
 tation from Ingersoll to better show on what Mr. 
 Lambert's criticism was based, but I must not go 
 back to it. I will give his argument on the good, 
 bad and mistaken men at length. 
 
 Ingersoll. "The old argument that if Christian- 
 ity is a human fabrication its authors must have 
 been either good men or bad men, takes it for 
 granted there are but two classes of persons the 
 good and the bad. There is at least one other 
 class the mistaken, and both of the other classes 
 may belong to this. Thousands of most excellent 
 people have been deceived, and the history of the 
 world is filled with instances where men have
 
 124 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 honestly supposed that they had received communi- 
 cations from angels and gods. 
 
 "In thousands of instances these pretended com- 
 munications contained the purest and highest thots, 
 together with the most important truths ; yet it will 
 not do to say that these accounts are true; neither 
 can they be proved by saying that the men who 
 claimed to be inspired were good. What we must 
 say is, that, being good men, they were mistaken; 
 and it is the charitable mantle of a mistake that 1 
 throw over Mr. Black, when I find him defend- 
 ing the institution of slavery. He seems to think 
 it utterly incredible that any 'combination of 
 knaves, however base, would fraudulently concoct 
 a religious system to denounce themselves, and to 
 invoke the curse of God upon their own conduct.' 
 How did religions other than Christianity and 
 Judaism arise ? Were they all 'concocted by a com- 
 bination of knaves'? The religion of Gautama is 
 filled with most tender and beautiful thots, with 
 most excellent laws, and hundreds of sentences 
 urging mankind to deeds of love and self-denial. 
 Was Gautama inspired? 
 
 "Does not Mr. Black know that thousands of 
 people charged with witchcraft actually confessed 
 in open court their guilt? Does he not know that 
 they admitted that they had spoken face to face 
 with Satan, and had sold their souls for gold and
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 125 
 
 power? Does he not know that these admissions 
 were made in the presence and expectation of 
 death ? Does he not know that hundreds of judges, 
 some of them as great as the late lamented Gib- 
 son, believed in the existence of an impossible 
 crime ?" 
 
 Lambert. "Then you must belong to this newly 
 invented class. The mistaken must be either good 
 or bad. If they are honestly mistaken they are 
 good, as far as the subject of the mistake goes; 
 if they are dishonestly mistaken they are bad. Don't 
 you see we must come back to the two classes which 
 'the old argument takes for granted'?" 
 
 Comment. We can very well see that men may 
 believe what is not true; in that case they might 
 be said to be honestly mistaken; but as for being 
 dishonestly mistaken I do not see how that could 
 be, for he is not mistaken unless he believes a 
 mistake, and how could there be anything dishonest 
 about that ? Mr. Lambert does not bring his powers 
 as a definer to bear on this word dishonestly, as 
 qualifying mistaken, tho it seems really perplex- 
 ing. 
 
 But if there were really only the two classes 
 after all, as he says, he does not show how that 
 would prove that Christianity is not a human fab- 
 rication. 
 
 Lambert. "How do you know that they honest-
 
 126 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 ly supposed" [that they had received communica- 
 tions from angels and gods] ? "From the nature of 
 the case you take their word for it, so it is their 
 claim that must be examined. History is full of 
 these instances and is full of instances where they 
 were rejected for want of sufficient evidence." 
 (About good men tho mistaken.) "Then you know 
 more about events that transpired nearly two thou- 
 sand years ago than those who were eye-witnesses 
 of them ! Whatever else a modern Infidel may lack, 
 he is never found wanting in assurance. It is his 
 strong point." 
 
 Comment. As assurance is here ascribed to the 
 modern Infidel it is supposed to be used in the 
 sense of impudence. In the same sense it may 
 be more correctly applied to the following explana- 
 tion, for it assumes as proved the things which 
 are questioned or denied. 
 
 He says apostles in these comments. It is com- 
 mon to say apostles and their successors, meaning 
 priests, but it does not so appear in this place ; this 
 book is written to please all of the opponents of 
 Rationalism. He proceeds on the assumption that 
 the divine mission of the apostles was proved by 
 miracles, which reliable witnesses saw with their 
 own eyes and heard with their own ears. If argu- 
 ment consisted in repeating an assertion instead of
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 127 
 
 trying to give reasons for sustaining it, what a 
 fine debater Mr. Lambert might be! 
 
 Lambert. Because there are fanatics and in- 
 sane men it does not prove that sane men have not 
 had commissions from God; a false prophet does 
 not prevent the possibility of a true one, and a 
 counterfeit note does not destroy the value of a 
 genuine one ; there are many presidents and queens 
 in the insane asylums, which does not vitiate the 
 real title. "Does the delusion of a Guiteau des- 
 troy the claims of a St. Paul or Moses to a divine 
 commission? Yet this is the assumption and drift 
 of your argument against the mission of the 
 apostles ! Your reasoning, stated in form, is this : 
 
 "Some men have been mistaken. 
 
 "Therefore the founders of Christianity were 
 mistaken. 
 
 "A boy who could reason no better than this 
 ought to have his ears boxed if boxes large 
 enough could be found." 
 
 Comment. But the boy who reasons thus is not 
 Mr. Ingersoll; it is Mr. Lambert. It is quite dif- 
 ferent from Mr. Ingersoll's reasoning. Let us con- 
 sider this last specimen of Mr. Lambert's reason- 
 ing. The believers in other religions are not in 
 insane asylums, any more than Christians; their 
 prophets are not Guiteaus; one note is not genu- 
 ine because another is counterfeit; if inspected, it
 
 128 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 must stand the test or be rejected; if one holds a 
 note he believes to be good he should be willing to 
 submit it to examination. If he refuses to allow 
 it to be compared with other notes we naturally 
 suppose he is not sure it is good, but wishes it to 
 pass anyhow. 
 
 AUTHENTICITY OF THE GOSPELS- 
 MIRACLES. 
 
 In view of the great advance in knowledge of 
 the Bible it hardly seems worth while to take time 
 in noting the pages on the authenticity of the Gos- 
 pels. This is not written to support or refute any 
 opinions respecting the Gospels, but to show Mr. 
 Lambert's plan of campaign, especially his treat- 
 ment of the man he opposes. 
 
 I see he discusses the subject as if such a thing 
 as higher and lower criticism had never been heard 
 of; and as if nothing had been written for a cen- 
 tury or two by those who have made a study of 
 the Bible beyond simply quoting texts. He writes 
 as if his authoritative statements had never been 
 disputed; indeed he says, "There can be no rea- 
 sonable doubt whatever that Matthew, Mark, Luke 
 and John wrote the gospels attributed to them. 
 Your statement to the contrary has not a particle 
 of evidence to rest on." "It is a remarkable fact
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 129 
 
 that the authenticity or genuineness of the Gospels 
 was never brot in question until modern times, and 
 then only by a few Infidels; and even these confine 
 themselves to bold, naked, groundless statements." 
 
 In reference to Mr. Ingersoll's question to Mr. 
 Black, "How is this known?" (Mr. Black had said 
 nothing had ever been said against the personal 
 honesty of the evangelists) he supposes the case of 
 some one of Ingersoll's friends praising his per- 
 sonal honesty, when some one asks, "How is this 
 known?" He goes on in this surprising strain: 
 
 Lambert. "What would you think of the man 
 who would reply by saying: 'How is this known?' 
 You would say he was a coward and a contemptible 
 sneak, with the heart of an assassin without his 
 courage. Is not your honesty and virtue to be 
 taken for granted until there is evidence to the 
 contrary? Is not that man a criminal who at- 
 tempts to rob you of your character by hints or 
 winks or insinuating questions ?" 
 
 Comment. Do you think anything could be more 
 astounding than this description of his own man- 
 ner of defaming a character that he must know 
 cannot be truthfully assailed? and written in his 
 own style, too ! But the wonder of it is surpassed 
 by the next sentence: "Christianity teaches that he 
 is, whatever you may think, with your code of 
 morals." (!)
 
 130 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 After quoting from some Pagan philosophers as 
 to miracles, he says: 
 
 Lambert. "Now, Mr. Ingersoll, do not all these 
 attempts of ancient philosophers to belittle and ex- 
 plain away the works of Jesus Christ prove that 
 these works were real that they were known and 
 admitted? These men knew the facts better than 
 you do, and instead of denying them as you do, 
 they tried to make little of them or explain them 
 away." 
 
 Comment. The citations simply show that the 
 Pagans claimed for their great men, Aristeus, 
 Pythagoras, Appollonius, greater miracle-working 
 powers than the Christians claimed for Jesus. 
 Claims for workers of miracles were common in 
 those days. 
 
 He takes up miracles again in chapter xxvii. For 
 the sake of convenience we will take two of his 
 texts together, and his comments in the same way. 
 
 Ingersoll. "How it is known that it was claimed 
 during the life of Christ that he had wrot a 
 miracle? and if the claim was made, how is it known 
 that it was not denied?" 
 
 Lambert. "It is known from four histories, writ- 
 ten by four well-known historians : Matthew, Mark, 
 Luke and John. These histories relate that the 
 Jews accused Jesus of working miracles by the 
 power of Beelzebub, and Jesus argued with them
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERTS NOTES. 13! 
 
 to prove that he did not." "There is contemporary 
 evidence that the claim was made and admitted, 
 and there is no evidence whatever that it was ever 
 denied. On the contrary, all history takes these 
 miracles as facts that have been passed upon as 
 no longer legitimate subjects of dispute. 
 
 "As you have adduced no ancient historian who 
 denies the miracles of Christ, it must be taken for 
 granted that there is none. If there was a single 
 line of Jew or Pagan denying these miracles, you 
 Infidels would hammer on it as persistently as the 
 gentlemanly waiter hammers on the Chinese gong 
 at the railroad depot twenty minutes for refresh- 
 ments. Failing to find any evidence of this kind, 
 what do you do ? It is almost incredible, but never- 
 theless true; you actually call on Christians to 
 prove that no such evidence ever existed! You 
 say how is it known that it was not denied? The 
 devil himself, in the highest flights of his genius, 
 never surpassed this piece of supreme imperti- 
 nence." Further, Mr. Ingersoll is a lawyer and 
 should know something of legal logic at least; 
 suppose the prosecution in the star route case, not 
 finding any evidence of guilt, should say, "How do 
 you know that such evidence does not exist?" 
 
 Comment. But Ingersoll did give many things 
 to prove that it had been disbelieved by some in 
 the time of the life of Jesus, and pointed out the
 
 132 VIEW OF LAMBERTS NOTES. 
 
 absence of any proof from contemporary history. 
 He showed how such claims might be made at the 
 time the accounts were written without exciting any 
 comment, when but few people could write, and a 
 manuscript did not, in any modern sense, become 
 public. Besides all the reasons given, it seems to 
 me enough to recall the fact that Eusebius admitted 
 that he kept only what favored the church, and 
 suppressed whatever he considered against it; and, 
 that manuscripts and books that were suspected of 
 being against the faith, or of doubtful use as to 
 the benefit of the church, were burned. 
 
 Lambert himself says, in answer to "Did the 
 Jews believe that Christ was clothed with miracu- 
 lous power?" "They did. And they believed that 
 their prophets were also clothed with miraculous 
 poiver, even that of raising the dead (italics mine), 
 and this was the reason why the miracles of Christ 
 did not convince them that he was God, or the 
 Messiah." 
 
 Mr. Lacy, in his answer to the "Notes," says a 
 good deal about miracles which is all very good, but 
 too long to quote in full here. Mentioning some mir- 
 acles, he says (page 136) : "Should we accept such 
 statements on the same kind and amount of evi- 
 dence as we do the reign of a monarch, the history 
 of a battle, or the constitution of a state? No, for 
 there is an antecedent improbability that such
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 133 
 
 things ever happened. They contradict human 
 experience. They imply the intervention of a force 
 unknown either to science or philosophy. Not only 
 so, but we find them wedded to superstitions 
 which the educated world has long ago discarded." 
 And on page 138: "Before we can credit miracles 
 we must insist on the most indubitable proof not 
 such as may suffice in a question of a common 
 historical or everyday fact, but such as disinterest- 
 ed, educated and unbiased minds would deem suf- 
 ficient." "But were the accounts of miracles given 
 us by the evangelists strictly contemporary with 
 the events they record ? Or, was the present canon 
 of Scripture accepted and the books therein con- 
 tained unquestioned as to genuineness and inspira- 
 tion in the infancy of the church ? I love to quote 
 Catholic authority; it is often so charming in its 
 explicitness. Bishop (afterwards Archbishop) Pur- 
 cell, in his debate with Campbell (p. 130), says: 
 'You did not see the miracles ; the books that record 
 them were written long after they occurred, and 
 many of the most important portions of this very 
 book were doubted for upwards of three hundred 
 years after Christ, even by Luther himself, in the 
 enlightened sixteenth century! His [Campbell's] 
 author, Du Pin, says there were abundance of 
 false gospels, false epistles, false Acts, in the early 
 ages. How then, according to his [Campbell's]
 
 134 VIEW OF LAMBERTS NOTES. 
 
 principles, can we be sure of the authenticity of a 
 single book of the Old or the New Testament, being 
 we have no vouchers for the truth but the testimony 
 of men? Here are chasms to be bridged, and 
 links in the chain of scriptural testimony to be 
 welded, for full three hundred years, aye, sixteen 
 hundred years before the various books of the 
 Scriptures were collected together. 
 
 "But have we a divine sanction, or other proof, 
 to show that Jesus ever authorized anyone to write 
 a history of his acts and sayings? Let Catholic 
 authority answer. See 'The Bible Question,' by the 
 great and good Fenelon, Fletcher's notes, p. 48: 
 'Our Divine Redeemer wrote nothing; he only 
 preached. But did he not command his apostles 
 to write? Of this or of such command there is 
 no testimony in the Bible. So that thus there is no 
 proof, in the sacred book itself, that any written 
 word has ever been appointed by Jesus Christ him- 
 self to be the rule of our belief.' Again, p. 57: 
 'The Bible neither proclaims its own inspiration, 
 nor can the sacred article be proved by any testi- 
 mony of the Bible.' In the same work (p. 57) 
 are quoted approvingly the words of 'the excellent 
 and learned Hooker,' as he is there called: 'But it 
 is not the word of God, which doeth and can assure 
 us that we do well to think it is his word' " (pages 
 139-140).
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 135 
 
 Comment. Mr. Purcell's argument was in refu- 
 tation of Protestants, instead of trying to please 
 them and get their aid in working against free in- 
 quiry; Mr. Lambert keeps everything offensive to 
 them for some other time. Everything is sweet and 
 smooth for them thruout the "Notes." 
 
 Ing er soil. "Is it not strange that the ones he 
 had cured were not his disciples ?" 
 
 Lambert. "It would be strange if true ; but how 
 do you happen to know they were not? Is it not 
 strange that you should know more about those 
 who were cured than history knows? Where did 
 you get your information? How do you know that 
 the son of the widow of Nain was not a disciple 
 of Christ? or Lazarus, or the deaf, the blind and 
 the lame? You simply know nothing whatever 
 about it. And yet with your Infidel brass you say 
 they were not." 
 
 Comment. It is usual to speak of the twelve as 
 the disciples; it is used in the Bible in that way; 
 the concordance says disciples where the body of 
 the book says twelve disciples. The disciples of 
 John are mentioned, and if the word simply meant 
 followers in general, the word disciples would not 
 be used, for they would all be the followers of 
 Jesus. In the subject index references are given 
 where the meaning was followers in general, but 
 the word disciples was not used in the text. The
 
 136 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 word is often used now to mean learners or fol- 
 lowers, but if we are speaking of the Gospels the 
 twelve would be understood. 
 
 Ingersoll. "Can we believe, upon the testimony 
 of those about whose character we know nothing, 
 that Lazarus was raised from the dead? What 
 became of Lazarus? We never hear of him again. 
 It seems to me he would have been an object of 
 great interest. People would have said, 'He is the 
 man who was once dead.' Thousands would have 
 inquired of him about the other world ; would have 
 asked him where he was when he received the in- 
 formation that he was wanted on the earth. His 
 experience would have been vastly more interest- 
 ing than everything else in the New Testament. 
 A returned traveler from the shores of Eternity 
 one who had walked twice thru the valley of the 
 shadow would have been the most interesting of 
 human beings. When he came to die again people 
 would have said : 'He is not afraid ; he has had ex- 
 perience; he knows what death is.' But, strangely 
 enough, this Lazarus fades into obscurity, with 'the 
 Wise Men of the East' and with the dead who came 
 out of their graves the night of the crucifixion." 
 
 Lambert. (In answer to "Can we believe . . . 
 that Lazarus was raised from the dead?") 
 "Yes, we can and must as we believe all facts of 
 history," enumerating a number of events ; he ends
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 the paragraph, "The principle that destroys the 
 credibility of the Gospel histories destroys at the 
 same time the credibility of all history and the cred- 
 ibility of the human race." 
 
 [The rest of the chapter is given entire for 
 readers should be acquainted with the Lambertian 
 quibbles.] 
 
 IngersolL What became of Lazarus? 
 
 Lambert. It is probable that he lived an honest 
 life and did not spend his time asking foolish ques- 
 tions. 
 
 IngersolL We never hear of him again. 
 
 Lambert. The world has not ceased to hear of 
 him to good purpose for the last nineteen hundred 
 years. 
 
 IngersolL It seems to me he would have been an 
 object of great interest. 
 
 Lambert. So it has proved, altho he was not 
 the first man who was raised from the dead, as 
 we learn from the Old Testament. 
 
