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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lectures of Col. R.G. Ingersoll - Latest
+by Col. Robert Green Ingersoll
+#2 in our series by Col. Robert Green Ingersoll
+
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+Title: Lectures of Col. R.G. Ingersoll - Latest
+
+Author: Col. Robert Green Ingersoll
+
+Release Date: June, 2005 [EBook #8389]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on July 6, 2003]
+[Date last updated: August 1, 2004]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LECTURES OF COL. INGERSOLL, V2 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jake Jaqua
+
+
+
+
+Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll--Latest
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+   Thomas Paine
+   Liberty of Man, Woman and Child
+   Orthodoxy
+   Blasphemy
+   Some Reasons Why
+   Intellectual Development
+   Human Rights
+   Talmagian Theology (Second Lecture)
+   Talmagian Theology (Third Lecture)
+   Religious Intolerance
+   Hereafter
+   Review of His Reviewers
+   How the Gods Grow
+   The Religion of our Day
+   Heretics And Heresies
+   The Bible
+   Voltaire
+   Myth and Miracle
+   Ingersoll's Letter, on The Chinese God
+   Ingersoll's Letter, Is Suicide a Sin?
+   Ingersoll's Letter, The Right To One's Life
+
+
+
+
+Ingersoll's Lecture on Thomas Paine--Delivered in Central Music Hall,
+Chicago, January 29, 1880 (From the Chicago Times, Verbatim Report)
+
+
+
+Ladies and Gentlemen:--It so happened that the first speech--the very
+first public speech I ever made--took occasion to defend the memory of
+Thomas Paine.
+
+I did it because I had read a little something of the history of my
+country.  I did it because I felt indebted to him for the liberty I then
+enjoyed--and whatever religion may be true, ingratitude is the blackest
+of crimes.  And whether there is any God or not, in every star that
+shines, gratitude is a virtue.
+
+The man who will tell the truth about the dead is a good man, and for
+one, about this man, I intend to tell just as near the truth as I can.
+
+Most history consists in giving the details of things that never
+happened--most biography is usually the lie coming from the mouth of
+flattery, or the slander coming from the lips of malice, and whoever
+attacks the religion of a country will, in his turn, be attacked.
+Whoever attacks a superstition will find that superstition defended by
+all the meanness of ingenuity.  Whoever attacks a superstition will find
+that there is still one weapon left in the arsenal of Jehovah--slander.
+
+I was reading, yesterday, a poem called the "Light of Asia," and I read
+in that how a Boodh seeing a tigress perishing of thirst, with her mouth
+upon the dry stone of a stream, with her two cubs sucking at her dry and
+empty dugs, this Boodh took pity upon this wild and famishing beast,
+and, throwing from himself the Yellowrobe of his order, and stepping
+naked before this tigress, said:  "Here is meat for you and your cubs."
+In one moment the crooked daggers of her claws ran riot in his flesh,
+and in another he was devoured.  Such, during nearly all the history of
+this world, has been the history of every man who has stood in front of
+superstition.
+
+Thomas Paine, as has been so eloquently said by the gentleman who
+introduced me, was a friend of man, and whoever is a friend of man is
+also a friend of God--if there is one.  But God has had many friends who
+were the enemies of their fellow-men.  There is but one test by which to
+measure any man who has lived.  Did he leave this world better than he
+found it?  Did he leave in this world more liberty?  Did he leave in
+this world more goodness, more humanity, than when he was born?  That is
+the test.  And whatever may have been the faults of Thomas Paine, no
+American who appreciates liberty, no American who believes in true
+democracy and pure republicanism, should ever breathe one word against
+his name.  Every American, with the divine mantle of charity, should
+cover all his faults, and with a never-tiring tongue should recount his
+virtues.
+
+He was a common man.  He did not belong to the aristocracy.  Upon the
+head of his father God had never poured the divine petroleum of
+authority.  He had not the misfortune to belong to the upper classes.
+He had the fortune to be born among the poor and to feel against his
+great heart the throb of the toiling and suffering masses.  Neither was
+it his misfortune to have been educated at Oxford.  What little sense he
+had was not squeezed out at Westminster.  He got his education from
+books.  He got his education from contact with fellow-men, and he
+thought, and a man is worth just what nature impresses upon him.  A man
+standing by the sea, or in a forest, or looking at a flower, or hearing
+a poem, or looking in the eyes of the woman he loves, receives all that
+he is capable of receiving--and if he is a great man the impression is
+great, and he uses it for the purpose of benefiting his fellow-man.
+
+Thomas Paine was not rich, he was poor, and his father before him was
+poor, and he was raised a sailmaker, a very lowly profession, and yet
+that man became one of the mainstays of liberty in this world.  At one
+time he was an excise man, like Burns.  Burns was once--speak it softly
+--a gauger--and yet he wrote poems that will wet the cheek of humanity
+with tears as long as the world travels in its orb around the sun.
+
+Poverty was his brother, necessity his master.  He had more brains than
+books; more courage than politeness; more strength than polish.  He
+had no veneration for old mistakes, no admiration for ancient lies.  He
+loved the truth for truth's sake and for man's sake.  He saw oppression
+on every hand, injustice everywhere, hypocrisy at the altar, venality on
+the bench, tyranny on the throne, and with a splendid courage he
+espoused the cause of the weak against the strong, of the enslaved many
+against the titled few.
+
+In England he was nothing.  He belonged to the lower classes--that is,
+the useful people.  England depended for her prosperity upon her
+mechanics and her thinkers, her sailors and her workers, and they are
+the only men in Europe who are not gentlemen.  The only obstacles in the
+way of progress in Europe were the nobility and the priests, and they
+are the only gentlemen.