 Comment. No one can fail to understand that 
 the disappearance of Lazarus from the Bible story 
 is meant; the most stupid could never imagine that 
 people of the present day do not hear of him; but 
 the dodging expedient of the priest had to be again 
 brot into requisition.
 
 138 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 JOSEPHUS INSPIRED WITNESSES. 
 
 Ingersoll. "The paragraph in Josephus is admit- 
 ted to be an interpolation." 
 
 Lambert. "Admitted by whom? By you and 
 Paine and Voltaire, and other Infidels, Tooley 
 Street tailors." 
 
 Comment. Wondering who were the Tooley 
 Street tailors, looking in the dictionary of noted 
 names of fiction, etc., and not finding them, the 
 next thing in trying to get on their track is to 
 look up printed authorities to find what those au- 
 thorities say about others who admit the interpola- 
 tion. Those accessible to me and references to 
 others show many names that do not seem to point 
 to any people who could be compared to Tooley 
 Street tailors, whatever they may be. Christian 
 writers see the improbability if not the impossi- 
 bility of the truth of the passage. But I see noth- 
 ing suggestive of any kind of tailors. 
 
 Mr. Lambert. "Eusebius was the first to quote 
 this passage, and it is morally impossible that he 
 could have forged it without being detected." 
 
 Comment. Besides his being the first to use it, 
 his admission of unpardonable faults as a historian 
 would direct suspicion to him as the originator. 
 
 Ingersoll. "Are the statements of the inspired 
 witnesses alike on this point?" [The ascension of 
 Jesus.]
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 139 
 
 Lambert. "Yes. But your opponent does not say 
 inspired witnesses. Christians do not teach that the 
 apostles were inspired witnesses of the events they 
 narrate. It does not require inspiration to witness 
 a fact. This is an illustration of your art in chang- 
 ing words to introduce into the question false 
 ideas. The apostles witnessed the events in the 
 life of Christ, as others witnessed them. But un- 
 like others, they were inspired to give a narration 
 of the events they witnessed. You are fond of 
 words of double meaning. They give room for 
 sophistry. A witness may mean one who has seen 
 an event take place, or it may mean one who gives 
 testimony of what he has seen. The evangelists 
 were the inspired narrators of what they witnessed. 
 I mention this merely to show how carefully you 
 have to be watched. The statements, then, of the 
 inspired witnesses, are alike on the ascension." 
 
 Comment. Witnesses testify to what they know ; 
 these witnesses testified in the books called the 
 gospels; as the gospels are spoken of as inspired 
 the writers would be called inspired witnesses 
 inspired testifiers. As Mr. Black spoke of these 
 witnesses as inspired and Mr. Ingersoll in his an- 
 swer used the words in the same way, I do not 
 see how Mr. Lambert could properly charge him 
 with changing words to introduce false ideas. If he 
 sees any false ideas let him point them out. Let
 
 140 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 him point out the double meaning and the sophis- 
 try. This wordy critic seems to find some bad 
 meaning suggested, but not expressed. If there is 
 really something bad in his mind let him speak 
 out and show, if he can, that it is not indigenous. 
 What is the use of his boasting that he is watch- 
 ing, if he brings nothing to light? He abounds in 
 hints that he has seen something. Why does he not 
 say what? He stands high as a caviller, and pre- 
 eminent in unmeaning innuendo. 
 
 Ingcrsoll. "Matthew says nothing on the sub- 
 ject" [the ascension of Jesus], " . . .To this won- 
 der of wonders Mark devotes one verse: 'So then, 
 after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was re- 
 ceived up into heaven and sat at the right hand 
 of God.' Can we believe that this verse was writ- 
 ten by one who witnessed the ascension of Jesus 
 Christ; by one who watched his Master slowly ris- 
 ing thru the air till distance reft him from his tear- 
 ful sight? Luke, another of the witnesses, says: 
 'And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was 
 parted from them, and was carried up to heaven.' 
 John corroborates Matthew by saying nothing on 
 the subject. Now we find that the last chapter of 
 Mark, after the eighth verse, is an interpolation, 
 so that Mark really says nothing about the occur- 
 rence. Either the ascension of Christ must be 
 given up, or it must be admitted that the witnesses
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 14! 
 
 do not agree, and that three of them never heard of 
 that most stupendous event." 
 
 Lambert, "Your opponent said the statements 
 made by the evangelists were alike, etc. He said 
 nothing of statements not made by this or that 
 evangelist. Matthew's history ends with the resur- 
 rection and commission of the apostles, and does 
 not extend to the ascension." 
 
 Comment. Each of the Gospels is looked upon 
 as a biography a story, or history of Jesus. Their 
 stories may be called statements. Among Webster's 
 definitions of the word appears: "a narrative"; "a 
 recital" ; and of narrative : "the recital of a story, 
 or a continued account of the particulars of an 
 event or transaction ; story." Of recital definitions 
 we have, "a telling of the particulars of anything, 
 as of a law, or an adventure, or of a series of 
 events; narration." If an important circumstance 
 is left out of a gospel, the natural inference is that 
 the author never heard of it, or disbelieved it. 
 When Luke tells of the ascension and Matthew 
 says nothing about it, their statements do not agree. 
 
 Of the one verse in Mark concerning it, Mr. 
 Lambert writes : "Is not one verse sufficient to state 
 an important fact? You, no doubt, would have 
 devoted many words to this fact, but that was not 
 Mark's style he was not a romancer. The differ- 
 ence between him and you is this : He was inspired
 
 142 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 to write the truth, while you are not at least your 
 writings give no evidence of it." 
 
 Comment. Here is another accusation of untruth 
 without any excuse for dragging it in. 
 
 He quotes Luke's statement and says: "Well, 
 is not this statement and that of Mark alike?" 
 taking no notice in this place of the reason why 
 Mark did not count. He seems to want the state- 
 ment that they are alike to stand prominent. Fur- 
 ther along he says we do not find it an interpola- 
 tion, "and when you say you have found it, you 
 simply take a dishonest advantage of your igno- 
 rant admirers. That they deserve no better treat- 
 ment at your hands is no excuse for you." He says 
 the words are found in almost all the ancient 
 manuscripts; the most ancient of the fathers ad- 
 mit them; all the oldest Latin, Syriac and Arabic 
 copies have them. They must, therefore, be con- 
 sidered genuine until we have some better reason 
 for rejecting them than your "we find." 
 
 I notice that he says they "are found in almost 
 all of the ancient manuscripts." He does not say 
 anything about the most ancient, which sustains the 
 charge of interpolation. The Revised Version has 
 this on the margin: "The two oldest Greek manu- 
 scripts, and some other authorities, omit from verse 
 9 to the end. Some other authorities have a dif- 
 ferent ending to the Gospel."
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 143 
 
 Lambert. "The ascension of Christ will not be 
 given up. It should never have been believed if 
 it could be overthrown by the silly trash which you 
 advance as arguments. The evidence of the three 
 evangelists whom I have quoted do agree, and no 
 man of sense and unbiased judgment will pretend 
 to the contrary . . . There are only four evangel- 
 ists. Three of them speak of the ascension . . . 
 now where do you find your other three who never 
 heard of it? But you contradict yourself. Ac- 
 cording to your reasoning only one of the evangel- 
 ists mentions the ascension, the rest are silent or 
 never heard of the stupendous event. Now if only 
 one of four witnesses speaks, how can they contra- 
 dict each other? There is such a thing as being 
 too smart." 
 
 Comment. If he had shown that silly trash had 
 been advanced as argument there would have been 
 no necessity for this invective, and giving evidence 
 of a thing is much more effective with thinking 
 people than the use of opprobrious epithets so 
 habitual with this writer. Anyone reading what 
 Ingersoll wrote about it finds that he says Mat- 
 thew and John say nothing on the subject; that the 
 last chapter of Mark, where it was mentioned, has 
 been found to be interpolated, and Luke is the 
 only one mentioning it. The agreement of the 
 Gospels on this subject stands disproved,
 
 144 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 The author of the "Notes" quotes John iii, 13. 
 This is not given in the subject index of the Ox- 
 ford Sunday School Edition in "Ascension of 
 Christ." It is in the concordance "No man hath 
 ascended." I do not find it in Young's Concor- 
 dance as "The Ascension." It is, "And no man 
 hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came 
 down from heaven, even the Son of man which is 
 in heaven." As Jesus says that to Nicodemus in 
 the first part of his public life, or his ministry, 
 I do not see how that could prove what is called 
 the ascension. Had no one else ascended? "And 
 Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven" (2 
 Kings ii, n). 
 
 Ingersoll. "Again, if anything could have left its 
 form and pressure on the brain, it must have been 
 the last words of Jesus Christ. The last words, 
 according to Matthew, are: 'Go ye, therefore, and 
 teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of 
 the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost ; 
 teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I 
 have commanded you; and lo, I am with you al- 
 ways, even unto the end of the world.' The last 
 words, according to the inspired witness known 
 as Mark, are: 'And these signs shall follow them 
 that believe ; in my name shall they cast out devils ; 
 they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take 
 up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing,
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 145 
 
 it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the 
 sick and they shall recover.' Luke tells us that 
 the last words uttered by Christ, with the excep- 
 tion of the blessing, were : 'And behold, I send forth 
 the promise of my father upon you; but tarry ye 
 in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with 
 power from on high.' The last words, according to 
 John, were: Teter, seeing Him, saith to Jesus, 
 Lord, and what shall this man do? Jesus saith 
 unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what 
 is that to thee? Follow thou me.' 
 
 "An account of the ascension is also given in the 
 Acts of the Apostles ; and the last words of Christ, 
 according to that inspired witness, are: 'But ye 
 shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is 
 come upon you ; and ye shall be witnesses unto me, 
 both in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and in Samaria, 
 and unto the uttermost part of the earth.' In this 
 account of the ascension we find that two men 
 stood by the disciples, in white apparel, and asked 
 them, 'Ye men of Galilee, why stand you gazing 
 up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken 
 up from you into heaven, shall so come in like 
 manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.' Mat- 
 thew says nothing of the two men. Mark never 
 saw them. Luke may have forgotten them when 
 writing his Gospel, and John may have regarded 
 them as optical illusions."
 
 146 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 Lambert. "Now these are not the last words of 
 Christ according to Matthew, and Matthew does 
 not say they were the last words. Why do you in- 
 terpolate into the gospel of Matthew a statement 
 he never made? Is it thru stupidity, or ignorance, 
 or a desire to deceive? You must excuse me, but 
 I must talk according to the facts; your statement 
 is absolutely false. Matthew does not pretend to 
 give the last words of Christ. The words, 'Go ye/ 
 etc., are simply the last words reported by Mat- 
 thew." 
 
 "What I have said above in reference to the 
 last words of Matthew are equally applicable here. 
 St. Mark does not report these words as the last 
 utterance of Christ. They are simply the last 
 words he (Mark) reports. You can be excused 
 from bad faith here only at the expense of your 
 intelligence." 
 
 "Luke tells us nothing of the kind; and it is 
 hard to believe that you did not know you were 
 misrepresenting Luke when you said so. You must 
 have an unlimited faith in the credulity of this 
 age, or the bottomless ignorance of the class to 
 which you appeal, when you make such a statement. 
 It is not at all surprising that great and learned 
 Christian theologians do not care to meet you. 
 The reason of their silence is evident to men of 
 sense. It is not their duty or business to turn aside
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 147 
 
 to meet every blatant blasphemer who wags his 
 tongue against Christianity for dollars, under the 
 pretense of being a philosopher. They decline to 
 talk with you about theology on the same principle 
 that a Taney, a Marshall, or an Evarts would de- 
 cline to discuss Common Law or the Code Jus- 
 tinian with a mountebank." 
 
 "It is needless to tell the reader, after what I 
 have said in reference to your falsification of the 
 other evangelists, that your assertion as to what 
 St. John says is utterly false and without a shadow 
 of foundation. You are squandering your repu- 
 tation too cheaply." 
 
 "This" (in the Acts) "is equally as false as what 
 you have said about the gospels." 
 
 Comment. Was there ever such a collection of 
 foolish denials, framed in such abusive language? 
 Insults are never defensible, and the denials are 
 based on a pretense. I have copied all there is in 
 the "Notes" about the last words of Jesus. If he had 
 been desirous of stating his argument without any 
 personalities he could have given the whole of it 
 in one sentence, thus: The last words of Jesus 
 given in the Bible are not his last words, but the 
 last words that were reported. 
 
 But, in a circumstantial account of the life and 
 death of the subject of any written work the last 
 words reported are, of course, the last words.
 
 148 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 Ingersoll. "Luke testifies that Christ ascended 
 on the very day of his resurrection." 
 
 Lambert. "Luke nowhere testifies that Christ 
 ascended on the very day of his resurrection. On 
 the contrary, he tells us in his Acts of the Apostles 
 that 'He (Christ) showed himself alive after his 
 passion, by many proofs, for forty days appearing 
 to them and speaking of the kingdom of God' 
 (1-3). Here Luke testifies explicitly as to the time 
 of the ascension, whereas in his Gospel he signifies 
 no time." Quoting Ingersoll, "These depositions 
 do not agree," he says: "It is your travesty of 
 them that does not agree." 
 
 Comment. I will give Ingersoll's whole para- 
 graph, and then show that he was right about Luke. 
 
 Ingersoll. "Luke testifies that Christ ascended 
 on the very day of his resurrection. John deposes 
 that eight days after the resurrection Christ ap- 
 peared to the disciples and convinced Thomas. In 
 the Acts we are told that Christ remained on earth 
 for forty days after his resurrection. These 'dep- 
 ositions' do not agree. Neither do Matthew and 
 Luke agree in their histories of the infancy of 
 Christ. It is impossible for both to be true. One of 
 these 'witnesses' must have been mistaken." 
 
 Comment. Mr. Lambert says that in his gospel 
 Luke specifies no time of the ascension. As far 
 as I have ever found out, Christians agree that
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 149 
 
 Jesus rose on the first day of the week. That day 
 the women found his body was missing and re- 
 ported. Peter went to the sepulchre; two of them 
 went that same day, etc., met Jesus, talked with 
 him, saw him vanish out of sight, and that same 
 hour returned to Jerusalem, told what they had 
 seen when Jesus stood in the midst of them . . . 
 blessed them, was parted from them and carried 
 up to heaven. 
 
 THE GENEALOGIES OF JESUS. 
 
 Ingersoll. "Two of the witnesses, Matthew and 
 Luke, give the genealogy of Christ. Matthew says 
 that there were forty-two generations from Abra- 
 ham to Christ. Luke insists that there were forty- 
 two from Christ to David, while Matthew gives 
 the number as twenty-eight. It may be said that 
 this is an old objection. An objection remains 
 young until it has been answered. Is it not won- 
 derful that Luke and Matthew do not agree on a 
 single name of Christ's ancestors for thirty-seven 
 generations ?" 
 
 Comment. Mr. Lambert's argument is here 
 given in full without interrupting it with his two 
 quotations of the above argument of IngersolL 
 Please do not fail to read the whole of it. 
 
 Lambert. "It is indeed an old objection, and ia
 
 150 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 this it is like all the objections you have made. 
 They are all, thus far, merely the old, oft-repeated 
 and oft-answered ones varnished and revamped 
 into modern parlance. They lose some of their 
 force in the translation, but what they lose that way 
 is made up by flippancy and verbal flummery. 
 
 "Your objection is that Matthew and Luke con- 
 tradict each other in the number of generations. 
 Generation has two meanings. It means first, the 
 actual number of persons in direct line, as father, 
 son, grandson, great-grandson, etc. Generation in 
 this sense gives us no measure of time, since every 
 individual in the above series may have lived from 
 twenty to twenty-five hundred years or more. This 
 kind of generation is therefore of no use whatever 
 in calculating time or historical epochs. It is too 
 indefinite. It is, however, of use to prove legiti- 
 macy, and the right of inheritance. It is genera- 
 tion in this sense that St. Luke traces, because it is 
 his purpose to show that Christ was of the direct 
 line of the royal family, and that he was the per- 
 son who, if royalty had continued in the family of 
 David, would have legally inherited the throne. 
 Luke was dealing with the question in reference to 
 legitimacy and inheritance, and with no reference 
 to historical times or epochs. 
 
 "The second meaning of generation has reference 
 to time and denotes the average life of man, which
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 151 
 
 at present is supposed to be thirty-three years. As 
 men lived longer in the early history of the race 
 than now, the average life or generation was much 
 longer. Now, Matthew uses the word generation 
 in reference to time to the average duration of 
 life when the prophecies concerning the coming of 
 Christ were written to prove that those prophe- 
 cies were verified. His purpose was to show two 
 things; first, that the time announced by the 
 prophets had been completed at the advent of 
 Christ, and second, to show that Christ was of the 
 royal line of David. Generations of time, then, in 
 the sense used by Matthew, might contain two, 
 three, or four generations of individuals in the 
 sense of Luke. It follows then, that as these two 
 evangelists were writing about two different things 
 they did not contradict each other. Luke spoke 
 of individual life, Matthew of average life. 
 
 "It is wonderful" (that Luke and Matthew do 
 not agree on a single name of Christ's ancestors 
 for thirty-seven generations^ "only to those who 
 are ignorant of the fact that Matthew gives the 
 ancestors of Joseph, while Luke gives the an- 
 cestors of Mary, the Mother of God. Are your an- 
 cestors on your mother's side all Ingersolls? Must 
 your maternal and paternal ancestors necessarily 
 have the same name ? A careful study of Christian
 
 152 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 writers would save you a good deal of ignorant 
 blundering." 
 
 Comment. He says these are old objections and 
 oft answered, but does not say where the answers 
 are to be found, so I looked it up in Paige's Com- 
 mentaries. This author, unlike the author of the 
 "Notes," thinks the objection new, and therefore 
 not entitled to weight. He says he recognizes the dif- 
 ficulty presented by the difference of the two gene- 
 alogies, and thinks the most probable solution is 
 that Matthew gave the genealogy of Joseph, the 
 reputed father of Jesus, while Luke gives that of 
 Mary. "The descent of Jesus from David and 
 Abraham was the great fact to be proved, and this 
 could not be satisfactorily done without distinctly 
 showing that such was the descent of Mary; be- 
 cause both Matthew and Luke distinctly assert 
 that Joseph was not the actual father of Jesus. . . . 
 Whether or not this be the true solution of the dif- 
 ficulty, we need not doubt the substantial accuracy 
 of either genealogy." Going on, he quotes some 
 Barnes, who "very sensibly observes" that early ob- 
 jectors to Christianity did not see anything wrong 
 about the two accounts being so different. He 
 quotes Whitby, who tells what each of the four- 
 teen generations (see Matt, i, 17) did, and adds, 
 "to make the full number of fourteen in each 
 class David and Josiah must be counted twice
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 153 
 
 each ending one class and commencing the next." 
 I see by Mr. Paige's introductions to the commen- 
 taries on Matthew and Luke that both are authen- 
 tic and inspired. The date of publication is 1844. 
 
 Here end the quotations from the Commentary. 
 
 As both of them are Joseph's genealogies, any 
 argument on their reconciliation with truth must 
 be on the ground that the story of the virgin birth 
 of Jesus, as given by both authors, is not true. One 
 is traced back from Joseph and one down to 
 Joseph, and both thru the direct male line, step 
 by step, so Mary could not possibly be brot in. 
 And there could be no difference in the number of 
 ancestors in the direct male line, nor in their names. 
 According to Matthew Joseph's father was Jacob, 
 his grandfather was Matthan, his great-grandfather 
 Eleazar. According to Luke Joseph's father was 
 Heli, his grandfather Matthat, his< great-grand- 
 father Melchi. 
 
 Average and individual life can have nothing to 
 do with it; both accounts are too plain. Besides 
 Mr. Lambert knocks out that explanation with his 
 other one that Luke gives Mary's genealogy 
 tho the Bible says it is Joseph's. 
 
 As the descent in both is thru the male line the 
 "ignorant blundering" charged and the remark 
 about Ingersoll's ancestors on his mother's side 
 being all Ingersolls seem very extraordinary I do 
 not mean in the way of literary merit or courtesy.
 
 154 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 DOCTRINES OF THE GOSPELS LAST 
 WORDS ON THE CROSS. 
 
 Without quoting any of the argument, or state- 
 ment of the doctrines of the four writers of the 
 gospels, Mr. Lambert takes the introductory and 
 the closing sentences of Ingersoll's presen- 
 tation for his texts, and goes on in his 
 usual virulent style, charging untruthfulness three 
 times in a little more than half a page. On the 
 next half page asks Ingersoll if he expects a Chris- 
 tian scholar to stoop to meet him; contradicts with 
 his usual arrogance; says Ingersoll's efforts are a 
 miserable failure, and his case in a very bad way 
 indeed. There is no argument advanced till near 
 the bottom of the page when he denies that the 
 last words reported in Matthew of the last words 
 of Jesus when he was crucified were his last words, 
 and repeats the same assertion in separate para- 
 graphs, in reference to all the other Gospels. 
 
 He charges ignorant and unprincipled misrep- 
 resentation Of the Gospels ; wishes to know by what 
 code of morals, if any, Ingersoll is governed; 
 "Gautama, Confucius, or Koang-Foo-Tzee, Zoro- 
 aster, Lao-Tzsee, Hermes, Trismegistus, Moses and 
 Mohammed all forbid lying in their codes. What 
 code do you follow, anyhow ?" 
 
 He seems to depend on this impressive array of
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 155 
 
 names to call attention from the lack of proof of 
 what he stigmatizes as lying. He does not say the 
 words given are not as they are in the Bible, of 
 course. He gives no reason for thinking the last 
 words reported were not the last words. In two 
 cases they could not fail to be the last. John has 
 the account this way: "He said, It is finished, and 
 he bowed his head and gave up the ghost." In 
 Luke the words are: "... he said, Father, into 
 thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said 
 this, he gave up the ghost." If either of these ac- 
 counts had been given without the other accounts, 
 would there ever have been any question about the 
 last words? 
 
 Matthew and Mark both say there was dark- 
 ness from the sixth to the ninth hour, and at the 
 ninth hour (Mark), about the ninth hour (Mat- 
 thew), Jesus cried with a loud voice, My God, my 
 God, why hast thou forsaken me? Then one ac- 
 count has two, and the other three verses of what 
 others said and did, and "Jesus, when he had cried 
 again with a loud voice yielded up the ghost" (Mat- 
 thew), "and Jesus cried with a loud voice and gave 
 up the ghost" (Mark). 
 
 Ingersoll. "Luke says that Christ said of his 
 murderers: 'Father, forgive them; for they know 
 not what they do.' Matthew, Mark, and John do 
 not record these touching words. John says that
 
 156 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 Christ, on the day of his resurrection, said to his 
 disciples : 'Whose soever sins ye remit, they are re- 
 mitted unto them ; and whose soever sins ye retain, 
 they are retained.' 
 
 "The other disciples do not record this mon- 
 strous passage. They did not hear the abdication 
 of God. They were not present when Christ 
 placed in their hands the keys of heaven and hell, 
 and put a world beneath the feet of priests." 
 
 Lambert. "The other disciples do not record this 
 passage, eh? Matthew was an apostle and a dis- 
 ciple, was he not? Well, Matthew says: Verily, 
 I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall bind on earth 
 shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall 
 loose upon earth shall be loosed in heaven (xxvii, 
 18). And again: I will give unto thee the keys of 
 the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt 
 bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, etc. (xvi, 
 
 19). 
 
 "This is enough to prove you ignorant or dis- 
 honest, and you may take your choice of position. 
 You should not forget that you are not only sacri- 
 ficing your own dignity and veracity, but are sac- 
 rificing and humbling in the dust, so far as one 
 man can do it, the dignity of our common man- 
 hood, by your false, foolish, and reckless state- 
 ments." " 
 
 Comment. The xxvii, 18, must be a misprint, for
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERTS NOTES. 157 
 
 xviii, 18; that and xvi, 19 are as given by Mr. 
 Lambert. He seems to be satisfied that they are 
 the same as the text in John ; he is remarkably easy 
 to satisfy this time, and does not find these texts 
 at all indefinite. But it seems to me that no one 
 would think that whatsoever ye shall bind on earth, 
 etc., meant the same as Whose soever sins ye shall 
 remit, etc., unless his mind had been fixed on the 
 idea that Matthew meant the same as John before 
 he read it. I feel sure if I had read Matthew and 
 not John I should not have thot forgiveness of 
 sins was meant. But the text in John says in plain 
 words that the priests may forgive sins. Matthew 
 xviii, r8, does not seem plain as xviii, 19, does. It 
 is, "Again I say unto you, that if two of you shall 
 agree on earth, as touching anything that they shall 
 ask, it shall be done for them of my father which 
 is in heaven." That is easy. Perhaps too many 
 prayed that Garfield might live ; it should have been 
 arranged for two. Excuse digression. 
 
 Lambert. "When you say, 'They were not pres- 
 ent when he placed in their hands the keys/ etc., 
 you intended to perpetrate one of those side-split- 
 ting jokes which are wont to set your audience in 
 a roar. The idea of their not being present when 
 he placed in their hands the keys, is droll, when we 
 come to think of it. But the subject is very seri- 
 ous, and the joke is out of place. When we want
 
 158 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 to enjoy such things we go to the circus or to the 
 minstrels. But let us return. You say that that 
 commission which Christ gave to the apostles to 
 pardon sinners 'puts a world beneath the feet of 
 priests.' Does the power of pardoning criminals, 
 which is reposed in the hands of the governor, place 
 the people of this State at his feet? Reflect on this 
 for a moment, and you will learn that there is 
 more sound than sense in the observation." 
 
 Comment. This shows that the necessity for say- 
 ing something must have been felt to be very ur- 
 gent indeed. Could anyone be led to believe that 
 Ingersoll used the word hands ignorantly? had 
 not sufficient command of language to give correct- 
 ly the idea he intended? For, of course, no one 
 with his intelligence awake could believe that he 
 would try to make even a good joke (and this is 
 a very poor one indeed), and spoil the effect of a 
 strong argument eloquently expressed. But Mr. In- 
 gersoll's strikingly effective sentence stands. A 
 weak, evasive pretense of an answer can have no 
 effect on it. If it were worth while to describe the 
 author of this specimen of inanity put forth as an 
 answer to Ingersoll, we might turn back a few 
 pages and copy some of the epithets he tries to 
 make readers believe are descriptive of the sub- 
 ject of his diatribe. 
 
 The word hands was quite correct as used by
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 159 
 
 Ingersoll. Common usage justifies it; some of 
 Webster's definitions are: possession, ownership, 
 control. 
 
 Priests, as a means of helping to keep the world 
 beneath their feet, try to prove that everyone should 
 be subject to the Pope because we have a Supreme 
 Court, and also, that the doctrine that they have 
 the power to forgive sins is all right because some 
 governors of states have the pardoning power. The 
 Supreme Court and executives of states are means 
 of protecting people against criminals. The court 
 is for the trial of crimes of what are recognized 
 by all as crimes. The "sins" of sending children 
 to public schools, and of failing to attend mass are 
 not recognized by the laws of states as crimes; if 
 they were they would be judged and punished by 
 authorities instituted by the people. Theological 
 opinions of "sins" differ, and if the State is wise 
 it does not meddle with them, but attends to its 
 own legitimate business. The belief in the power 
 of a priest over the temporal or spiritual affairs of 
 other men; the belief that one man can assume 
 absolute control over another, is very often denied, 
 while all admit that the machinery of the State is 
 for the protection of the rights of the people.
 
 160 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 GOSPELS SALVATION INFIDELS. 
 
 Ingersoll. "It is easy to account for the differ- 
 ences and contradictions in these 'depositions' 
 [Mr. Black had called them depositions] (and 
 there are hundreds of them) by saying that each 
 one told the story as he remembered it, or as he 
 had heard it, or that the accounts have been 
 changed, but it will not do to say that the witnesses 
 were inspired of God. We can account for these 
 contradictions by the infirmities of human nature; 
 but, as I said before, the infirmities of human na- 
 ture cannot be predicated of a divine being." 
 
 Lambert takes the first sentence, leaving out 
 the parenthetic part, says it is easy to account for 
 things by "saying"; "that is the way you account 
 for almost everything," but it does not account for 
 everything. "It has been the misfortune of your 
 theological career that you have placed too much 
 reliance on 'saying* and too little on 'proving.' " 
 
 Comment. Notice, that is entirely aside from the 
 argument, besides being untrue. 
 
 He says no contradictions have been shown ( !) 
 so there is no necessity for accounting for them. 
 "Hence your cunning method of accounting for 
 them by 'saying' is gratuitous, uncalled for and en- 
 tirely inconsistent with Christian principles. Chris- 
 tianity must be defended by straight, true, and cor-
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 161 
 
 rect methods or none. It cannot afford to be de- 
 fended in the spirit in which you attack it. It 
 must not use sophistry, or cunning, or wit, or jokes, 
 or lies. Its platform is truth, and if that ground 
 sinks it must go under with it." 
 
 Comment. This assumption that he uses the 
 straight methods instead of the others which he 
 censures is wonderful, even for him. 
 
 He makes so many references to jokes, which 
 he ascribes to Ingersoll, that I will copy the only 
 anecdote that appears in the whole article, and let 
 all compare it with the frequent sallies of the "Holy 
 Father." 
 
 Ingersoll. "A little while ago, in the city of Chi- 
 cago, a gentleman addressed a number of Sunday 
 school children. In his address he stated that 
 some people were wicked enough to deny the story 
 of the deluge; that he was a traveler; that he had 
 been to the top of Mount Ararat, and had brot with 
 him a stone from that sacred locality. The children 
 were then invjted to form in procession and walk 
 by the pulpit, for the purpose of seeing this won- 
 derful stone. After they had looked at it, the lec- 
 turer said: 'Now, children, if you ever hear any- 
 body deny the story of the deluge, or say that the 
 ark did not rest on Mount Ararat, you can tell 
 them that you know better, because you have seen
 
 162 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 with your own eyes a stone from that very moun- 
 tain.' " 
 
 Comment. This was to illustrate his argument 
 that "All the natural things in the world were not 
 sufficient to establish the supernatural." I wish 
 there were space to give his whole argument con- 
 cerning that point in the debate. The story comes 
 in to show you that it is pertinent to the argument, 
 and that he brings in no personal flouts at Mr. 
 Black. 
 
 Ingersoll. "Why should there be more than one 
 inspired Gospel?" 
 
 Lambert. "The fact that there were four in- 
 spired Gospels written is sufficient evidence that 
 there was reason for four. God does not act with- 
 out reason. But your question shows that you do 
 not understand what is meant by inspiration. An 
 inspired history is not necessarily a complete his- 
 tory. The inspiration has reference to what is said 
 by an inspired writer, and not to what is not said 
 by him." This is the substance of the argument 
 tho he keeps on for two more pages, getting in, 
 by the way, the repetition "while you talk so glibly 
 about inspiration you do not know what it means" 
 the repetition with an added insult. He explains 
 that while one Gospel was written for one set of 
 people, another was written for another set. 
 While they were all inspired while being written
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 163 
 
 they do not all tell everything. He amplifies on 
 what was written for the Jews, what for the Gen- 
 tiles, what for Theophilus, and what (John) to 
 refute heresies. 
 
 Comment. [The thot here arises that none of 
 them were written for Americans of 1908.] 
 
 Ingersoll. "There can be only one true account 
 of anything." 
 
 Lambert. "You confound true with complete 
 and adequate." "They are all true, different, yet 
 not contradictory. The truth of history depends 
 on what it says, not what it does not say . . . 
 You simply confound true with complete and ade- 
 quate. A school boy writing his first composition 
 might be excused for an improper use of adjectives, 
 but a philosopher should be more careful or more 
 honest." 
 
 Comment. No one who reads Ingersoll will be- 
 lieve that he does not perfectly understand the dif- 
 ference between true, complete and adequate, or 
 that he doesn't use words in their proper significa- 
 tion or that he uses words when he lacks ideas. 
 "More honest," like the rest of this person's hap- 
 hazard ammunition, is as ineffectual as tooth 
 powder. 
 
 Ingersoll. "That which is a test of truth as to 
 ordinary witnesses is a demonstration against their 
 inspiration."
 
 164 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 Lambert. "The test of truth in the case of or- 
 dinary witnesses is the fact of their agreement. 
 The fact that the evangelists agree in the state- 
 ments made by them is evidence of their truth, just 
 as in the case of ordinary witnesses. Now, how 
 the evidence of their veracity can be a demonstra- 
 tion against their inspiration is difficult to under- 
 stand. You have said if they disagree they can- 
 not be inspired, and you are right. But you are 
 not satisfied; you now try to prove that if they 
 agree they cannot be inspired. Any remarks of 
 mine on this reasoning of yours would only draw 
 the reader from a contemplation of its sublimity. 
 So we will pass in silence to other points." 
 
 Comment. This confused me for a time, and I 
 began to consider evidences of credibility in ordi- 
 nary and in inspired witnesses to see what Inger- 
 soll meant. But reading the whole paragraph in 
 the Ingersoll-Black discussion cleared away the 
 smoke. His sentence means, in other words, if 
 the same test of truth that is applied to ordinary 
 witnesses is applied to them it will demonstrate 
 that they are not inspired. 
 
 Ingersoll. "My doctrine is that there is only one 
 way to be saved, and that is to act in harmony with 
 your surroundings to live in accordance with the 
 facts of your being." 
 
 Lambert. "Then you have changed your 'doc-
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 165 
 
 trine' considerably since you began your article. 
 Your 'doctrine' in the first part of it was that there 
 is no God, or at least that we cannot know whether 
 there is or not; that a future life was 'invented' 
 by Christians to give God a chance to rectify the 
 mistakes of this. Your 'doctrine' now is that there 
 is one way at least, to be saved it is 'to act in 
 harmony with your surroundings.' Well, your sur- 
 roundings are certainly Christian. If you lived 
 among the Mormons you should be a Mormon; if 
 in Turkey you should have a harem, and sit cross- 
 legged like a tailor; if among Thugs you should 
 be a Thug; if among assassins, an assassin; if 
 among thieves, a thief ! This theory has the advan- 
 tage of being in harmony with the 'elastic cord 
 of human feeling.' " 
 
 Comment. Does an idea on the eternity of the 
 universe preclude the possibility of having one also 
 on the conduct of life? In what possible way 
 can one conflict with the other, even if the first 
 should be called a doctrine, as it is by Mr. Lam- 
 bert? Cannot Mr. Lambert hold the doctrine of 
 atonement without first changing his mind as to the 
 doctrine that unbaptized infants are condemned to 
 eternal darkness ? 
 