+
+This, and his native genius, constituted his entire capital, and he
+needed no more.  He found the colonies clamoring for justice; whining
+about their grievances; upon their knees at the foot of the throne,
+imploring that mixture of idiocy and insanity, George III., by the grace
+of God, for a restoration of their ancient privileges.  They were not
+endeavoring to become free men, but were trying to soften the heart of
+their master.  They were perfectly willing to make brick if Pharaoh
+would furnish the straw.  The colonists wished for, hoped for, and
+prayed for reconciliation.  They did not dream of independence.
+
+Paine gave to the world his "Common Sense."  It was the first argument
+for separation; the first assault upon the British form of government;
+the first blow for a republic, and it aroused our fathers like a
+trumpet's blast.  He was the first to perceive the destiny of the new
+world.  No other pamphlet ever accomplished such wonderful results.  It
+was filled with arguments, reasons, persuasions, and unanswerable logic.
+It opened a new world.  It filled the present with hope and the future
+with honor. Everywhere the people responded, and in a few months the
+Continental Congress declared the colonies free and independent states.
+A new nation was born.
+
+It is simple justice to say that Paine did more to cause the Declaration
+of Independence than any other man.  Neither should it be forgotten that
+his attacks upon Great Britain were also attacks upon monarchy, and
+while he convinced the people that the colonies ought to separate from
+the mother country, he also proved to them that a free government is the
+best that can be instituted among men.
+
+In my judgment Thomas Paine was the best political writer that ever
+lived.  "What he wrote was pure nature, and his soul and his pen ever
+went together."  Ceremony, pageantry, and all the paraphernalia of power
+had no effect upon him.  He examined into the why and wherefore of
+things.  He was perfectly radical in his mode of thought.  Nothing short
+of the bed-rock satisfied him. His enthusiasm for what he believed to be
+right knew no bounds. During all the dark scenes of the revolution never
+for a moment did he despair.  Year after year his brave words were
+ringing through the land, and by the bivouac fires the weary soldiers
+read the inspiring words of "Common Sense," filled with ideas sharper
+than their swords, and consecrated themselves anew to the cause of
+freedom.
+
+Paine was not content with having aroused the spirit of independence,
+but he gave every energy of his soul to keep that spirit alive.  He was
+with the army.  He shared its defeats, its dangers, and its glory.  When
+the situation became desperate, when gloom settled upon all, he gave
+them the "Crisis."    It was a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by
+night, leading the way to freedom, honor, and glory.  He shouted to them
+"These are the times that try men's souls."  The summer soldier and the
+sunshine patriot, will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his
+country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man
+and woman.
+
+To those who wished to put the war off to some future day, with a lofty
+and touching spirit of self-sacrifice, he said:  "Every generous parent
+should say: 'If there must be war, let it be in my day, that my child
+may have peace'."  To the cry that Americans were rebels, he replied:
+"He that rebels against reason is a real rebel; but he that in defense
+of reason rebels against tyranny, has a better title to 'Defender of the
+Faith' than George III."
+
+Some said it was to the interest of the colonies to be free. Paine
+answered this by saying:  "To know whether it be the interest of the
+continent to be independent, we need ask only this simple, easy
+question:  'Is it the interest of man to be a boy all his life?"'  He
+found many who would listen to nothing, and to them he said:  "That to
+argue with a man who has renounced his reason is like giving medicine to
+the dead."  This sentiment ought to adorn the walls of every orthodox
+church.
+
+There is a world of political wisdom in this: "England lost her liberty
+in a long chain of right reasoning from wrong principles;"  and there is
+real discrimination in saying:  "The Greeks and Romans were strongly
+possessed of the spirit of liberty, but not the principles, for at the
+time they were determined not to be slaves themselves, they employed
+their power to enslave the rest of mankind."
+
+In his letter to the British people, in which he tried to convince them
+that war was not to their interest, occurs the following passage brimful
+of common sense:  "War never can be the interest of a trading nation any
+more than quarreling can be profitable to a man in business.  But to
+make war with those who trade with us is like setting a bull-dog upon a
+customer at the shop door."
+
+The Writings of Paine fairly glitter with simple, compact, logical
+statements that carry conviction to the dullest and most prejudicial.
+He had the happiest possible way of putting the case, in asking
+questions in such a way that they answer themselves, and in stating his
+premises so clearly that the deduction could not be avoided.
+
+Day and night he labored for America.  Month after month, year after
+year, he gave himself to the great cause, until there was "a government
+of the people and for the people," and until the banner of the stars
+floated over a continent redeemed and consecrated to the happiness of
+mankind.
+
+At the close of the Revolution no one stood higher in America than
+Thomas Paine.  The best, the wisest, the most patriotic were his friends
+and admirers; and had he been thinking only of his own good he might
+have rested from his toils and spent the remainder of his life in
+comfort and in ease.  He could have been what the world is pleased to
+call "respectable."  He would have died surrounded by clergymen,
+warriors, and statesmen, and at his death there would have been an
+imposing funeral, miles of carriages, civic societies, salvos of
+artillery, a Nation in mourning, and, above all, a splendid monument
+covered with lies. He choose rather to benefit mankind.  At that time
+the seeds sown by the great infidels were beginning to bear fruit in
+France. The eighteenth century was crowning its gray hairs with the
+wreath of progress.
+
+On every hand science was bearing testimony against the church. Voltaire
+had filled Europe with light.  D'Holbach was giving to the elite of
+Paris the principles contained in his "System of Nature."  The
+encyclopaedists had attacked superstition with information for the
+masses.  The foundation of things began to be examined.  A few had the
+courage to keep their shoes on and let the bush burn.  Miracles began to
+get scarce.  Everywhere the people began to inquire.  America had set an
+example to the world.  The word liberty was in the mouths of men, and
+they began to wipe the dust from their superstitious knees.  The dawn of
+a new day had appeared.   Thomas Paine went to France.  Into the new
+movement he threw all his energies.  His fame had gone before him, and
+he was welcomed as a friend of the human race and as a champion of free
+government.