 I don't think to act in harmony with surround- 
 ings is meant as Mr. Lambert construes it. A 
 widow has children and she must look to their
 
 i66 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 future well-being. She is in a crowded part of a 
 large city, is poor, but not dependent. Some peo- 
 ple in her neighborhood drink, talk loud, laugh or 
 quarrel thru the first part of the night, often. But 
 that does not govern her life. She must live ac- 
 cording to the circumstances of her own life. She 
 must work, watch her children, read to them, and 
 keep her own mind from rusting. It would not 
 be in harmony with her circumstances to spend her 
 time in gossip, or in mourning her hard lot, or in 
 pretending to be what she is not. She must live 
 in accordance with the facts of her being, not mak- 
 ing useless efforts to accomplish what is not pos- 
 sible, but marking out the best that can be done, 
 and working to that end. The different surround- 
 ings of others and the different facts of their being 
 call for different manner of life to be in harmony 
 with their surroundings, and the facts of their 
 being. 
 
 Mr. Lambert. "But you explain. To live in har- 
 mony with your surroundings is to live 'in accord- 
 ance with the facts of your being.' Good. This 
 is precisely what Christianity demands of us. But 
 what are the facts of our being? There's the rub. 
 This question brings the whole controversy back 
 to the starting point. It is time you should un- 
 derstand that the whole question between you and 
 the Christian, as well as the heathen, the pagan, the
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 167 
 
 barbarian, and the Christian is : What are the facts 
 of our being? This question is the root or founda- 
 tion of all the difference of opinion that ever ex- 
 isted in the world as to man, his duties and his 
 obligations. It is the question that philosophers 
 in all ages have tried in vain to solve, and which 
 the Christian believes unaided reason cannot solve. 
 
 "What am I? Whence came I? Whither am 
 I drifting? Your answer to these questions is: I 
 do not know. Your reply is true, tho no answer. 
 
 "It is a common understanding among men of 
 sense that when a man confesses ignorance of a 
 subject, he should not force himself to the front 
 and confuse investigation by his ignorant, garrulous 
 talk. If he confessedly knows nothing of the sub- 
 ject under investigation, it is incumbent on him, 
 as a man of sense, to hold his tongue. Ignorance 
 is no disgrace where it is not one's own fault, but 
 there is nothing so admirable in an ignorant man 
 as a quiet tongue and an attentive ear; and there 
 is nothing more pitiable and detestable in God's 
 universe than an ignorant man trying to play the 
 role of a teacher of mankind. 
 
 "What are the facts of our being? 
 
 "It is the mission of the true religion to answer 
 this question. And by God's help it has been an- 
 swering it and dinning it into the ears of hu- 
 manity, as it surges by, generation after genera-
 
 i68 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 tion, from the time of Adam down to the year 
 of our Lord 1884, and it will continue to do so un- 
 til the angel of eternity calls the muster roll of 
 time. Voltaires, Frerets, Gibbons, Diderots, Paines 
 and Ingersolls will appear from time to time to 
 curse the moral world, as plagues, small-pox, lep- 
 rosy and insanity have cursed the physical world. 
 But Christianity is destined to survive the one, as 
 the human race survived the other." 
 
 Comment. He says unaided reason cannot solve 
 the question, What are the facts of our being? 
 philosophers have tried vainly thro all the ages to 
 solve it, tho true religion has been answering it 
 since Adam's time. Why does not he tells us the 
 answer? Why have not the philosophers and all 
 the rest of us heard the answer which he says 
 religion has been dinning into our ears? 
 
 In my opinion the above dissertation has been 
 spread out before us with all this pomp and cir- 
 cumstance of words to make us think there is 
 something deep and mysterious under it, while in 
 reality the facts of our being are pretty well un- 
 derstood by all who take the trouble to make their 
 lives worth living. I said those who take the 
 trouble, but they are really the ones who get the 
 greatest joy and satisfaction out of life. Mr. Lam- 
 bert is great on definitions. Suppose we take this
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 169 
 
 for a definition of the facts of your being: What 
 you are< 
 
 What am I? Whence came I? Whither am I 
 drifting? are not Ingersoll's questions. They are 
 the questions people ask when they are leading up 
 to talk of God and immortality. I don't think any- 
 one in thotful seriousness ever asks, whither am 
 I drifting? No worthy person ever drifts. 
 
 INFIDELS ATHEISTS REASON. 
 
 Chapter xx begins with contemptuous jests to 
 the effect that an honest Infidel could not be found ; 
 but if the evangelical pulpit "could be convinced 
 of the 'honesty' of an Infidel, and his decency in 
 other respects, it would check him thru as a vic- 
 tim of defective phrenal development." 
 
 This is the ansiver to, "For the honest Infidel, ac- 
 cording to the American evangelical pulpit, there is 
 no heaven." 
 
 And the following, on, "For the upright Atheist 
 there is nothing in another world but punishment." 
 
 Lambert. "The upright or downright Atheist 
 will no doubt be treated as the upright rebel or 
 traitor is treated by the government whose laws 
 he defies, and whose authority he rejects. Chris- 
 tianity teaches that God loves the honest man, that 
 he will never punish him for his honest convictions ;
 
 170 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 it teaches also that God, who is infinitely wise, 
 knows the difference between an honest man and a 
 loquacious demagogue. Christianity teaches that 
 honesty is an affair of the heart and conscience, 
 and not a matter of word-spinning and gush." 
 
 Comment. When he says Christianity teaches 
 that God loves an honest man he is using the word 
 in the sense in which it is used more and more as 
 belief in its creeds changes or dies. Many drop 
 the beliefs of Christianity, and speak of it as if 
 the word were synonymous with the word good- 
 ness. The beliefs are sustained by many who keep 
 them in the background, or even deny them; these 
 people call goodness Christianity, tho it is really 
 the beliefs they are sustaining under the name of 
 goodness, which they call Christianity. But this 
 priest sustains Catholicism which is the only thing 
 he recognizes as Christianity. When any good 
 qualities are brot up in an argument he sweeps them 
 into his basket, tho they do not belong to him, 
 and he does not carry them home with him, for his 
 Christianity is the real, old-fashioned, deep-dyed 
 Catholic belief. 
 
 One would think he would hesitate to use the 
 expression word-spinning, it so obviously applies 
 to his style, and is so directly opposite to that of 
 Ingersoll.
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 171 
 
 Ingersoll. "Mr. Black admits that lunatics and 
 idiots are in no danger of hell." 
 
 Lambert. "That should be a consolation to many) 
 for we are told that the number of fools is in- 
 finite." 
 
 Ingersoll. "This being so, 'his God should have 
 created only lunatics and idiots." 
 
 Lambert. "He has in his inscrutable ways created 
 more than we poor finite creatures can understand 
 the reason for, and he permits them to play their 
 antics before high heaven to an extent that can 
 be explained only by reference to his infinite pa- 
 tience." 
 
 Comment. Can anyone be found who thinks these 
 sentences are answers? Did this man think when 
 he began to write the "Notes" that he would not 
 attempt argument, but would depend on his readers' 
 being satisfied with cheap wit, chiefly in the form 
 of insults and evasions? To those of us who do 
 not think him an infallible teacher such efforts 
 will not attain their purpose, but as far as we are 
 able to judge of his subjects they must appear to 
 accept whatever he offers, as valuable truth, or 
 keen and convincing retort, whether they really do 
 or not. I presume they generally really do so ac- 
 cept it. 
 
 Notice his thot in the elaborate sentence above: 
 God created lunatics and idiots, and allows them
 
 172 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 to live the kind of life he gave them because he 
 , is patient. No one is expected to ask why he should 
 create unfortunates instead of happy and useful 
 people. 
 
 Notice, also, he disregards the argument entire- 
 ly in his answers. 
 
 Ingersoll. "Why should the fatal gift of brain 
 be given to any human being, if such gift renders 
 him liable to eternal hell?" 
 
 [His comments on this are long, but can be sum- 
 marized because they are given as arguments, and 
 are not personal abuse. Let us mark this to his 
 credit he substitutes argument.] 
 
 Lambert. Reason was given to be used and not 
 abused. [He answers what he calls Ingersoll's 
 theory by these illustrations:] A man should not 
 be deprived of a pistol, razor, or knife because he 
 might harm himself with them ; a man may learn to 
 write tho his knowledge renders him liable to 
 forge; he may have hands tho he should steal or 
 murder with them; you can eat tho you might eat 
 too much; you have a tongue tho you might talk 
 nonsense or commit perjury. "What would you 
 think or say of God if, to free us from all possible 
 danger, he should deprive us of every faculty that 
 may be abused, of everything that constitutes us 
 men everything that makes life worth living?" 
 
 Comment. Men soon learn the right use for
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 173 
 
 knives, etc., and the evil consequences of a bad use 
 of them prevent most people from putting them 
 to a bad use. The argument was concerning the 
 danger of hell. Would it not be better to be de- 
 prived of everything which makes life worth liv- 
 ing, if this short life were followed by an eternity 
 of bliss? What would it profit a man to be fitted 
 to enjoy all the blessings of this life if an eternity 
 of hell might follow? Besides all these things are 
 supposed to be in the power of God, and that he 
 has foreknowledge of everything. Some theo- 
 logians say that he does not foreordain, but he has 
 foreknowledge. It seems to me that foreknowledge 
 vould make foreordination necessary to a good 
 chai acter. 
 
 From Mr. Lambert's argument we infer that God 
 did not deprive idiots and lunatics of brains to save 
 them from hell. He gives no hint of what he thinks 
 God's purpose is. 
 
 What is abuse of the reason? The more reason 
 a man has the more good he can do. A man's 
 learning to write is never going to make him a 
 forger. There is something the matter with the 
 forger's brain. He is a criminal, and he would 
 be one if he did not know how to write. The more 
 reason he has, the less danger of criminality. 
 
 Ingersoll. "Better be an idiot in this world if 
 you can be a seraph in the next."
 
 174 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 Lambert. "Better be an idiot saved than a phil- 
 osopher damned. But fortunately for men of com- 
 mon average sense, there is a middle course. Idiots 
 and philosophers are extremes phenomenal and 
 exceptional. The majority of mankind are neither, 
 while they are sometimes the victims of both." 
 
 Comment. Here we have a new idea : it is better 
 to be half-way idiot; a very good mind is danger- 
 ous. Blessed idiots in heaven; and damned phil- 
 osophers in hell! What a prospect for a future 
 life! 
 
 The only reason one can have for preferring to 
 be an idiot is the theological one. 
 
 I do not see how a person can be a victim of a 
 philosopher. I believe that outside of the church 
 they are thot to be benefactors of the race. We 
 read in Catholic books and hear Catholics say when 
 they have no reason for an argument, "The pride 
 of intellect has lost many a soul and will lose 
 many more." Why should a modest question about 
 the reason for a belief indicate pride of intellect 
 any more than the dogmatic statement of a belief? 
 What is pride of intellect? I never heard the 
 phrase applied to anything but the use of reason 
 on a religious subject. The use of intellect is 
 considered commendable on any other subject.
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 175 
 
 THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 Ingersoll. "For nearly two thousand years Judas 
 Iscariot has been execrated by mankind ; and yet if 
 the doctrine of atonement is true, upon his treach- 
 ery hung the plan of salvation. Suppose Judas 
 had known of this plan known that he was se- 
 lected by Christ for that very purpose, that Christ 
 was depending on him. And suppose that he also 
 knew that only by betraying Christ could he save 
 either himself or others ; what ought Judas to have 
 done? Are you willing to rely upon an argument 
 that justifies the treachery of that wretch?" 
 
 Lambert. "Judas is justly execrated because he 
 was a traitor and gave away his friend. His trea- 
 son has nothing to do with the doctrine of Atone- 
 ment. Judas was a free agent. The plan of sal- 
 vation involved the death of Christ, but not by the 
 treason of Judas. 
 
 "Suppose that he was not selected for this very 
 purpose; that Christ was not depending on him. 
 Where did you learn that Judas was selected for 
 this very purpose, or that Christ depended on him ?" 
 
 Comment. According to the plan, then, how was 
 the sacrifice to be carried thru? Did God provide 
 the victim and leave the rest to chance? but that 
 could not be, for, according to the Bible, every- 
 thing took place according to the plan. It was
 
 176 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 understood by Judas and Jesus. Jesus said he 
 was going to be given up to the authorities by one 
 of the disciples, and when the time came he told 
 Judas to do it quickly and Judas obeyed. 
 
 The Bible does not say whether Judas was in- 
 structed in the whole scheme or not. He might 
 have performed the part set for him, and might 
 have thot Jesus could vanish when arrest seemed 
 imminent, as he had done before. At any rate, it 
 always seemed queer to me to worship the victim 
 of a sacrifice, which was accomplished in a few 
 hours, and forever execrate the memory of the un- 
 fortunate agent or we might include Pilate, and 
 say agents. 
 
 When Judas saw that Jesus did not escape he 
 
 was much distressed and . How did he die? I 
 
 think the account which says he hanged himself is 
 the one preferred by most of those who speak of 
 him. 
 
 "Him" (Jesus) "being delivered by the deter- 
 minate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have 
 taken, and by wicked hands have sacrificed and 
 slain" (Acts ii, 23). 
 
 Altho this text has not before been introduced 
 into this discussion as far as I know, I do not think 
 it irrelevant to the subject of the guilt or inno- 
 cence of Judas. Paige, in his commentaries, says 
 as to "By the determinate counsel and foreknowl-
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 177 
 
 edge of God When God sent his son into the 
 world, nothing pertaining to his mission or its re- 
 sults was a matter of chance or contingency. Every 
 circumstance was clearly and distinctly foreseen, 
 and absolutely determined by the Supreme Ruler. 
 So much is here distinctly affirmed; and any con- 
 trary supposition would be manifestly inconsistent 
 with a just conception of an omniscient and omnip- 
 otent God." There is much more, too long to 
 quote, but the closing sentence is this: "Let no 
 man flatter himself that he is guiltless, because God 
 rules the world; for guilt results from an evil de- 
 sign." (I wish I had more commentaries; they are 
 interesting reading.) 
 
 The above explanation agrees with the Bible ac- 
 count, but I should like to have some one bring 
 about an agreement between the idea that the sac- 
 rifice was all arranged and carried out by God, and 
 yet his agent was a guilty man a contemptible 
 traitor. Ingersoll refers to the "treachery of that 
 wretch," but Ingersoll does not believe the dogma 
 of the atonement. 
 
 Lambert quotes: "And suppose." That stands 
 on one line. On the next line he begins this won- 
 drous comment: "No, sir; we must suppose noth- 
 ing. I want facts and not suppositions and 
 guesses." That is all he says about it. He does 
 not quote the rest of the sentence, which is this:
 
 178 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 "And suppose that he also knew that only by be- 
 traying Christ could he save either himself or 
 others ; what ought Judas to have done ?" 
 
 The first "suppose," which Lambert answers by 
 saying, Suppose he was not a clear evasion was 
 a question of fact. The next "suppose" he an- 
 swers as a word, as if he had just noticed the word 
 for the first time, and calls for facts. While the 
 first one can be answered by statement of the fact 
 of the Bible story (this does not involve the truth 
 of the story), the last one, the one where he calls 
 for facts, involves a religious dogma only. 
 
 Taking up this same dogma as stated by Inger- 
 
 % soll, "Are you willing to rely upon an argument 
 
 that justifies that wretch?" he replies, without 
 
 touching the only real question of the controversy, 
 
 with low abuse of Ingersoll, the man. 
 
 The whole tirade here follows : 
 
 Lambert. "No, I am not, any more than I am 
 ready to rely upon your assertions. Judas was a 
 bad man, but there are worse men living than he. 
 He did not go lecturing about Judea, boasting of 
 his crime, and ridiculing the Christ whom he had 
 betrayed he went and hanged himself. I do not 
 commend his desperate act, because suicide is mur- 
 der, but the fellow showed some respect for the 
 opinions of his fellow men by ridding them of his 
 detestable presence. He loved money, but in this
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 179 
 
 he was not alone. There were no lecture bureaus 
 in those days, and he felt that his career was at 
 an end. Had he known that others would come to 
 continue his work he might have been terrified, and 
 perhaps repented, but not foreseeing this he only 
 hanged himself." 
 
 Comment. It makes no difference to this ma- 
 licious calumniator that Ingersoll did not say one 
 word against Jesus, and that he spoke of him in 
 terms of admiring respect on pages 94 and 102. 
 When a man argues against the inspiration of the 
 Bible, he is accused of ridiculing Jesus. What 
 would that kind of argument be called if it could 
 be engaged in by an Infidel? 
 
 So, Mr. Lambert thinks that the character of 
 Judas is justly execrated, but better than that of 
 Ingersoll, because Judas did not go about boasting 
 of his crime. If Lambert had ever found any 
 boasting in any of the Ingersoll writings it seems 
 certain that he would make no delay in publish- 
 ing his discovery. As for crime, who but a very 
 inferior Catholic priest would make himself ridicu- 
 lous enough to stigmatize the expression of opinion 
 on religion as a crime? 
 
 According to the priest another way in which 
 Judas showed his superiority to Ingersoll was by 
 hanging himself. Altho he pronounces suicide the 
 crime of murder yet he thinks it would have been
 
 180 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NORES. 
 
 more decent for Ingersoll to commit that crime and 
 thus show "some respect for the opinions of his 
 fellow men by ridding them of his detestable pres- 
 ence." 
 
 Here we come upon a whole bushel basketful 
 of delicate, ripe, religious, moral instruction, direct 
 from an infallible teacher. 
 
 Judas's love of money is excused because in hav- 
 ing this fault he is not alone, and in taking the 
 money for the betrayal of Jesus, he had the fur- 
 ther excuse of not knowing that Ingersoll was 
 going to carry on the work with the aid of lec- 
 ture bureaus; if he had known, says Mr. Lambert, 
 "he might have repented, but as it was, he only 
 hanged himself." 
 