+
+He had never relinquished his intention of pointing out to his
+countrymen the defects, absurdities, and abuse of the English
+government.  For this purpose; he composed and published his greatest
+political work. "The Rights of Man."  This work should be read by every
+man and woman.  It is concise, accurate, rational, convincing, and
+unanswerable.  It shows great thought, an intimate knowledge of the
+various forms of government, deep insight into the very springs of human
+action, and a courage that compels respect and admiration.  The most
+difficult political problems are solved in a few sentences.  The
+venerable arguments in favor of wrong are refuted with a question--
+answered with a word.  For forcible illustration, apt comparison,
+accuracy and clearness of statement, and absolute thoroughness, it has
+never been excelled.
+
+The fears of the administration were aroused, and Paine was prosecuted
+for libel, and found guilty; and yet there is not a sentiment in the
+entire work that will not challenge the admiration of every civilized
+man.  It is a magazine of political wisdom, an arsenal of ideas, and an
+honor not only to Thomas Paine, but to nature itself.  It could have
+been written only by the man who had the generosity, the exalted
+patriotism, the goodness to say:  "The world is my country, and to do
+good my religion."
+
+There is in all the utterances of the world no grander, no sublimer
+sentiment.  There is no creed that can be compared with it for a moment.
+It should be wrought in gold, adorned with jewels, and impressed upon
+every human heart:  "The world is my country, and to do good my
+religion."
+
+In 1792, Paine was elected by the department of Calais as their
+representative in the National Assembly.  So great was his popularity in
+France, that he was selected about the same time by the people of no
+less than four departments.
+
+Upon taking his place in the assembly, he was appointed as one of a
+committee to draft a constitution for France.  Had the French people
+taken the advice of Thomas Paine, there would have been no "reign of
+terror."  The streets of Paris would not have been filled with blood in
+that reign of terror.  There were killed in the City of Paris not less,
+I think, than seventeen thousand people--and on one night, in the
+massacre of St. Bartholomew, there were killed, by assassination, over
+sixty thousand souls--men, women, and children.  The revolution would
+have been the grandest success of the world.  The truth is that Paine
+was too conservative to suit the leaders of the French revolution. They,
+to a great extent, were carried away by hatred and a desire to destroy.
+They had suffered so long, they had borne so much, that it was
+impossible for them to be moderate in the hour of victory.
+
+Besides all this, the French people had been so robbed by the
+government, so degraded by the church, that they were not fit material
+with which to construct a republic.  Many of the leaders longed to
+establish a beneficent and just government, but the people asked for
+revenge.  Paine was filled with a real love for mankind.  His
+philanthropy was boundless.  He wished to destroy monarchy--not the
+monarch.  He voted for the destruction of tyranny, and against the death
+of the tyrant.  He wished to establish a government on a new basis--one
+that would forget the past; one that would give privileges to none, and
+protection to all.
+
+In the assembly, where all were demanding the execution of the king,--
+where to differ with the majority was to be suspected, and where to be
+suspected was almost certain death--Thomas Paine had the courage, the
+goodness, and the justice to vote against death. To vote against the
+execution of the king was a vote against his own life.  This was the
+sublimity of devotion to principle.  For this he was arrested,
+imprisoned, and doomed to death.  There is not a theologian who has ever
+maligned Thomas Paine that has the courage to do this thing.  When Louis
+Capet was on trial for his life before the French convention, Thomas
+Paine had the courage to speak and vote against the sentence of death.
+In his speech I find the following splendid sentiments:
+
+
+"My contempt and hatred for monarchical governments are sufficiently
+well known, and my compassion for the unfortunate, friends or enemies,
+is equally profound.
+
+I have voted to put Louis Capet upon trial, because it was necessary to
+prove to the world the perfidy, the corruption, and the horror of the
+monarchical system.
+
+To follow the trade of a king destroys all morality, just as the trade
+of a jailer deadens all sensibility.
+
+Make a man a king today and tomorrow he will be a brigand.
+
+Had Louis Capet been a farmer, he might have been held in esteem by his
+neighbors, and his wickedness results from his position rather than from
+his nature.
+
+Let the French nation purge its territory of kings without soiling
+itself with their impure blood.
+
+Let the United States be the asylum of Louis Capet, where, in spite of
+the overshadowing miseries and crimes of a royal life, he will learn by
+the continual contemplation of the general prosperity that the true
+system of government is not that of kings, but of the people.
+
+I am an enemy of kings, but I can not forget that they belong to the
+human race.
+
+It is always delightful to pursue that course where policy and humanity
+are united.
+
+As France has been the first of all the nations of Europe to destroy
+royalty, let it be the first to abolish the penalty of death.
+
+As a true republican, I consider kings as more the objects of contempt
+than of vengeance."
+
+
+Search the records of the world and you will find but few sublimer acts
+than that of Thomas Paine voting against the king's death.  He, the
+hater of despotism, the abhorer of monarchy, the champion of the rights
+of man, the republican, accepting death to save the life of a deposed
+tyrant--of a throneless king!  This was the last grand act of his
+political life--the sublime conclusion of his political career.
+
+All his life he had been the disinterested friend of man.  He had
+labored not for money, not for fame, but for the general good. He had
+aspired to no office.  He had no recognition of his services, but had
+ever been content to labor as a common soldier in the army of progress,
+confining his efforts to no country, looking upon the world as his field
+of action.  Filled with a genuine love for the right, he found himself
+imprisoned by the very people he had striven to save.