 Before getting hold of this Lambert idea we , 
 had been led to believe that it was supposed by 
 the Bible writers to be repentance which caused 
 his suicide; indeed, the account says so. However, 
 another Bible writer gave another version. He 
 said Judas killed himself by falling headlong in the 
 field he had purchased with the price of the be- 
 trayal. 
 
 There is some mistake about that money, for the 
 writer of Matthew said when Judas saw that Jesus 
 was condemned he repented, and took back the 
 money to the chief priests and elders, saying he 
 had betrayed an innocent man. They said, "What
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 181 
 
 is that to us ? See thou to that," whereupon Judas 
 threw down "the pieces of silver in the temple and 
 departed, and went and hanged himself." This 
 account comes before the other one in the order 
 in which the books of the Bible are bound to- 
 gether, which is, perhaps, the reason it is accepted, 
 tho the other one still stands in the book of Acts. 
 
 What do the Catholics and Protestants who have 
 taken this priest by the hand and thanked him for 
 "holding up to the scorn and contempt of man- 
 kind" "this blatant reviler of all revealed truth," 
 this "fraudulent peddler of old Infidel junk" 
 Ingersoll what do they think of his idea that the 
 plan of salvation was not carried out by Judas, 
 but has been carried on by Col. Robert G. Inger- 
 soll some years after the death of Judas? Will 
 they deem it necessary to change hymns like this? 
 "Jesus died upon a tree, That from sin we might 
 be free, And forever happy be, Happy in the Lord. 
 He has paid the debt we owe, If with trusting 
 hearts we go, He will wash us white as snow, In 
 his blood. Then with joy and gladness sing, 
 Worthy is our Savior King. Loudly let his praises 
 ring. Praises ever more." 
 
 I ask pardon for putting this stuff before you, 
 but Protestants thot it good enough to teach my 
 children in the public schools, and it was set to 
 rowdy, dowdy, dowdy, dow music, too.
 
 182 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 Mr. Lambert says he does not rely on an argu- 
 ment that justifies Judas (the atonement). I should 
 think some of the Protestant preachers who were 
 in the long line of those who congratulated him on 
 the "Notes" would take some notice of this abandon- 
 ment of the foundation dogma of the Christian re- 
 ligion. Catholics, too, are supposed to believe it, 
 the cross, the crucifix, and images of the Virgin 
 Mother of God are their chief emblems. It is 
 known, tho, that they insist that people must ac- 
 cept the offices of the church if they are to gain 
 salvation. 
 
 Mr. Lambert did not say particularly what is to 
 be the effect of Inger soil's work, but the logical 
 conclusion is that it is to somehow work for sal- 
 vation under the direction of the priests. 
 
 Ingersoll. "I insisted upon knowing how the 
 sufferings of an innocent man can satisfy justice 
 for the sins of the guilty." 
 
 Lambert's comments are a fair exposition of the 
 Jesuitical mind, trained to dodge an argument be- 
 hind an array of words which they expect, depend- 
 ing on the aid of religious mists, to pass muster as 
 containing sense, tho the beholder sees it only with 
 the eyes of faith. 
 
 It is so long I will give one paragraph, without 
 criticizing his grammar, and summarize the most 
 of the rest.
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOJES. 183 
 
 Lambert. "It would have been wiser to have in- 
 sisted upon knowing the fact than upon knowing 
 the how of it. There are many facts that you 
 know and admit, and yet if you were asked the 
 how of them you could not answer. How do you 
 think? How do you apprehend a thot? How do 
 you know that you are, or that you are Inger- 
 soll? Would it be just to infer that you know 
 nothing because you cannot explain "how" you 
 know? This is precisely what you expect of your 
 opponent. You ask how can the sufferings of the 
 innocent satisfy for the sins of the guilty? Your 
 opponent replies by saying that the answer involves 
 a question of metaphysics. He is, in my opinion, 
 wrong in this, because he confounds the supernat- 
 ural with the metaphysical. These terms are not 
 synonyms. To answer your question he had no 
 need to appeal to metaphysics; in doing so he ap- 
 pealed to the wrong court. His appeal should have 
 been to reason; he should have confined himself to 
 the fact, or the possibility of it, and not to the how 
 of it. We don't know the 'how' of anything; 
 and the philosopher who asks it and expects an 
 adequate answer is nothing better than the end man 
 in a minstrel show. Conundrums are associated 
 with tambourines and burnt cork. Lecturers who 
 make pretensions to philosophy should not infringe 
 on the amusing trade of honest minstrelsy."
 
 184 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 Comment. When the foundation dogma of the 
 Christian religion the atonement is stated, the 
 priest waves it contemptuously away and calls for 
 facts. The how that he pretends is so inexplicable 
 simply means, give reasons for this belief. In place 
 of the five pages of word-spinning (that is a good 
 word when it is used right), it seems to me it would 
 have been much better for him to say, It is above 
 reason, God only knows. 
 
 How he makes out that reasoning is a mere 
 statement of an assumed fact, instead of the "how" 
 of it, an uninspired mortal can never understand. 
 As for his relegating a philosopher who asks the 
 "how" to the position of the end man in a min- 
 strel show, such an idea appears to be original with 
 him, but if we should read disquisitions of other 
 priests on the same subject I presume we should 
 find them all alike, and perhaps expressed in iden- 
 tical words. 
 
 Repeating his last quotation from Ingersoll he 
 again recurs to the method of lecturing on words. 
 The next three pages are filled with solemn com- 
 plaints about the use and misuse of the word jus- 
 tice. He says: "Unless the word is made to ex- 
 press a definite idea common to your mind and 
 mine your question is unintelligible and not sus- 
 ceptible of an intelligent answer." With many 
 words he demands to know what one of the many
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 185 
 
 meanings of the word is used. Again he demands 
 to know what is meant by the word justice? If 
 justice in the abstract, why then it "is a mere ab- 
 straction having no entity of its own. A pure ab- 
 straction can induce no obligation, no duties, no 
 suffering of innocent or guilty." 
 
 He continues : "Do you mean what theologians call 
 original justice f Original justice is the subjection 
 of the body to the mind, the subjection of the will 
 to reason, and the subjection of the will to God. 
 This is the justice that was lost by Adam's fall 
 and restored by the suffering of Christ. 
 
 "Do you mean divine justice? That, so far as 
 creatures are concerned, is the will of God, and he 
 is free to determine the nature of atonement. 
 
 "Do you mean justice in its theological sense? 
 In that sense it is a moral virtue or influence con- 
 stantly inclining the will of man to render to every 
 one his own. This meaning can have no ap- 
 plication to your question. 
 
 Do you mean legal justice? Legal justice is that 
 which co-orders the parts or individuals of a com- 
 munity in reference to the whole, and inclines the 
 individual to render to the community what is 
 necessary for the common good." 
 
 He proceeds in this manner thru distributive 
 justice, commutative justice, vindictive justice and 
 labors along this way: "You see the word justice
 
 i86 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 has many meanings. As you are a theologian, 
 philosopher and lawyer, you should be able to say 
 in what sense you use the word, and you must not 
 imagine your opponent to be fool enough to com- 
 mit himself to any answer till he knows what you 
 ask." 
 
 Thinking, I suppose, that he now has the reader 
 sufficiently hypnotized by his unmeaning mono- 
 tone to believe there is truth in the last sentence, 
 which he makes conspicuous in a paragraph by 
 itself, he ascribes a fallacy to the question for which 
 there is not the slightest foundation. Of course, 
 he cannot have any such idea himself, but knows 
 perfectly well that Mr. Ingersoll's question means 
 nothing of the kind. Here is his pretended find of 
 a fallacy: "The fallacy of your question consists 
 in this: It supposes justice to be a thing existing 
 independent of God and man, whereas it is an at- 
 tribute, in different degrees, of both God and man, 
 and has no existence outside of them." 
 
 "But," he says, "I am not done with your ques- 
 tion yet." ( !) Then he goes on with a long para- 
 graph, containing his usual, "What do you 
 mean by" satisfy? and ending with this astonish- 
 ing conclusion: "Mere suffering then, of innocent 
 or guilty, does not satisfy for sin; and this fact 
 takes the bottom out of your question." 
 
 Here is an answer at last, tho it does not take
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 187 
 
 the bottom out of the question. It only takes the 
 bottom out of the doctrine of the atonement. 
 
 But the pomp does not come to an end here; 
 there is a long-drawn paragraph following: 
 
 Lambert. "Again you ask: How can the suffer- 
 ings of the innocent satisfy for the sins of the 
 guilty? The mere suffering alone of the innocent 
 do not satisfy for the sins of the guilty. They can, 
 however, satisfy for the suffering due the sins of 
 the guilty, which is quite another thing. You can 
 pay a fine of five dollars for a loafer who has com- 
 mitted an assault, and save him the sufferings of 
 six months in the workhouse; but while your vi- 
 carious sufferings to the extent of five dollars re- 
 mit the punishment, they do not satisfy for the 
 offense. I think by this time the reader sees that 
 the question upon which you 'insisted' means noth- 
 ing when cleared and cleaned of its sophistry and 
 words of double meaning. Mr. Black was wrong 
 when he said it raised a 'metaphysical question.' 
 He should have said it raised a psychological or 
 phrenological question involving the condition of 
 your mind or brain when you asked it." 
 
 Comment. Does anyone have a better under- 
 standing of the atonement now? We always knew 
 that the death of Jesus was supposed to save be- 
 lievers from suffering for their sins. He says suf- 
 fering of the innocent or guilty does not along
 
 i88 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 satisfy justice for the sins, tho he does not men- 
 tion what else is necessary. He says it can satisfy 
 for the suffering due to the sins, which, he says, is 
 a very different thing. He illustrates by pointing out 
 that one can pay another's fine, but that does not 
 satisfy for the offense. It seems the law permits 
 it, but it does not permit one to pay the penalty 
 of another for murder. Mr. Lambert may be- 
 lieve the doctrine of atonement, but he does not 
 explain it, nor does he show anything wrong about 
 Ingersoll's question. He could get along better 
 explaining absolution. 
 
 Ingersoll. "To answer an argument, is it only 
 necessary to say that it raises a metaphysical ques- 
 tion?" 
 
 Lambert. "No; but a question, to deserve an 
 answer, should have some sense to it." 
 
 Comment. The question, remember, was: How 
 can the suffering of an innocent man satisfy for 
 the sins of the guilty? 
 
 NON-RESISTANCE. 
 
 Ingersoll. "The idea of non-resistance never oc- 
 curred to the man with the power to protect him- 
 self. This doctrine was the child of weakness, 
 born when resistance was impossible. To allow 
 a crime to be committed when you can prevent it,
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 189 
 
 is next to committing the crime yourself." 
 
 Mr. Lambert quotes the two first sentences. The 
 weakest mind could not fail to understand what 
 was meant by non-resistance by reading the first 
 sentence, and would find the idea perfectly clear 
 and definite, but the priest begins : 
 
 Lambert. "This is one of your soft, indefinite 
 generalities. Let us see what it means and what 
 it is worth practically. 
 
 "Non-resistance to what?" 
 
 Comment. Would you believe it? and he says 
 the very same thing again on the very next page. 
 He keeps on for more than a page as if supposing 
 Mr. Ingersoll meant to favor resistance to things 
 which no one thinks of opposing. 
 
 Lambert. He says there can be resistance and 
 non-resistance only where there is aggression 
 [which is true] ; that aggression may be just or 
 unjust [which is news to me]. He says your 
 natural rights are limited or infringed on by society, 
 and that is just aggression. To this aggression you 
 agree, and therefore the idea of non-resistance must 
 have occurred to you. Then the tax collector ag- 
 gresses on you; you yield and pay. Here again is 
 the idea of non-resistance. The idea occurs to every 
 honest man. Woe to the government whose citi- 
 zens yield only because they must. "Such citizens 
 cannot be trusted in time of danger. They are
 
 190 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 latent rebels every one of them. Resistance to the 
 just requirements of law is sinful, and non-resist- 
 ance a duty. Hence the idea of it should and 
 does occur to every honest, loyal citizen/' 
 
 Comment. After this long pursuit of the phan- 
 toms of his dream he appears to get partially awake, 
 and subsides thus: 
 
 Lambert. "You will say that you meant non- 
 resistance to unjust power and tyranny. Probably 
 you did. But you did not say it, and a man of 
 your power of talk is expected to say what he 
 means." 
 
 Comment. He did say it, and Mr. Lambert could 
 not help seeing what he said about the "power to 
 protect himself," before writing all those com- 
 ments for the purpose of clouding over the text 
 or at least putting it in a false light. He most 
 likely also saw the sentence, "To allow a crime to 
 be committed when you can prevent it is next to 
 committing the crime yourself." Yet he goes on 
 with a ridiculous sermon about just and unjust 
 aggressions! and patriotic citizens disregarding 
 the plain text of his discourse. 
 
 Lambert, repeating the quotation, again says: 
 "Non-resistance to what?" [This is certainly a 
 unique book] "as you reject the doctrine of non- 
 resistance without limitation, it follows that you 
 hold the opposite doctrine without limitation, which
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. IQI 
 
 is that you believe in resistance to everything. But 
 you are not original in this. The world is familiar 
 with men of this kind, and has provided for them 
 as comfortably as circumstances will permit." 
 
 Comment. This is worth preserving as an ex- 
 ample of sophistry in its worst sense. 
 
 STANDARD OF RIGHT AND WRONG. 
 
 Ingersoll. "Mr. Black insists that without be- 
 lief in God there can be no perception of right and 
 wrong, and that it is impossible for an Atheist to 
 have a conscience." 
 
 Lambert. "Mr. Black made no such statement 
 insists on neither of the things which you attrib- 
 ute to him. Why this misrepresentation?" 
 
 Comment. As Ingersoll was not making a di- 
 rect quotation he had a perfect right to put the 
 idea in his own words, as he did not change the 
 sense. Mr. Lambert criticizes Ingersoll for the 
 use of "perception" and "conscience"; says these 
 words are not used by Mr. Black; "it does not re- 
 quire much brains to distinguish between percep- 
 tion of right and standard of right." 
 
 Mr. Black's words were: "Then for him there 
 is no standard at all; one thing is as right as an- 
 other, and all things are equally wrong. Without 
 a ruler there can be no law, and where there is
 
 IQ2 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 
 
 no law there can be no transgression," etc. "No 
 perception of right and wrong" express the same 
 thing more tersely. As for conscience, Mr. Inger- 
 soll's use of that word does not change the sense 
 of Mr. Black's writing and is justified by common 
 usage and Webster's dictionary. 
 
 Lambert next quotes Mr. Ingersoll about wars 
 of extermination, says he and Mr. Black differ as 
 to their being wrong, and who shall decide be- 
 tween them? They must fix upon some com- 
 mon standard, or measure, or form of right and 
 wrong. To illustrate, he says, suppose the disput- 
 ants to disagree about the length of a piece of 
 cloth, a yardstick is the common measure. "It 
 was the want of a common standard or measure like 
 this that Mr. Black called attention to as an insur- 
 mountable obstacle in debating ethical questions 
 With you. He had a standard, the will of God; 
 you have none. Between him and you, then, there 
 is no common standard, and hence the difficulty of 
 arguing with you." 
 
 Comment. A yardstick cannot decide ethical 
 questions, even if you call it the will of God. While 
 Mr. Black thinks slavery right (wars of extermina- 
 tion were mentioned above, but slavery was included 
 in the argument), because it is the will of God, 
 others may not think it the will of God, and there- 
 fore feel under no obligation to defend it. Inger-
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 193 
 
 soil shows very clearly why he thinks it wrong, 
 and many intelligent, reputable people now stand 
 with him. By the way, does Mr. Lambert think 
 it right under any circumstances? He and Mr. 
 Black both decide according to the will of God 
 but slavery has been overthrown. 
 
 Ingersoll. "Yet I am told that I have no knowl- 
 edge of right and wrong; that I measure with 'the 
 elastic cord of human feeling,' while the believer 
 in wars of extermination and human slavery meas- 
 ures with the 'golden metewand of God.' " 
 
 Lambert. "Until you have a criterion, or stand- 
 ard of right and wrong you cannot determine what 
 is right and what is wrong ; and as long as you can- 
 not do this, you cannot claim knowledge on the 
 subject. You may have 'notions' or 'opinions,' but 
 knowledge you cannot claim." 
 
 Comment. Ingersoll has the standard of high 
 courage, justice, and kindness, and had the will and 
 capacity to live according to that standard. His 
 "notions" and "opinions" of right and wrong are 
 appreciated by those who know him personally or 
 thru his writings. If those notions and opinions 
 differ from knowledge, let the difference be shown. 
 
 Mr. Lambert continues to harp on the common 
 measure the will of God. Let us see about this 
 common measure. Of people who may or may 
 not be believers in God, some have higher stand-
 
 194 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 ards of honor than others. One very religious 
 person who would not think of stealing any piece 
 of property that might be out of the sight of the 
 owner, might take advantage of another in trade, 
 while another, also very religious, would scorn to 
 do any such thing. Neither of them has any doubt 
 but he does the will of God. How about the com- 
 mon measure in such a case? Two men receive 
 an injury at the hands of a fellow man. One of 
 them, out of revenge, will do something to the 
 injury of the one who has wronged him. The 
 other would never feel like doing anything of the 
 kind, and if a friend suggests retaliation, he sees 
 at once that it would not be right and feels no 
 temptation to do anything to the detriment of the 
 man who has shown himself unfriendly. Do these 
 two opposite examples have a common standard? 
 They both believe in God, but neither of them asks 
 whether it is the will of God that they do or do 
 not this thing. One of them has a better sense of 
 right and wrong which in no way depends on his 
 religious belief, for their beliefs are the same. One 
 man might say I will manage to buy this thing 
 for less than it is worth of this man who would 
 not fail to cheat me if he had the chance. An- 
 other man sees that the seller does not know that 
 the market price has advanced, but it would never 
 come into his mind to take advantage of the other's
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 195 
 
 ignorance of prices. Have both of these buyers 
 the metewand of God, or has one a better sense 
 of right than the other? 
 