+
+Had his enemies succeeded in bringing him to the block, he would have
+escaped the calumnies and the hatred of the Christian world. And let me
+tell you how neat they came getting him to the block. He was in prison,
+there was a door to his cell--it had two doors, a door that opened in
+and an iron door that opened out.  It was a dark passage, and whenever
+they concluded to cut a man's head off the next day, an agent went along
+and made a chalk mark upon the door where the poor prisoner was bound.
+Mr. Barlow, the American minister, happened to be with him and the outer
+door was shut, that is, open against the wall, and the inner door was
+shut, and when the man came along whose business it was to mark the door
+for death, he marked this door where Thomas Paine was, but he marked the
+door that was against the wall, so when it was shut the mark was inside,
+and the messenger of death passed by on the next day.  If that had
+happened in favor of some Methodist preacher, they would have clearly
+seen, not simply the hand of God, but both hands.  In this country, at
+least, he would have ranked with the proudest names.  On the anniversary
+of the Declaration, his name would have been upon the lips of all
+orators, and his memory in the hearts of all the people.
+
+Thomas Paine had not finished his career.  He had spent his life thus
+far in destroying the power of kings, and now turned his attention to
+the priests.  He knew that every abuse had been embalmed in scripture--
+that every outrage was in partnership with some holy text.  He knew that
+the throne skulked behind the altar, and both behind a pretended
+revelation of God.  By this time he had found that it was of little use
+to free the body and leave the mind in chains.  He had explored the
+foundations of despotism, and had found them infinitely rotten.  He had
+dug under the throne, and it occurred to him that he would take a look
+behind the altar.  The result of this investigation was given to the
+world in the "Age of Reason."  From the moment of its publication he
+became infamous.  He was calumniated beyond measure.   To slander him
+was to secure the thanks of the church.  All his services were instantly
+forgotten, disparaged, or denied.  He was shunned as though he had been
+a pestilence. Most of his old friends forsook him.  He was regarded as a
+moral plague, and at the bare mention of his name the bloody hands of
+the church were raised in horror.  He was denounced as the most
+despicable of men.
+
+Not content with following him to his grave, they pursued him after
+death with redoubled fury, and recounted with infinite gusto and
+satisfaction the supposed horrors of his death-bed: gloried in the fact
+that he was forlorn and friendless, and gloated like fiends over what
+they supposed to be the agonizing remorse of his lonely death.
+
+It is wonderful that all his services are thus forgotten.  It is amazing
+that one kind word did not fall from some pulpit; that some one did not
+accord to him, at least--honesty.  Strange that in the general
+denunciation some one did not remember his labor for liberty, his
+devotion to principle, his zeal for the rights of his fellow-men.  He
+had, by brave and splendid effort, associated his name with the cause of
+progress.  He had made it impossible to write the history of political
+freedom with his name left out.  He was one of the creators of light,
+one of the heralds of the dawn.  He hated tyranny in the name of kings,
+and in the name of God, with every drop of his noble blood.  He believed
+in liberty and justice, and in the sacred doctrine of human equality.
+Under these divine banners he fought the battle of his life.  In both
+worlds he offered his blood for the good of man.  In the wilderness of
+America, in the French assembly, in the sombre cell waiting for death,
+he was the same unflinching, unwavering friend of his race; the same
+undaunted champion of universal freedom.  And for this he has been
+hated; for this the church has violated even his grave.
+
+This is enough to make one believe that nothing is more natural than for
+men to devour their benefactors.  The people in all ages have crucified
+and glorified.  Whoever lifts his voice against abuses, whoever arraigns
+the past at the bar of the present, whoever asks the king to show his
+commission, or question the authority of the priest, will be denounced
+as the enemy of man and God.  In all ages reason has been regarded as
+the enemy of religion.  Nothing has been considered so pleasing to the
+Deity as a total denial of the authority of your own mind. Self-reliance
+has been thought deadly sin; and the idea of living and dying without
+the aid and consolation of superstition has always horrified the church.
+By some unaccountable infatuation, belief has been and still is
+considered of immense importance.  All religions have been based upon
+the idea that God will forever reward the true believer, and eternally
+damn the man who doubts or denies.  Belief is regarded as the one
+essential thing.  To practice justice, to love mercy, is not enough;
+you must believe in some incomprehensible creed.  You must say: "Once
+one is three, and three times one is one."  The man who practiced every
+virtue, but failed to believe, was execrated. Nothing so outrages the
+feelings of the church as a moral unbeliever, nothing so horrible as a
+charitable atheist.
+
+When Paine was born the world was religious, the pulpit was the real
+throne, and the churches were making every effort to crush out of the
+brain the idea that it had the right to think.  He again made up his
+mind to sacrifice himself.  He commenced with the assertion  "That any
+system of religion that had anything in it that shocks the mind of a
+child can not be a true system." What a beautiful, what a tender
+sentiment!  No wonder the church began to hate him.  He believed in one
+God, and no more.  After his life he hoped for happiness.  He believed
+that true religion consisted in doing justice, loving mercy; in
+endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy, and in offering to God
+the fruit of the heart. He denied the inspiration of the scriptures.
+This was his crime.
+
+He contended that it is a contradiction in terms to call anything a
+revelation that comes to us at secondhand, either verbally or in
+writing.  He asserted that revelation is necessarily limited to the
+first communication, and that after that it is only an account of
+something which another person says was a revelation to him.  We have
+only his word for it, as it was never made to us.  This argument never
+had been, and probably never will be answered.  He denied the divine
+origin of Christ and showed conclusively that the pretended prophecies
+of the Old Testament lead no reference to Him whatever.  And yet he
+believed that Christ was a virtuous and amiable man; that the morality
+he taught and practiced was of the most benevolent and elevated
+character, and that it had not been exceeded by any.  Upon this point he
+entertained the same sentiments now held by the Unitarians, and in fact
+by all the most enlightened Christians.
+
+In his time the church believed and taught that every word in the Bible
+was absolutely true.  Since his day it has been proven false in its
+cosmogony, false in its astronomy, false in its chronology and geology,
+false in its history, so far as the Old Testament is concerned, false in
+almost everything.  There are but few, if any, scientific men, who
+apprehend that the Bible is literally true.  Who on earth at this day
+would pretend to settle any scientific question by a text from the
+Bible?  The old belief is confined to the ignorant and zealous.  The
+church itself will before long be driven to occupy the position of
+Thomas Paine. The best minds of the orthodox world, today, are
+endeavoring to prove the existence of a personal Deity.  All other
+questions occupy a minor place.  You are no longer asked to swallow the
+Bible whole, whale, Jonah and all; you are simply required to believe
+in God and pay your pew-rent.
+
+There is not now an enlightened minister in the world who will seriously
+contend that Sampson's strength was in his hair, or that the
+necromancers of Egypt could turn water into blood, and pieces of wood
+into serpents.  These follies have passed away, and the only reason that
+the religious world can now have for disliking Paine, is that they have
+been forced to adopt so many of his opinions.
+
+Paine thought the barbarities of the Old Testament inconsistent with
+what he deemed the real character of God.  He believed the murder,
+massacre, and indiscriminate slaughter had never been commanded by the
+Deity.  He regarded much of the Bible as childish, unimportant and
+foolish.  The scientific world entertains the same opinion.  Paine
+attacked the Bible precisely in the same spirit in which he had attacked
+the pretensions of the kings.  He used the same weapons.  All the pomp
+in the world could not make him cower.  His reason knew no "Holy of
+Holies," except the abode of truth.  The sciences were then in their
+infancy.  The attention of the really learned had not been directed to
+an impartial examination of our pretended revelation. It was accepted by
+most as a matter of course.
+
+The church was all-powerful, and no one else, unless thoroughly imbued
+with the spirit of self-sacrifice, thought for a moment of disputing the
+fundamental doctrines of Christianity.  The infamous doctrine that
+salvation depends upon belief, upon a mere intellectual conviction, was
+then believed and preached.  To doubt was to secure the damnation of
+your soul.  This absurd and devilish doctrine shocked the common sense
+of Thomas Paine, and he denounced it with the fervor of honest
+indignation.  This doctrine, although infinitely ridiculous, has been
+nearly universal, and has been as hurtful as senseless.  For the
+overthrow of this infamous tenet, Paine exerted all his strength. He
+left few arguments to be used by those who should come after him, and he
+used none that have been refuted.
+
+The combined wisdom and genius of all mankind can not possibly conceive
+of an argument against liberty of thought.  Neither can they show why
+anyone should be punished, either in this world or another, for acting
+honestly in accordance with reason; and yet a doctrine with every
+possible argument against it has been, and still is, believed and
+defended by the entire orthodox world. Can it be possible that we have
+been endowed with reason simply that our souls may be caught in its
+toils and snares, that we may be led by its false and delusive glare out
+of the narrow path that leads to joy into the broad way of everlasting
+death?  Is it possible that we have been given reason simply that we may
+through faith ignore its deductions and avoid its conclusions? Ought the
+sailor to throw away his compass and depend entirely upon the fog?  If
+reason is not to be depended upon in matters of religion, that is to
+say, in respect to our duties to the Deity, why should it be relied upon
+in matters respecting the rights of our fellows?  Why should we throw
+away the law given to Moses by God Himself, and have the audacity to
+make some of our own?  How dare we drown the thunders of Sinai by
+calling the ayes and naes in a petty legislature?  If reason can
+determine what is merciful, what is just, the duties of man to man, what
+more do we want either in time or eternity?
+
+Down, forever down, with any religion that requires upon its ignorant
+altar its sacrifice of the goddess Reason; that compels her to abdicate
+forever the shining throne of the soul, strips from her form the
+imperial purple, snatches from her hand the sceptre of thought and makes
+her the bond-woman of senseless faith.
+
+If a man should tell you he had the most beautiful painting in the
+world, and after taking you where it was should insist upon having your
+eyes shut, you would likely suspect either that he had no painting or
+that it was some pitiful daub.  Should he tell you that he was a most
+excellent performer on the violin, and yet refused to play unless your
+ears were stopped, you would think, to say the least of it, that he had
+an odd way of convincing you of his musical ability.  But would this
+conduct be any more wonderful than that of a religionist who asks that
+before examining his creed you will have the kindness to throw away your
+reason?  The first gentleman says:  "Keep your eyes shut; my picture
+will bear everything but being seen.  Keep your ears stopped; my music
+objects to nothing but being heard."  The last says:  "Away with your
+reason; my religion dreads nothing but being understood."
+
+So far as I am concerned, I most cheerfully admit that most Christians
+are honest and most ministers sincere.  We do not attack them; we
+attack their creed.  We accord to them the same rights that we ask for
+ourselves.  We believe that their doctrines are hurtful, and I am going
+to do what I can against them.  We believe that the frightful text, "He
+that believes shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be
+damned," has covered the earth with blood.  You might as well say that
+all that have red hair shall be damned.  It has filled the heart with
+arrogance, cruelty, and murder.  It has caused the religious wars;
+bound hundreds of thousands to the stake; founded inquisitions; filled
+dungeons; invented instruments of torture; taught the mother to hate
+her child; imprisoned the mind; filled the world with ignorance;
+persecuted the lovers of wisdom; built the monasteries and convents;
+made happiness a crime, investigation a sin, and self-reliance a
+blasphemy.  It has poisoned the springs of learning; misdirected the
+energies of the world; filled all countries with want; housed the
+people in hovels; fed them with famine; and but for the efforts of a
+few brave infidels, it would have taken the world back to the midnight
+of barbarism, and left the heavens without a star.