 Lambert quotes, "Everything is right that tends 
 to the happiness of mankind," and judges it a vague 
 rule. He quotes, "And everything is wrong that 
 increases the sum of human misery," and judges 
 it vague and unsatisfactory. I leave out the super- 
 fluous words that go with those opinions. Far 
 from being a vague rule it is quite definite. A 
 vague or uncertain rule would be "the will of 
 God." There is a wide difference in judgment as 
 to what is the will of God; some men are kind, 
 some cruel; some generous, some otherwise; some 
 are foolish, some of strong intellect; some sober 
 and industrious, some lazy and intemperate; con- 
 sider each of these in any common affair of life, or 
 in time of calamity. There are multitudes in all 
 of these classes who every one believe in God, 
 and think they are doing his will. Is it not a vague 
 rule that works out such a wide difference in 
 characters ? 
 
 Mr. Lambert asks Mr. Ingersoll if he would 
 pause and reflect whether in the long run it would 
 tend to human happiness before performing an ac- 
 tion? We might just as well ask him if he stops 
 to ask whether it is the will of God? Would not 
 each one act according to his character?
 
 196 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 Mr. Lambert asks, "Who is to determine what is 
 for the happiness of mankind?" That seems to 
 me to be much easier than to determine the will 
 of God. If he saw a barefoot child, blue with cold, 
 he would know in an instant what would conduce 
 to happiness. Each person determines actions ac- 
 cording to his own mind and character even when 
 he determines the will of God, and the action is 
 determined when the occasion comes. 
 
 He kindly says as it is plain that Mr. Ingersoll 
 does not know what conscience is he will give 
 him a definition of it. "Conscience," he explains, 
 "is a practical judgment which passes on each and 
 every act of our life, and determines, before we 
 perform the act, whither it is right or wrong." I 
 do not see how that corrects Mr. Ingersoll in the 
 least. But Mr. Ingersoll was not writing defini- 
 tions, but a short magazine article. The practical 
 judgment the conscience shown in that article is 
 above criticism. Mr. Lambert adds to his defini- 
 tion, "It does not determine what is right and 
 wrong in the abstract that is the office of the 
 moral intellect." How can you determine in the 
 abstract what is right or wrong? According to 
 common use abstract means something considered 
 apart from other associated things. It seems to 
 me the quality of right and wrong must be as- 
 sociated with some idea or act; we cannot think
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 197 
 
 of it in any other way. And what is "moral in- 
 tellect" but conscience? Is not the moral judg- 
 ment of the intellect the conscience? It seems to 
 me there can be no right and wrong in the ab- 
 stract, and that moral intellect is not a clear ex- 
 pression; and it seems to me the intellect is with 
 you all the time, and it judges of every moral ques- 
 tion as it arises in the intellect. 
 
 Mr. Lambert. "It" (the conscience) "is not the 
 power of realizing vividly the sufferings of others, 
 as you dogmatically state. The word for that is 
 sympathy, or philanthropy, not conscience." 
 
 Comment. I take Mr. Ingersoll's argument to 
 mean, not that a sympathetic feeling for another 
 is conscience, but that the capacity for understand- 
 ing and caring for the feelings of another is what 
 gives him conscience. 
 
 Answering "Consequences determine the quality 
 of an action," Mr. Lambert again brings forward 
 Guiteau, and speaks of his considering assassina- 
 tion a good act. Does Mr. Lambert think that 
 consequences in that case did not show the act to 
 be bad, just because the crazed politician tried to 
 justify himself by calling it good? Mr. Lambert 
 forgets that Guiteau was religious, and therefore 
 had the metewand of God; the same one used by 
 the Spanish Inquisitors. 
 
 If he did think his act a good one does that
 
 198 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 show that people are never to do what they con- 
 sider good acts ? 
 
 Mr. Lambert suggests that if consequences de- 
 termine it would be necessary to find the sum of 
 the consequences, or, if one consequence was to 
 be considered, which one, before determining the 
 nature of the act 
 
 The moral sense always tells. One knows if 
 he lies about a person that the consequences are bad 
 for at least two persons; the one lied about is 
 wronged; the character of the one who lies is 
 lowered. So it is with all faults and crimes the 
 consequences are always known to be bad. 
 
 Again Mr. Lambert asks who is to determine 
 the quality of the consequences? The actor judges, 
 but luckily there is a pretty general agreement as 
 to what is good or bad, tho some have a better 
 capacity than others for judging and for perform- 
 ing. 
 
 Ingersoll. "If consequences are good, so is the 
 action." 
 
 Lambert. "According to this dictum, you cannot 
 say a cold-blooded murder or an assassination is 
 good or bad until you have learned the consequences 
 of it ! The consequence of Garfield's taking off can 
 never be known to man. Then, according to your 
 philosophy, it can never be known whether his 
 murder was a crime or a virtue ! Are you not afraid
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 
 
 that your philosophy may put a bee into the head 
 of some religious fanatic, who, misled by your 
 teachings, might consider his killing of you a vir- 
 tuous and holy act, foolishly imagining that the 
 result of it might, in its consequences, prove ben- 
 eficial to society and religion? I, as a Christian, 
 condemn that act beforehand, as a crime deserving 
 the eternal torments of hell; but you cannot con- 
 sistently condemn it, because, according to your 
 Infidel theory, the act cannot be said to be evil 
 or wicked till its consequences are known. As the 
 consequences of your death cannot be known, it 
 follows that your murder might be a good or a 
 bad act ! This is the result or consequence of your 
 philosophy. From a Christian point of view it is 
 a very bad consequence, and therefore, if there is 
 any virtue in logic, your philosophy is bad. The 
 Christian holds not only that murder is a crime, 
 but that even the intention, determination, or un- 
 actuated resolve is a crime, deserving of hell. It 
 is thus that the Christian religion strikes at the 
 root of this murderous propensity in man, and 
 kills the dragon before he issues from his inner- 
 most den in the human heart. The doctrine that 
 acts take their nature and quality from their re- 
 sults is a logical and necessary consequence of the 
 denial of God. It destroys individual responsi- 
 bility and is subversive of all government and social
 
 2oo VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 order. It denies all appeal to right, and destroys 
 not only justice, but the very idea of it. It con- 
 templates nothing but results physical, cognizable 
 results." 
 
 Comment. Are the consequences of Guiteau's 
 crime not known? How many, so far as known, 
 prove his act a virtue? It is known that Garfield 
 was taken off in his prime; his family and friends 
 bereft. The National Executive, elected by the 
 people of the United States, shot down by an assas- 
 sin crazed by factional prejudice thus staining the 
 reputation of the Republic. Were not these con- 
 sequences (I do not mean that these are all) 
 enough to stigmatize the crime as hideous in the 
 view of the whole world? The consequences to 
 Guiteau were a shameful death, and memory dis- 
 graced; to his family and friends a lifelong 
 shame and sorrow. All of the consequences 
 unalloyed bitterness. 
 
 No. Mr. Ingersoll's arguments for the right 
 against the wrong have never led anyone to crime 
 and never will. Your argument that the belief in 
 hell prevents crime does not hold good. According 
 to my observation no one has ever been deterred 
 from crime by this belief, while we all know of 
 great numbers of cases of believing criminals. The 
 belief as far as I know has never led people to
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERTS NOTES. 2OI 
 
 crime without first driving them insane, but there 
 have been many instances of that kind. 
 
 The belief that good consequences determine 
 the quality of an action will never destroy individ- 
 ual responsibility nor prove subversive of govern- 
 ment and social order, but quite the contrary. The 
 doctrine of the atonement might if the belief in 
 it had anything to do with the conduct of the 
 life of the believer. If it had any effect it would 
 destroy individual responsibility, and that is at the 
 bottom of government and social order. 
 
 Life soon teaches consequences. Anything so 
 plain as murder is understood without any really 
 conscious thot. Other things, more intricate and 
 less striking, require a finer conscience for their 
 comprehension, and systems of worship and belief 
 are not effectual educators of the conscience. 
 
 Don't worry about any religious fanatic's being 
 led by Ingersoll's teaching to kill him; that idea 
 is farfetched over a very difficult road. Religious 
 fanatics hear of him only thru their own religious 
 teachers, who hold up a false picture of him for 
 their scorn and contempt. As the picture is of a 
 weak clown without any influence it is not likely 
 their learners would think him worth killing. Those 
 liable to be led by him would find themselves jour- 
 neying along to a more generous humanity. 
 
 I have not been thinking of him as dead; but he
 
 2O2 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 lives now in memory and in the consequences of 
 his deeds. Why do not priests try to destroy those 
 consequences instead of traducing an honorable 
 character ? 
 
 -^~l 3 hysical, cognizable results? But the discussion 
 is altogether from a moral point of view and can- 
 not be diverted to a physical aspect. 
 
 That "it denies all appeal to right and destroys 
 not only justice, but the very idea of it" is one of 
 the most audacious perversions I ever saw. Why, 
 it is appeal to right, and its foundation is justice.. 
 
 When religious dogma is not under discussion 
 I think the rational idea that right conduct al- 
 ways produces good results, and wrong conduct 
 always produces bad results is accepted by all. 
 
 "If actions had no consequences they would be 
 neither good nor bad." Mr. Lambert begins his 
 last chapter with quoting this and setting up a 
 straw man, first issuing this piece of jargon: 
 "Which is the same as saying if actions were not 
 actions they would not be actions." He says that 
 actions are inseparable from their consequences; 
 there can not be an act without consequences. That 
 is not opposed to anything Ingersoll said. If Mr. 
 Lambert means anything it must be that he is try- 
 ing to make it appear that Ingersoll meant that 
 sometimes actions were neither good nor bad, be-
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERTS NOTES. 2O3 
 
 cause they had no consequences ; but he meant only 
 what he plainly stated. 
 
 Mr. Lambert declares again that consequences 
 cannot be known, and to show how far-reaching 
 they may be illustrates by the often used pebble 
 thrown in a stream. After a lecture on gravita- 
 tion, etc., he says: "A false principle taught to a 
 child will grow with it and spread from it to 
 others, and from these others to yet others, and 
 thus on thru the ages, and when time ceases it 
 will continue into eternity and affect heaven and 
 hell. Thus this one act of a false teacher changes 
 the current and harmony of the world." 
 
 I should like to know if these consequences are 
 not enough to keep well-disposed people to the 
 highest mark? Luckily one false teacher cannot 
 have it all his own way. There are other pebbles. 
 Let the good teachers use their best influences. The 
 good spreads as well as the bad. 
 
 I should like to quote the next two and a half 
 pages they contain some Lambertian gems but 
 this division of the subject has been gone over be- 
 fore, except that he says man cannot learn what 
 is right and wrong by experience. 
 
 Ingersoll. God or no God, larceny is the enemy 
 of industry industry is the mother of prosperity 
 prosperity is a good, and therefore larceny is 
 an evil. God or no God, murder is a crime. There
 
 2O4 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 has always been a law against larceny, because 
 the laborer wishes to enjoy the fruit of his toil. 
 As long as men object to being killed, murder will 
 be illegal. 
 
 Lambert. "To say an act is a larceny is to de- 
 termine its nature its quality. You have said that 
 the quality of an action is determined by its con- 
 sequences. How then can you assert that any given 
 act is a larceny till its consequences are known? 
 To assert larceny, you must assert it of particular 
 acts, for larceny in the abstract is simply nothing, 
 and can have none but abstract consequences, which 
 are no consequences at all, and therefore cannot 
 be an enemy of industry, unless it be industry in 
 the abstract, which again is no industry at all. Lar- 
 ceny to injure industry, must be larceny in act 
 and practice the act of A, B or C. But how 
 can you assert that the act of A, B, or C is evil or 
 larcenous till its consequences are known? for, ac- 
 cording to your philosophy, the nature of the act 
 of A, B, or C can be known and judged only by 
 its consequences." 
 
 Comment. How fortunate it is that Mr. Inger- 
 soll was not educated to argue this way by the 
 day ! He did not take up space in trivialities hair- 
 splitting to confuse his readers, trying to make 
 them think black is not black, because it might be 
 faded into white. He wrote and spoke always to
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 205 
 
 the point to be understood, and he was under- 
 stood. 
 
 Larceny is the name of the crime of wrongfully 
 depriving a person of his own property. The 
 known consequences of the act are what makes 
 the act a crime. That is why a penalty is imposed 
 by the civil power. The legal penalty incurred and 
 loss of reputation are some of the consequences 
 affecting the criminal. As for "larceny in the ab- 
 stract" and "industry in the abstract" time might 
 be taken up indefinitely with such an array of words 
 and with such questions as, "What do you mean 
 by justice?" As so much is said about abstract 
 larceny's being simply nothing and can have no con- 
 sequences, because the consequences are abstract, 
 why, say then, larceny (in the abstract) is a crime 
 (in the abstract) and its consequence (in the ab- 
 stract) is a penalty (in the abstract). 
 
 Lambert. "According to your standard, prosper- 
 ity is good only when its consequences are good. 
 But the philosophy of history teaches that pros- 
 perity leads to the downfall of nations as well as 
 of individuals. What did prosperity do for Egypt, 
 Greece and Rome? It made the people luxurious, 
 voluptuous and imbecile, and buried the monu- 
 ments of hardier ages in ruins. It was the siren 
 that led Hannibal, Alexander and Caesar to untime- 
 ly graves, and Napoleon to Moscow and Waterloo.
 
 206 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 Prosperity leads to decay, national, individual, in- 
 tellectual, moral and physical. When prosperity 
 is at its zenith, decay is at the door ; when the tree 
 is in full bloom there is but one step to the sere 
 and yellow leaf. Prosperity has evil consequences, 
 and if, as you say, consequences determine the 
 quality of actions, how can prosperity be good?" 
 
 Comment. Down with prosperity! Death to 
 the siren! Let us have impeding poverty and 
 groveling ignorance. 
 
 I deny that any evil is the consequence of pros- 
 perity. I think other causes lead to the undoing 
 of nations and people. The full bloom of the tree 
 is the promise of its fruit; the sere and yellow 
 leaf announces the rest of the forces which work 
 again next year. When the tr^e dies it is not be- 
 cause of its prosperity; a stunted tree in poor soil 
 dies also, and the poverty of the soil and other 
 unfavorable conditions do not prolong its life. 
 
 Oh! but here is another paragraph introduced 
 by an impressive "Again, Prosperity, aside from 
 those who prosper, is an abstraction, nothing, and 
 therefore the good you assert of it is equally an 
 abstraction, a delusion and a snare." 
 
 Do not put prosperity with those who prosper 
 and no harm will be done, for it will remain an 
 intellectual abstraction. 
 
 About murder, he begins with reminding Inger-
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 2O/ 
 
 soil to not forget his principles, for it is wrong 
 to say murder is a crime when he doesn't know 
 the consequences, and proceeds as before about 
 murder in the abstract. 
 
 He says laws against larceny are unjust if it 
 is a virtue, etc., as before. 
 
 Lambert. "If there is no God, the real thieves 
 are those who have and hold the goods of this 
 world from those who have not. This is in fact 
 the doctrine of your Infidel confreres, the commu- 
 nists of France. Proudhon, a prophet of Infidelity, 
 lays it down as a maxim that 'property is robbery.' 
 The difference between you and Proudhon is this: 
 He denies God and carries that denial to its logical 
 consequences, while you, without an atom of logic 
 in your head, deny God and yet assert the sacred- 
 ness of property. If there be no God, Proudhon is 
 right; but God or no God you are wrong." 
 
 Comment. We should remembei that the debate 
 was on the inspiration of the Bible; that Inger- 
 soll's argument was against the Old Testament 
 representations of God; that he did not deny nor 
 affirm the existence of God. Therefore, it is in 
 order to consider the statement, "If there is no 
 God the law against larceny has no moral or bind- 
 ing obligation ("Notes," p. 194) unconnected with 
 any prejudice against Ingersoll and see what you 
 think of it. Do you feel any "moral unlift" about
 
 2o8 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 which we have lately heard so much, from this 
 "high ideal" presented by the writer of the "Notes"? 
 
 To show that Mr. Lambert made a bad use of 
 Proudhon, calling him a prophet of infidelity in 
 trying to make a point against Ingersoll, I will 
 give a short quotation from, What is Property? by 
 Proudhon, page 256: "His (man's) conception of 
 God and a future life is spontaneous and instinc- 
 tive, and his expressions of this conception have 
 been by turns monstrous, eccentric, beautiful, com- 
 forting and terrible. All these different creeds at 
 which the frivolous irreligion of the eighteenth 
 century mocked, are modes of expression of the 
 religious sentiment. Some day man will explain 
 to himself the character of God whom he believes 
 m, and the other world to which his soul aspires." 
 
 Lambert. "Convicted murderers object to being 
 killed; is it therefore murder or illegal to execute 
 them? But here again you show a bad memory, 
 Only five lines above you say: 'Consequences are 
 the standard by which actions are judged/ and 
 now you tell us that the objection of men to being 
 killed constituted the illegality of murder! Now 
 which of these two statements do you intend us 
 to believe? Of course we cannot believe them 
 both, because they are contradictory. This is the 
 consequence of trying to reason without a stand- 
 ard of truth and morality."
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 209 
 
 Comment. One might suppose that this author 
 looked upon the world as chiefly inhabited by mur- 
 derers ; that there were no other people worth men- 
 tioning; as if laws were by them and for their 
 protection if his purpose were not understood to 
 be to use language for the purpose of darkening 
 instead of enlightening. 
 