+
+The maligners of Paine say that he had no right to attack this doctrine,
+because he was unacquainted with the dead languages, and, for this
+reason, it was a piece of pure impudence to investigate the scriptures.
+
+Is it necessary to understand Hebrew in order to know that cruelty is
+not a virtue, that murder is inconsistent with infinite goodness, and
+that eternal punishment can be inflicted upon man only by an eternal
+fiend?  Is it really essential to conjugate the Greek verbs before you
+can make up your mind as to the probability of dead people getting out
+of their graves?  Must one be versed in Latin before he is entitled to
+express his opinion as to the genuiness of a pretended revelation from
+God? Common sense belongs exclusively to no tongue.  Logic is not
+confirmed to, nor has it been buried with, the dead languages. Paine
+attacked the Bible as it is translated.  If the translation is wrong,
+let its defenders correct it.
+
+The Christianity of Paine's day is not the Christianity of our time.
+There has been a great improvement since then.  It is better now because
+there is less of it.  One hundred and fifty years ago the foremost
+preachers of our time--that gentleman who preaches in this magnificent
+hall--would have perished at the stake.  Lord, Lord, how John Calvin
+would have liked to have roasted this man, and the perfume of his
+burning flesh would have filled heaven with joy.  A Universalist would
+have been torn to pieces in England, Scotland, and America.  Unitarians
+would have found themselves in the stocks, pelted by the rabble with
+dead cats, after which their ears would have been cut off, their tongues
+bored, and their foreheads branded.  Less than one hundred and fifty
+years ago the following law was in force in Maryland:
+
+
+"Be it enacted by the right honorable, the lord proprietor, by and with
+the advice and consent of his lordship's governor, and the upper and
+lower houses of the assembly, and the authority of the same:  That if
+any person shall hereafter, within this province, willingly,
+maliciously, and advisedly, by writing or speaking, blaspheme or curse
+God, or deny our Savior, Jesus Christ, to be the son of God, or shall
+deny the Holy Trinity, the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost, or the
+God-head of any of the three persons, or the unity of the God-head,
+or shall utter any profane words concerning the Holy Trinity, or the
+persons thereof and shall therefore be convicted by verdict, shall, for
+the first offense, be bored through the tongue, and fined L20, to be
+levied on his body.  As for the second offense, the offender shall be
+stigmatized by burning in the forehead the letter B, and fined L40.  And
+that for the third offense, the offender shall suffer death without the
+benefit of clergy."
+
+
+The strange thing about this law is, that it has never been repealed,
+and was in force in the District of Columbia up to 1875.  Laws like this
+were in force in most of the colonies and in all countries where the
+church had power.
+
+In the Old Testament the death penalty was attached hundreds of
+offenses.  It has been the same in all Christian countries. Today, in
+civilized governments, the death penalty is attached only to murder and
+treason; and in some it has been entirely abolished.  What a commentary
+upon the divine systems of the World!
+
+In the days of Thomas Paine the church was ignorant, bloody, and
+relentless.  In Scotland the "kirk" was at the summit of its power.  It
+was a full sister of the Spanish Inquisition.  It waged war upon human
+nature.  It was the enemy of happiness, the hater of joy, and the
+despiser of liberty.  It taught parents to murder their children rather
+than to allow them to propagate error.  If the mother held opinions of
+which the infamous "kirk" disapproved, her children were taken from her
+arms, her babe from her very bosom, and she was not allowed to see them,
+or write them a word.  It would not allow ship-wrecked sailors to be
+rescued from drowning on Sunday.
+
+Oh, you have no idea what a muss it kicks up in heaven to have anybody
+swim on Sunday.  It fills all the wheeling worlds with sadness to see a
+boy in a boat, and the attention of the recording secretary is called to
+it.  In a voice of thunder they say, "Upset him!"  It sought to
+annihilate pleasure, to pollute the heart by filling it with religious
+cruelty and gloom, and to change mankind into a vast horde of pious,
+heartless fiends.  One of the most famous Scotch divines said:  "The
+kirk holds that religious toleration is not far from blasphemy."  And
+this same Scotch kirk denounced, beyond measure, the man who had the
+moral grandeur to say, "The world is my country, and to do good my
+religion."  And this same kirk abhorred the man who said, "Any system of
+religion that shocks the mind of a child can not be a true system."
+
+At that time nothing so delighted the church as the beauties of endless
+torment, and listening to the weak wailing of damned infants struggling
+in the slimy coils and poison folds of the worm that never dies.
+
+About the beginning of the nineteenth century a boy by the name of
+Thomas Aikenhead was indicted and tried at Edinburgh for having denied
+the inspiration of the scriptures, and for having, on several occasions,
+when cold, wished himself in hell that he might get warm.
+Notwithstanding the poor boy recanted and begged for mercy, he was found
+guilty and hanged.  His body was thrown in a hole at the foot of the
+scaffold and covered with stones, and though his mother came with her
+face covered with tears, begging for the corpse, she was denied and
+driven away in the name of charity.  That is religion, and in the velvet
+of their politeness there lurks the claws of the tiger.  Just give them
+the power and see how quick I would leave this part of the country.
+They know I am going to be burned forever; they know I am going to
+hell, but that don't satisfy them.  They want to give me a little
+foretaste here.
+
+Prosecutions and executions like these were common in every Christian
+country, and all of them based upon the belief that an intellectual
+conviction is a crime.  No wonder the church hated and traduced the
+author of the "Age of Reason."  England was filled with Puritan gloom
+and Episcopal ceremony.  The ideas of crazy fanatics and extravagant
+poets were taken as sober facts. Milton had clothed Christianity in the
+soiled and faded finery of the gods--had added to the story of Christ
+the fables of mythology.  He gave to the Protestant church the most
+outrageously material ideas of the Deity.  He turned all the angels into
+soldiers--made heaven a battle-field, put Christ in uniform, and
+described God as a militia-general.  His works were considered by the
+Protestants nearly as sacred as the Bible itself, and the imagination of
+the people was thoroughly polluted by the horrible imagery, the sublime
+absurdity of the blind Milton.
+
+Heaven and hell were realities--the judgment-day was expected--books of
+accounts would be opened.  Every man would hear the charges against him
+read.  God was supposed to sit upon a golden throne, surrounded by the
+tallest angels, with harps in their hands and crowns on their heads.
+The goats would be thrust into eternal fire on the left, while the
+orthodox sheep, on the right, were to gambol on sunny slopes forever and
+ever.  So all the priests were willing to save the sheep for half the
+wool.
+
+The nation was profoundly ignorant, and consequently extremely
+religious, so far as belief was concerned.  In Europe liberty was lying
+chained up in the inquisition, her white bosom stained with blood.  In
+the new world the Puritans had been hanging and burning in the name of
+God, and selling white Quaker children into slavery in the name of
+Christ, who said, "Suffer little children to come unto Me."
+
+Under such conditions progress was impossible.  Some one had to lead the
+way.  The church is and always has been, incapable of a forward
+movement.  Religion always looks back.  The church has already reduced
+Spain to a guitar, Italy to a hand-organ, and Ireland to exile.
+
+Some one, not connected with the church, had to attack the monster that
+was eating out the heart of the world.  Some one had to sacrifice
+himself for the good of all.  The people were in the most abject
+slavery; their manhood had been taken from them by pomp, by pageantry,
+and power.
+
+Progress is born of doubt and inquiry.  The church never doubts--never
+inquires.  To doubt is heresy--to inquire is to admit that you do not
+know--the church does neither.
+
+More than a century ago Catholicism, wrapped in robes red with the
+innocent blood of millions, holding in her frantic clutch crowns and
+scepters, honors and gold, the keys of heaven and hell, tramping beneath
+her feet the liberties of nations, in the proud movement of almost
+universal dominion, felt within her heartless breast the deadly dagger
+of Voltaire.  From that blow the church can never recover.  Livid with
+hatred she launched her eternal anathema at the great destroyer, and
+ignorant Protestants have echoed the curse of Rome.
+
+In our country the church was all-powerful, and, although divided into
+many sects, would instantly unite to repel a common foe.  Paine did for
+Protestantism what Voltaire did for Catholicism.  Paine struck the first
+blow.
+
+The "Age of Reason" did more to undermine the power of the Protestant
+church than all other books then known.  It furnished an immense amount
+of food for thought.  It was written for the average mind, and is a
+straightforward, honest investigation of the Bible, and of the Christian
+System.
+
+Paine did not falter from the first page to the last.  He gives you his
+candid thought, and candid thoughts are always valuable.
+
+The "Age of Reason" has liberalized us all.  It put arguments in the
+mouths of the people; it put the church on the defensive, it enabled
+somebody in every village to corner the parson; it made the world wiser
+and the church better; it took power from the pulpit and divided it
+among the pews.  Just in proportion that the human race has advanced,
+the church has lost its power. There is no exception to this rule.  No
+nation ever materially advanced that held strictly to the religion of
+its founders.  No nation ever gave itself wholly to the control of the
+church without losing its power, its honor, and existence.
+
+Every church pretends to have found the exact truth.  This is the end of
+progress.  Why pursue that which you have?  Why investigate when you
+know.  Every creed is a rock in running water; humanity sweeps by it.
+Every creed cries to the universe, "Halt!"  A creed is the ignorant past
+bullying the enlightened present.
+
+The ignorant are not satisfied with what can be demonstrated. Science is
+too slow for them, and so they invent creeds.  They demand completeness.
+A sublime segment, a grand fragment, are of no value to them.  They
+demand the complete circle--the entire structure.
+
+In music they want a melody with a recurring accent at measured periods.
+In religion they insist upon immediate answers to the questions of
+creation and destiny.  The alpha and omega of all things must be in the
+alphabet of their superstition.  A religion that can not answer every
+question, and guess every conundrum, is in their estimation, worse than
+worthless.  They desire a kind of theological dictionary--a religious
+ready reckoner, together with guide-boards at all crossings and turns.
+They mistake impudence for authority, solemnity for wisdom, and pathos
+for inspiration. The beginning and the end are what they demand.  The
+grand flight of the eagle is nothing to them.  They want the nest in
+which he was hatched, and especially the dry limb upon which he roosts.
+Anything that can be learned is hardly worth knowing.  The present is
+considered of no value in itself.  Happiness must not be expected this
+side of the clouds, and can only be attained by self-denial and faith;
+not self-denial for the good of others, but for the salvation of your
+own sweet self.
+
+Paine denied the authority of Bibles and creeds; this was his crime,
+and for this the world shut the door in his face and emptied its slops
+upon him from the windows.
+
+I challenge the world to show that Thomas Paine ever wrote one line, one
+word in favor of tyranny--in favor of immorality; one line, one word
+against what he believed to be for the highest and best interest of
+mankind; one line, one word against justice, charity, or liberty, and
+yet he has been pursued as though he had been a fiend from hell.  His
+memory had been execrated as though he had murdered some Uriah for his
+wife; driven some Hagar into the desert to starve with his child upon
+her bosom; defiled his own daughters; ripped open with the sword the
+sweet bodies of loving and innocent women; advised one brother to
+assassinate another; kept a harem with seven hundred wives and three
+hundred concubines, or had persecuted Christians even unto strange
+cities.