 Ingersoll's language was perfectly clear and per- 
 fectly correct; and it does not present the least 
 contradiction to what he said before that con- 
 sequences determine the quality of an action. 
 
 Ingersoll. "According to Mr. Black the man 
 who does not believe in a Supreme Being acknowl- 
 edges no standard of right and wrong." 
 
 Lambert. "You ought to be ashamed to mis- 
 represent an honorable antagonist. Mr. Black never 
 said that, nor anything like it, nor anything from 
 which such an inference could be drawn. He com- 
 plained of the difficulty of arguing with a man like 
 you, who had no acknowledged standard of right 
 and wrong. That his complaint was just is evi- 
 dent from the fact in your reply to him you give 
 half a dozen different standards, and all contradic- 
 tory, as we have just seen." 
 
 Comment. It has already been shown by quo- 
 tation from Mr. Black that he did say it, and Mr. 
 Lambert repeats it, showing that he understood the
 
 2io VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 argument, tho he charged misrepresentation be- 
 fore. 
 
 I have not seen the half a dozen different stand- 
 ards of right and wrong, all contradictory, which 
 Mr. Lambert says we have just seen. Have you, 
 Reader? Please look for them, and "when found 
 make a note o't." 
 
 Ingersoll. "Is it possible that only those who 
 believe in the God who persecuted for opinion's 
 sake have any standard of right and wrong?" 
 
 Lambert. "Only those who believe in the true 
 God, whom you falsely accuse of persecuting, can 
 have the true standard of right and wrong. That 
 those who do not believe in him may have some 
 standard is evident from the fact that you have 
 laid down half a dozen standards, such as they are ; 
 and no doubt you could give more if the exigencies 
 of your argument required it. But when Mr. Black 
 spoke of a standard he did not mean India rubber 
 strings. Every man has, or ought to have, some 
 one standard by which to regulate his conscience 
 and his acts, but you have half a dozen worthless 
 ones ; hence the difficulty of knowing where to find 
 you. Mr. Black's complaint is that you have no 
 standard that holds you, or that prevents you from 
 acting like the little joker in the game of thimble 
 now you see it, and now you don't."
 
 VIEW of LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 Ingersoll. "Were the greatest men of antiquity 
 without this standard?" 
 
 Lambert. "Which standard? Do you refer to 
 the true standard, or to some standard? These 
 great men had a standard the will of the gods. 
 They thus recognized a very important truth ; name- 
 ly, that the standard of morals should be a will 
 superior to the human will. They erred in locating 
 this superior or supreme will, but they recognized 
 its necessity somewhere. In doing this these great 
 men paid a magnificent tribute to the true God 
 and to human reason. These great men whose 
 genius the world honors were too great to be Athe- 
 ists. They believed in the existence of God, and 
 failed only to identify him and understand his na- 
 ture. They honored the true God, when by mis- 
 take they accepted the false one, as you would 
 honor a genuine United States bond by accepting 
 a counterfeit thro ignorance. They had, then, a 
 standard of right and wrong, and altho it was 
 not the true one, yet they were consistent and held 
 themselves amenable to it in their lives and in 
 their logic. Their philosophy and theology began 
 where yours end. It is your misfortune that you 
 never studied them profoundly, as they deserve to 
 be studied, for they were giants, these men of 
 old." 
 
 Comment. What has become of Mr. Lambert's
 
 212 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 yardstick? He had it when he began, but dropped 
 it out of sight while he was comparing Ingersoll 
 to the little joker "now you see it, and now you 
 don't." (He knew what game he was playing, and 
 knew Ingersoll was not present.) Here he contents 
 himself with any standard even that of the will 
 of the gods. Does he admit more than one stand- 
 ard for those who accept many gods, or can he im- 
 agine a composite of Bacchus, Juno, Jove, Mars, 
 Ceres, etc.? [The lady gods go with the others.] 
 No; that would be impossible, for then there would 
 no longer be gods, but one god. Remembering 
 what he said about the treason of worshiping other 
 gods than Jehovah it looks to me as if he were 
 giving aid and comfort in large quantities to trai- 
 tors, and the penalty is death. He picks up his 
 yardstick again and informs us those great man 
 had his God, but didn't know him; but again loses 
 it when he comes to the very strange idea (for 
 him) that they honor the true God by worshiping 
 a false one by mistake, and still keeps it out of 
 sight while he goes on to the effect that tho the 
 great men's yardstick was not the true one, they 
 stuck to it anyhow, and were giants whose ac- 
 quaintance Ingersoll, unfortunately for him, did 
 not make. 
 
 Ingersoll. "In the eyes of the intelligent men
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 213 
 
 of Greece and Rome, were all deeds, whether good 
 or evil morally alike?" 
 
 Lambert. "No, sir. As we have seen they had 
 a standard the will of the gods and therefore 
 all deeds were not, in their eyes, morally alike. 
 Their standard, not being a true one, did not en- 
 able them to correctly distinguish right and wrong. 
 In this their standard was superior to any you 
 have advanced; for your denial of God destroys 
 all difference between right and wrong, and leaves 
 the words crime and virtue without a meaning." 
 
 Comment. In short, Greeks, Romans, and In- 
 gersolls do not any of them know any difference 
 between right and wrong; the Greeks and Romans 
 being incapacitated by having too many gods, and 
 Ingersoll by not having enough. A large number 
 of false gods are preferable to no god. Mr. Lam- 
 bert does not appear to use his yardstick any more ; 
 just above he thot the false gods could be made 
 to cover the deficiency if people kept a tight hold 
 on them; but now he thinks they are inadequate 
 tho they do show those who worship them that 
 there is a right and wrong. It does not seem as 
 if it would be of any use to know there are such 
 things if you can't tell them apart, and this Mr. 
 Lambert tells us they cannot do. If they cannot 
 distinguish right from wrong, they would be just 
 as likely to choose one as the other; it would all
 
 214 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 depend on chance. I don"t see why he thinks In- 
 gersoll has not the same chance. What follows 
 does not shed any light on the subject. It is in- 
 troduced only for the sake of euphony, but I want 
 you to see it. 
 
 Lambert. "These men of Greece and Rome were 
 not so stupid as to believe your theory that con- 
 sequences determine the nature of actions. They 
 never stole the truths, beauties and magnificent re- 
 sults of the Christian religion and tried to make 
 believe they were the fruits of Paganism, as mod- 
 ern Infidels try to make it appear that those mag- 
 nificent results are the fruits of reason and experi- 
 ence. These intelligent men of Greece and Rome 
 had their faults, but they were not given to that 
 kind of lying." 
 
 Comment. Let us have an extract from Epictetus 
 to take away the bad taste: "Mind, knowledge, 
 right reason here seek the essence of goodness." 
 
 Civilization is claimed as the result of Chris- 
 tianity, but that claim is not sustained by history. 
 Christians now often speak of morality as religion 
 and many accept it as such on account of the label. 
 The power of wealth and social and political in- 
 fluence in the churches enables them to keep up a 
 certain sentiment of refinement which does not be- 
 long to bare religion itself. Many people forget 
 that it is a system of belief and worship; and that
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 215 
 
 its organization is kept up at great expense for 
 the perpetuation of that belief and worship. Many 
 lose sight of the fact that it does not stand on its 
 own merits. It is the habit of the masses to con- 
 sent to an established custom, and defer to a power- 
 ful organization. The church has the advantage 
 of the support of the State in many ways. This 
 means, of course, the people are compelled to help 
 support it by means of taxation. The State will 
 do this as long as the church demands it, and the* 
 people make no organized or general objection felt 
 by politicians. It is astonishing to hear the sup- 
 porters of the church argue that Christianity could 
 not stand if left to the voluntary support of its ad- 
 herents. This is admitting much more than In- 
 fidels could expect from any taxation reform. 
 
 Ingersoll. "Is it necessary to believe in the ex- 
 istence of an infinite intelligence, before you have 
 any standard of right and wrong?" 
 
 Lambert. "Yes. Deny the infinite intelligence 
 or God, and all deeds are morally alike; there is 
 no right, no wrong, and of course no distinction 
 between them." (He keeps the yardstick where 
 he can use it or not, as he pleases.) "Where there 
 is no right nor wrong, there can be no standard 
 of right and wrong. Where there is no standard 
 there cannot be any standard." (This gem is worth 
 keeping. How much longer does it take to get up
 
 216 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 sentences like these than when there are ideas in 
 them?) "It will not do to say that Christians 
 admit a difference between right and wrong, for 
 they do not admit it, if there is no God; on the 
 contrary, they deny it." (There is an idea, tho 
 it is a queer one.) 
 
 Ingersoll. "Is it possible that a being cannot be 
 just and virtuous unless he believes in some being 
 infinitely superior to himself? If this doctrine be 
 t.rue, how can God be just and virtuous? Does he 
 Relieve in some being infinitely superior to him- 
 self?" 
 
 Mr. Lambert cuts these three sentences apart, 
 denies the first one; calls it a trick; says every 
 finite being must believe, etc.; answers the others 
 as if they were made ridiculous by his answer to 
 the first one; says to the second that it supposes 
 Ingersoll had caught a gudgeon; reproaches him 
 for an unworthy play upon words, and says: "God 
 is just because he is justice; and justice and virtue 
 are justice and virtue because He is, and without 
 Him, there is neither justice and virtue, nor any- 
 thing else. I merely indicate here Christian prin- 
 ciples; to enter into a discussion of their meta- 
 physical basis with you would be to degrade a 
 magnificent science, of which you manifest an 
 ignorance which is only commensurate with your 
 brazen egotism." He answers the third question,
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 217 
 
 "It is not at all necessary. After the trickery of 
 your former question there is not timber enough 
 in this last one to nail an answer to." 
 
 Comment. Separating the sentences does some- 
 what interfere with the clearness of the logical ef- 
 fect, and commenting on the first one in the way 
 he did gave him the chance of making it appear 
 to careless readers in his comments on the other 
 sentences as if he had answered the first, tho he 
 did not. He merely excepts God from the rule 
 without showing any reason for the exception. 
 Saying God is infinite is not a reason. Then he 
 builds his argument in the answers to the other 
 sentences on the false assumption that he had an- 
 swered the first one. 
 
 When trying to hide the fact that he cannot 
 answer he often insists on definitions. There would 
 be some reason in asking him what he means by 
 "play upon words," he uses the phrase so much 
 at random. Ingersoll's second question follows the 
 preceding one naturally leading to the conclusion 
 of the argument, and nothing like a play upon 
 words appears. 
 
 Ingersoll. "If there is a God, infinite in power 
 and wisdom, above him, poised in eternal calm, 
 is the figure of Justice." 
 
 Lambert. In answer to this he tells Mr. Inger- 
 soll that it is not pleasant to talk to him; that he
 
 2l8 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 has no idea of God; he is "too intellectually blind 
 to see that to place an abstraction called justice 
 above God is to destroy God." [Abstraction has 
 been drawn so often that the Rev. Mr. Lambert 
 is nearly driven to distraction. Let the pile of 
 words be turned over and shaken up.] "Justice 
 has no existence of its own, aside from that which 
 is just, justice is a pure abstraction." He says jus- 
 tice to exist must exist as a quality, or mode or 
 form of something; it can't live by itself. 
 
 Comment. The writer of the "Notes" seems to be 
 in a position similar to that in which he imagines 
 the Pagan philosophers regarding right and wrong. 
 He knows there is such a thing as Justice, but 
 does not know it when he sees it. Not going into 
 enumerations of the different ways in which the 
 word can come in different subjects, nor analysis 
 of subjects in which the word occurs, nor giving 
 all the definitions, I should say Justice is a quality ; 
 it does not exist as a quality in the sense of ap- 
 pearing as something else. If I were a Pagan I 
 might say, Justice, oh beautiful Goddess! keep my 
 life pure! Do not allow me to contract the dis- 
 ease of the false witness, or a tergiversator while 
 reviewing the book of a finite mortal! O sweet 
 Goddess! I fear I am not immune to the sin of 
 trifling. Help thou me ! 
 
 Ingersoll wrote for the purpose of expressing
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT S NOTES. 
 
 ideas, and knew everyone would know what he 
 meant by Justice. 
 
 Ingersoll. "There is no world, no star, no heav- 
 en, no hell, in which gratitude is not a virtue, and 
 where slavery is not a crime." 
 
 Mr. Lambert admonishes Ingersoll to confine 
 himself to this world ; says he is going to hold him 
 to his standard of right and wrong; as long as he 
 is "bound by that standard, your talk about virtue 
 and crime is unmitigated hypocrisy; for until the 
 consequences of acts are known, there is no dif- 
 ference between virtue and crime." 
 
 Comment. So much iteration will put readers to 
 sleep. This must be hurried on to the end as fast 
 as possible. 
 
 Ingersoll. "I have insisted, and I still insist, 
 that it is impossible for a finite man to commit a 
 crime deserving infinite punishment." 
 
 Lambert. "A little more reason and a little less 
 assertion would be more becoming in a philoso- 
 pher." 
 
 Comment. I do not know why he begins in this 
 blustering way, for he goes on with a copious flow 
 of words to point out that Christians all agree 
 with Ingersoll. But down the page he remarks, 
 "But you had a purpose and a meaning in your 
 statement." [How strange that one should write 
 with purpose and meaning!]
 
 22o VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 With a great show of asperity he charges In- 
 gersoll with juggling words to bring in another 
 very different idea. It turns out that Ingersoll has 
 done a very shocking thing. He said infinite when 
 he should have said everlasting punishment. [Let 
 Mr. Lambert have everlasting punishment, by all 
 means, if he prefers it.] 
 
 He says because Ingersoll said infinite his 
 "whole argument on this point collapses like a 
 punctured balloon." He repeats, man is capable 
 of receiving everlasting, but not infinite punish- 
 ment. 
 
 Ingersoll. "Of the supernatural we have no con- 
 ception." 
 
 Lambert. Then how can you say anything about 
 it? To admit this after writing your article "is 
 to advertise yourself a thotless gabbler." In his 
 usual prolix style he argues that no one can think 
 or talk of that of which he has no conception, 
 and so it is not surprising that he said wonderful 
 and curious things in his argument with Mr. 
 Black. 
 
 Comment. We may think and talk on the super- 
 natural even if we do not believe in it. Mr. Lam- 
 bert may have no conception of Ingersoll's creed 
 of science, but may express his ideas about it. 
 
 Ingersoll, "Mr. Black takes the ground that if
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 221 
 
 a man believes in the creation of the universe . . . 
 he has no right to deny anything." 
 
 Lambert. "This is mere trifling, and shows what 
 an Infidel philosopher is capable of when put to 
 the stretch. There is not a word of truth in what 
 you say, and you knew it when you said it. Mr. 
 Black takes no such ground as you, in utter dis- 
 regard of the obligations of veracity, attributed to 
 him." 
 
 Comment. Mr. Ingersoll did not give a direct 
 quotation. He gave the substance of the same 
 thing. You may find it on pages 56-57 of the In- 
 gersoll-Black debate. 
 
 Ingersoll. "We should remember that ignorance 
 is the mother of credulity; that the early Chris- 
 tians believed everything but the truth, and that 
 they accepted Paganism, admitted the reality of 
 all the Pagan miracles taking the ground that 
 they were all forerunners of their own. Pagan 
 miracles were never denied by the Christian world 
 till late in the seventeenth century. Voltaire was 
 the third man of note in Europe who denied the 
 truth of Greek and Roman mythology. "The early 
 Christians cited Pagan oracles predicting in detail 
 the sufferings of Christ. They forged prophecies, 
 and attributed them to heathen sibyls, and they 
 were accepted as genuine by the entire church.' " 
 [Taking part of the first sentence of this para-
 
 222 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 graph, "We should remember . . . that the early 
 Christians believed everything but the truth, and 
 that they accepted Paganism, admitted the real- 
 ity of the Pagan miracles," for his text, Mr. Lam- 
 bert concludes the "Notes" thus] 
 
 Lambert. "In making and printing this state- 
 ment you lose all claim to respectful consideration. 
 We must brand it in the whole and in all its parts 
 as a falsehood, and he who made it is ignorant 
 or malicious or both. And yet this falsifier talks 
 glibly of 'honesty' and 'honor bright' ! We charge 
 Mr. Ingersoll with falsehood in making the above 
 statement. We call on him to verify it, or stand 
 as a convicted falsifier. A falsifier cannot be 
 trusted; his glib talk of honesty and virtue must 
 be looked upon as a snare, like that of the profli- 
 gate who talks of virtue to his intended victim. 
 We can respect an enemy, but when we find deceit 
 and falsehood in his methods, we relegate him to 
 that disreputable class which affords remunera- 
 tive employment to detectives and policemen. A 
 falsifier is a manufacturer of base coin, a counter- 
 feiter, a fraud. 
 
 "We here conclude these notes, believing we have 
 accomplished what we undertook to do. We have 
 said enough to convince our readers that Mr. In- 
 gersoll is profligate of statement; that he is not 
 to be trusted; that he is unscrupulous; that as a
 
 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 223 
 
 logican and metaphysician he is beneath contempt; 
 that he is a mere galvanizer of oltl objections long 
 ago refuted; that he is ignorant and superficial 
 full of gas and gush ; in a word, that he is a char- 
 latan of the first water, who mistakes curious lis- 
 teners for disciples and applause for approval. 
 
 "Of course we do not expect him to reply to 
 us, and for several reasons. First, he will not 
 want to; second, he cannot; third, he can pretend 
 not to notice an obscure country pastor. Very 
 well. Then let some of his disciples or admirers 
 try to rehabilitate his smirched character. We hold 
 ourselves responsible to him, and to all the glib 
 little whiffets of his shallow school." 
 
 Comment. Anyone who has read the other pages 
 of this attempt to correct Lambert's presentation 
 of Ingersoll, will see that it is not necessary to 
 use any more time on these pages. He presents 
 the usual charges of "deceit," "falsehood" and 
 "glib talk" which have been exposed before. 
 
 This view has been very imperfectly presented. 
 It is impossible for me to place the author of the 
 "Notes" and the subject of his criticism before you 
 as plain as I hoped to make them, because I have 
 not been able to avoid the appearance of a dialog 
 between Ingersoll and Lambert, which is occasion- 
 ally interrupted by my comments. But a dialog 
 of this kind could never have taken place. Please
 
 224 VIEW OF LAMBERT'S NOTES. 
 
 remember that Mr. Lambert selected sentences and 
 parts of sentences as he pleased, put them where he 
 pleased, and put on them any construction he 
 pleased. Ingersoll neither heard him nor answered 
 him, and he did not answer Ingersoll ; he only tried 
 to make people think he scorned him. 
 
 Altho Ingersoll did not notice Mr. Lambert, we 
 have in book form his debates with Mr. Gladstone, 
 Judge Black, Rev. Henry M. Field, and the great 
 controversy which followed the famous Christmas 
 sermon.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Abuse of reason 172 
 
 Abolitionists 72, 75 
 
 Abdication of God 156 
 
 "According to my idea" n 
 
 Admission of Mr. Black 101 
 
 Aggressions 189 
 
 Analyzing 83 
 
 Anecdote of Ingersoll's 161 
 
 Anti-slavery a Christian thot 115 
 
 Appeal to reason, Extraordinary 183 
 
 Apostles 126 
 
 Argument is tried by Mr. Lambert 172 
 
 Ascensions of Jesus 140 
 
 Assertion 43 
 
 Assurance, Infidel 126 
 
 Atonement 175, 182 
 
 Authenticity of Bible 117 
 
 Gospels 128 
 
 Black and design argument 28 
 
 Black and statement made by 
 
 Evangelists 141 
 
 Book of Wisdom ' 53 
 
 Brownson's Quarterly Review . . 43 
 Buncombe about questioning 
 
 honesty and virtue 129 
 
 Charge of audacity 7 
 
 absolutely false statements 146 
 
 advertising himself a thotless gabbler . . 220 
 
 affecting to believe, &c 67 
 
 a fellow-feeling with sorcerers, &c S3 
 
 almost indefinite self-assertive capacity. 36 
 assuming to determine what is 
 
 monstrous, miraculous, &c in 
 
 assurance 126 
 
 avoidance of the issue 39 
 
 of a question by missta- 
 ting it 40
 
 228 INDEX 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Charge of baseless assertions and appeal to igno- 
 rance 53 
 
 being dishonest 7 
 
 a fool 7 
 
 a monumental bore 52 
 
 too narrow and local 15 
 
 a blatant blasphemer 147 
 
 too general and indefinite 100 
 
 a convicted falsifier 222 
 
 beneath contempt 223 
 
 a simian philosopher 54 
 
 ignorant and dishonest 156 
 
 belittling Jesus by denying miracles . . 130 
 beslavering sorcerers, &c., with gush- 
 ing sympathy 53 
 
 that Black was not allowed to answer 6, 44, 82 
 
 of being an incompetent interpreter of na- 
 ture 15 
 
 blasphemous jests 66 
 
 blasphemy for dollars 147 
 
 blundering in confounding logic and 
 
 reasoning 43 
 
 blundering and failure to understand .... 114 
 bringing in design argument when Black 
 
 did not 28 
 
 brazen egotism 216 
 
 calling for proof that evidence did not 
 
 exist 131 
 
 cant about freedom of thot 61 
 
 challenging to mortal combat 107 
 
 change of doctrine 164 
 
 changing words to introduce false ideas . . 139 
 
 charlatancy of the first water 223 
 
 claltter ,7 
 
 confounding law and force intentionally 
 
 or thru ignorance 16 
 
 confounding true with complete or ade- 
 quate -.. 163 
 
 continuing the work of Judas 179 
 
 consummate hypocrisy 85
 
 INDEX 229 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Charge of criminality 222 
 
 cunning 29, 160 
 
 cunning assumption 47 
 
 deceit and falsehood 222 
 
 deceit and sophistry 113 
 
 defence of treason 58 
 
 defective phrenal development 169 
 
 denial of right of others to express thot . . 25 
 
 different standards 210 
 
 dishonest use of improper adjections .... 163 
 
 dishonesty and demagogy 170 
 
 dodging 48 
 
 double meaning 139 
 
 exhausting lachrymal glands on guilty 
 
 wretches and law breakers 113 
 
 fallacy 61, 186 
 
 false accusations 210 
 
 false, foolish and reckless statements 156 
 
 flippancy and verbal flummery 150 
 
 forcing himself to the front and confusing 
 
 investigation 167 
 
 fraud 107 
 
 galvanizing old objections 223 
 
 gas and gush 223 
 
 giving an impression dishonestly 46 
 
 glib talk 162, 222 
 
 that great and learned theologians do not care 
 
 to meet him 146 
 
 of idiocy 7 
 
 ignorance 44, 167, 216 
 
 and brazen egotism 216 
 
 and garrulous talk 167 
 
 and dishonesty 156 
 
 ignorance and superficiality 223 
 
 ignorance and malice 222 
 
 of metaphysics 216 
 
 ignoring other parts of argument 121 
 
 ignorant blundering 152 
 
 and malicious falsehood 222 
 
 impertinence 131 
 
 imposing on readers 4&
 
 230 INDEX 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Charge of Infidel brass 135 
 
 infinite self-asserting capacity 36 
 
 intellectual staphyloma 36 
 
 blindness 218 
 
 imbecility 85 
 
 interpolation 146 
 
 juggling words 220 
 
 lacking breadth and comprehensiveness . . 15 
 low trickery, deceit, flattery of popular 
 
 passions and errors 107 
 
 low and venomous epithets 108 
 
 loquacity 26 
 
 and demagogy 170 
 
 lugubrious cant 70 
 
 lying 7, 82, 107, 146(2), 154(3), 214, 221, 222 
 
 many bad methods 160 
 
 , mawkish sentimentality 60 
 
 meaningless verbiage 43 
 
 metaphysical sky-rocketing 29 
 
 misinterpreting nature 15 
 
 misrepresentation 72, 78, 79, 80, 82, 101, 105, 
 
 106, 107, 112, 119, 123, 146, 191, 209 
 
 misrepresentation, puttying and patching . 107 
 
 miserable failure 154 
 
 misunderstanding and misinterpreting 
 
 Moses and revealed religion 15 
 
 narrowness, &c 15 
 
 noticing one part and ignoring the other . . 121 
 
 offering crude notions in 
 
 by Patrick Cronin in strings of epithets 121 
 
 of petty chicanery 103 
 
 placing too much reliance on saying and 
 
 placing too little on proving 160 
 
 pitiable begging of the whole question 47 
 
 plagiarism n 
 
 playing counsel and judge at the same 
 
 time ill 
 
 playing upon words 217 
 
 presuming to criticize, &c 15 
 
 pretence of being a philosopher 147 
 
 profligacy of statement 222
 
 INDEX , 231 
 k PAGES 
 
 Change of purpose and meaning 219 
 
 Charge of ribaldry 7 
 
 sacrificing dignity and veracity 156 
 
 self-contradiction 47, 143 
 
 sentimental gush 80 
 
 shameless misrepresentation of history ... 53 
 
 showing his ears 49 
 
 silly trash as arguments 143 
 
 softest and silliest kind of gush 61 
 
 soft, indefinite generalities 189 
 
 sophistry and double meaning 139 
 
 speculation and turning falsehood into 
 
 dollars 107 
 
 standards of right and wrong, Having 
 
 no 209 
 
 standards of right and wrong, Having 
 
 half a dozen 209, 210 
 
 suppression of explanation of command . . 49 
 taking fling at theologians over Black's 
 
 ishoulders 107 
 
 taking dishonest advantage of ignorant ad- 
 mirers 142 
 
 torturing the truth out of shape 40 
 
 travestry of the gospels 148 
 
 trickery 2,10, 216,) 247 
 
 trifling 221 
 
 trying to reason without a standing of 
 
 truth and morality 208 
 
 trotting out infants 67 
 
 turning falsehood into dollars 107 
 
 twisting arguments out of shape 121 
 
 uncandor 107 
 
 unfairness to antagonist 107 
 
 unmitigated hypocrisy 219 
 
 unreliability 15 
 
 unscrupulousness 222 
 
 untrustworthy definitions 85 
 
 unworthy play upon words 216 
 
 use of words with a purpose 22 
 
 use of the word vacuum in gross material 
 
 sense . 20
 
 232 INDEX 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Charge of verbal thimble-rigging 41 
 
 varnishing and revamping old objections . 150 
 
 whining and whimpering 108 
 
 whimpering -107 
 
 wordspinning and gush 170 
 
 wounding and lacerating 7 
 
 wagging tongue against Christianity for 
 
 dollars 147 
 
 Christian belief 169 
 
 Christianity and common sense 69-70 
 
 Coarseness, Extreme 53 
 
 Code of Moses 9 
 
 Commandments , 48 
 
 Confounding judgment and deduction 14 
 
 Conscience and perception 191 
 
 Conscience and definition of 196, 197 
 
 Consequents 198 
 
 Created or self -existent universe 18 
 
 Creative act 31 
 
 Crime the result of liberty 34 
 
 Defence of the civil war 73 
 
 Definitions 49, 84, 87, 90, 104, 196, 222 
 
 Denial that Matthew, Mark and Luke gave the 
 
 last words of Jesus 146 
 
 Denial that last words were reported 154 
 
 of lying spirits 54 
 
 the ascensions testimony 148 
 
 the right to express thot 24 
 
 Black's saying God established slavery 
 
 in Judea 114 
 
 Black's saying the anti-slavery move- 
 ment began only forty years ago 115 
 
 that Black thot the Old and New Testa- 
 ments harmonious (see 117) 112 
 
 that Black said rapid rise of Christianity 
 
 proved its divine character 119 
 
 that anyone held above position 119 
 
 Design argument 28 
 
 Design in suffering > 32 
 
 Difference and contradictions in gospels 160 
 
 Disciples 135
 
 INDEX 233 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Disciples of liberty and license 61 
 
 Disagreement of genealogies, old objection 149 
 
 Disagreement of genealogies, new objection 152 
 
 Doctrine of gospels 154 
 
 Doing as your enemies did 66-67 
 
 Epictetus 214 
 
 Estimates of other rationalist authors 7, 168 
 
 Eternal act 19 
 
 Eternity of the universe n 
 
 Eusebius 138 
 
 Evasion 100, 137, 171 (2), 177, 188, 219 
 
 Everlasting punishment 220 
 
 Ex-parte philosophy 81 
 
 Expressed in words 16 
 
 Facts legal tender 39, 43, 45 
 
 Facts of our being 164 
 
 Fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind 53 
 
 Fenelon -* 134 
 
 Finite and infinite 39 
 
 Fisher's article in North American Review 6 
 
 Forces and laws of nature 16 
 
 Founders of Christianity 123 
 
 Free will and liberty 91 
 
 Gabbling like an idiot 25 
 
 Gathering an idea 13 
 
 Genealogies of Jesus 149 
 
 Generations, Two measurings of 150 
 
 Gospels, Contradiction of 160 
 
 Guiteau 25, 89, 127, 197, 198 
 
 Harmony with your surroundings 166 
 
 Hooker 134 
 
 Idiots and philosophers 174 
 
 "If actions were not actions" 202 
 
 Implications of damnation of philosophers 174 
 
 Infants 67 
 
 Infidels charged with being dishonest or fools 169 
 
 Infinite, Explanation of the -.* I2 
 
 Ingersoll compared to end man in minstrel show . . 183 
 
 Insinuation that Ingersoll lies 55, 141, 154 
 
 is a sharper of the 
 
 meanest order 107
 
 234 INDEX 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Insinuation that Ingersoll is a clown 68 
 
 lies, misrepresents and 
 
 blasphemes 83 
 
 has instincts of a 
 
 slave 85 
 
 should have his ears 
 boxed, if boxes large 
 enough could be 
 
 found 127 
 
 is too smart 143 
 
 stole truths, &c. ; tried 
 
 to make believe, &c . 214 
 is descendant of false 
 
 prophets 54 
 
 of jokes, lies, sophistry and cunning . . 161 
 
 that Ingersoll is worse than Judas . . 178 
 
 boasted of crime 178 
 
 is egotistic 33 
 
 is insane 36 
 
 is criminal 222 
 
 Inspiration 162 
 
 Insults, A few of the 7, 52, 58, 23, 64, 68, 81, 154, 162 
 
 187, 191, 216, 222 (many), 223 
 
 Josephus 138 
 
 Judas 175 
 
 Judging and thinking 40 
 
 Jurisdiction or capacity, Neither 38 
 
 Justice 185 
 
 Justification of polygamy 192 
 
 Knowledge of human nature 49 
 
 Lacy's answer to Lambert 6 
 
 Lambert jokes 29, 45, 51, 61, 62, 67, 68(2), 127, 131 
 
 151, 169 
 
 Larceny 203 
 
 Last words of Jesus 144 
 
 Last words of Jesus on the cross 154 
 
 Law and force 13 
 
 Lazarus 136 
 
 Lecturers 33, 54, 178, 183 
 
 Lecture bureaus 179 
 
 Liberty 89
 
 INDEX 235 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Liberty, crime the result of , 34 
 
 of conscience 59 
 
 and free will 54 
 
 according to Lambert 86, 91, 92, 99 
 
 Lunatics best reasoners 24 
 
 Lunatics, fools and philosophers 90 
 
 Lying spirits 54 
 
 Man's destiny 34 
 
 Men, good, bad and mistaken 123 
 
 Metaphysics, Question of 183 
 
 Metewand of God 73, 76, 78 
 
 of Greeks and Romans 211 
 
 Middle course between idiocy and philosophy 174 
 
 Mind and reason 47 
 
 Mind, The human 66 
 
 Minstrel show, New idea of 157, 183 
 
 Miracles 130 
 
 Lacy 132 
 
 facts 130 
 
 Misrepresentation of Ingersoll 46,81, 164, 190 
 
 Mistaken, honestly and dishonestly 125 
 
 Murder of millions 53 
 
 Murderers 208 
 
 Non-resistance 188 
 
 Nothing new 9 
 
 Overt acts 58, 105 
 
 Overcoming obstacles 120 
 
 Paige's commentaries on genealogy of Jesus 152 
 
 Paige's commentaries on sacrifice of Jesus 176 
 
 Pardoning power of Governor 158 
 
 Penalty fixes plane of crime 50 
 
 Persecution 101, 105 
 
 Philosophers of liberty of thot 61 
 
 Plan and design (Ingersoll) , 31 
 
 Polygamy 101 
 
 Popular lecturers 54 
 
 Powder, Ineffectual 119 
 
 Praise of other rationalist authors 8 
 
 Proof of the deluge 161 
 
 Proofs 10, 12, 29, 38, 44, 117, 127, 131 
 
 Prosperity 205
 
 236 INDEX 
 
 PAGES 
 
 Proudhon 207 
 
 Purcell 133 
 
 Reasoning, Sample of 127 
 
 Rejudging the justice of God 38 
 
 Responsibility 199 
 
 Result and effect 47 
 
 Revelation the guide * 48 
 
 Ridicule of religion 7 
 
 Right to express thot on the infinite 24 
 
 Rights of women 95 
 
 Rise of other religions 118 
 
 Rousseau 94 
 
 Roving lecturers 52 
 
 Silence and subjection excellent for all 96 
 
 Slavery 10, 72, 75, 77, 103, ill, 115, 193 
 
 permitted 103 
 
 not an evil per se 114 
 
 Sneers and insults, A few of the 36, 107, 108 
 
 Sort of thing they like 45 
 
 Standard of right and wrong 191 
 
 Statements made and statements not made 141 
 
 Subordination 84 
 
 Suffering not designed 33 
 
 Superior man 77 
 
 Suicide 178 
 
 Surroundings and facts of being 164 
 
 "Tactics of Infidels" 7 
 
 Testimonials for the "Notes" 45 
 
 Test of truth 164 
 
 Toleration, Theories of 58 
 
 Tooley Street tailors 138 
 
 Treason 58, 60, 105, 169, 175 
 
 Truth only has the right of expression 24 
 
 Vacuum 20 
 
 Vague rule 195 
 
 Verbal expressions 16 
 
 Verbiage, Meaningless 43 
 
 Vicarious suffering 186 
 
 War, Ingersoll's defence of civil 73 
 
 Warfare, Barbarous 67 
 
 Warfare. God's laws of 71
 
 INDEX 237 
 PAGES 
 
 Wars of extermination 101, 104, 192 
 
 conquest 78 
 
 Water runs down hill 14 
 
 Way to be saved 164 
 
 What no Christian denies 102 
 
 Whims the will 63 
 
 Whom Ingersoll answered 224 
 
 Why we must not torture prisoners 69 
 
 Will of God 193 
 
 the gods 211 
 
 Witnesses, Inspired 138 
 
 Witchcraft 124 
 
 Worse than Judas 178
 
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