+
+The church has pursued Paine to deter others.  The church used painting,
+music, and architecture simply to degrade mankind.  But there are men
+that nothing can awe.  There have been at all times brave spirits that
+dared even the gods.  Some proud head has always been above the waves.
+Old Diogenes, with his mantle upon him, stiff and trembling with age,
+caught a small animal bred upon people, went into the Pantheon, the
+temple of the gods, and took the animal upon his thumb nail, and,
+pressing it with the other, "he sacrificed Diogenes to all the gods."
+Just as good as anything!  In every age some Diogenes has sacrificed to
+all the gods. True genius never cowers, and there is always some Samson
+feeling for the pillars of authority.
+
+Cathedrals and domes, and chimes and chants, temples frescoed and
+grained and carved, and gilded with gold, altars and tapers, and
+paintings of virgin and babe, censer and chalice, chasuble, paten and
+alb, organs, and anthems and incense rising to the winged and blest,
+maniple, anice and stole, crosses and crosiers, tiaras, and crowns,
+mitres and missals and masses, rosaries, relics and robes, martyrs and
+saints, and windows stained as with the blood of Christ, never, never
+for one moment awed the brave, proud spirit of the infidel.  He knew
+that all the pomp and glitter had been purchased with liberty, that
+priceless jewel of the soul. In looking at the cathedral he remembered
+the dungeon.  The music of the organ was not loud enough to drown the
+clank of fetters. He could not forget that the taper had lighted the
+fagot.  He knew that the cross adorned the hilt of the sword, and so
+where others worshiped, he wept and scorned.  He knew that across the
+open Bible lay the sword of war, and so where others worshiped he looked
+with scorn and wept.  And so it has been through all the ages gone.
+
+The doubter, the investigator, the infidel, have been the saviors of
+liberty.  The truth is beginning to be realized, and the truly
+intellectual are honoring the brave thinker of the past.  But the church
+is as unforgiving as ever, and still wonders why any infidel should be
+wicked enough to attempt to destroy her power. I will tell the church
+why I hate it.
+
+You have imprisoned the human mind; you have been the enemy of liberty;
+you have burned us at the stake, roasted us before slow fires, torn our
+flesh with irons; you have covered us with chains, treated us as
+outcasts; you have filled the world With fear; you have taken our
+wives and children from our arms; you have confiscated our property;
+you have denied us the right to testify in courts of justice; you have
+branded us with infamy; you have torn out our tongues; you have refused
+us burial.  In the name of your religion you have robbed us of every
+right; and after having inflicted upon us every evil that can be
+inflicted in this world, you have fallen upon your knees, and with
+clasped hands implored your God to finish the holy work in hell.
+
+Can you wonder that we hate your doctrines; that we despise your
+creeds; that we feel proud to know that we are beyond your power; that
+we are free in spite of you; that we can express our honest thought,
+and that the whole world is gradually rising into the blessed light?
+Can you wonder that we point with pride to the fact that infidelity has
+ever been found battling for the rights of man, for the liberty of
+conscience, and for the happiness of all?  Can you wonder that we are
+proud to know that we have always been disciples of reason and soldiers
+of freedom; that we have denounced tyranny and superstition, and have
+kept our hands unstained with human blood?
+
+I deny that religion is the end or object of this life.  When it is so
+considered it becomes destructive of happiness.  The real end of life
+is, happiness.  It becomes a hydra-headed monster, reaching in terrible
+coils from the heavens, and thrusting its thousand fangs into the
+bleeding, quivering hearts of men.  It devours their substance, builds
+palaces for God (who dwells not in temples made with hands), and allows
+His children to die in huts and hovels.  It fills the earth with
+mourning, heaven with hatred, the present with fear, and all the future
+with fear and despair.  Virtue is a subordination of the passion of the
+intellect.  It is to act in accordance with your highest convictions.
+It does not consist in believing, but in doing. This is the sublime
+truth that the infidels in all ages have uttered.  They have handed the
+torch from one to the other through all the years that have fled.  Upon
+the altar of reason they have kept the sacred fire, and through the long
+midnight of faith they fed the divine flame.  Infidelity is liberty;
+all superstition is slavery.  In every creed man is the slave of God,
+woman is the slave of man, and the sweet children are the slaves of all.
+We do not want creeds; we want some knowledge.  We want happiness.  And
+yet we are told by the church that we have accomplished nothing; that
+we are simply destroyers; that we tear down without building again.
+
+Is it nothing to free the mind?  Is it nothing to civilize mankind?  Is
+it nothing to fill the world with light, with discovery, with science?
+Is it nothing to dignify man and exalt the intellect.  Is it nothing to
+grope your way into the dreary prisons, the damp and dropping dungeons,
+the dark and silent cells of superstition, where the souls of men are
+chained to floors of stone; to greet them like a ray of light, like the
+song of a bird, the murmur of a stream, to see the dull eyes open and
+grow slowly bright; to feel yourself grasped by the shrunken and unused
+hands, and hear yourself thanked by a strange and hollow voice?  Is it
+nothing to conduct these souls gradually into the blessed light of day--
+to let them see again the happy fields, the sweet, green earth, and hear
+the everlasting music of the waves?  Is it nothing to make men wipe the
+dust from their swollen knees, the tears from their blanched and
+furrowed cheeks? Is it a small thing to reave the heavens of an
+insatiate monster and write upon the eternal dome, glittering with
+stars, the grand word liberty?  Is it a small thing to quench the thirst
+of hell with the holy tears of piety, break all the chains, put out the
+fires of civil war, stay the sword of the fanatic, and tear the bloody
+hands of the church from the white throat of progress?  Is it a small
+thing to make men truly free, to destroy the dogmas of ignorance,
+prejudice, and power, the poisoned fables of superstition, and drive
+from the beautiful face of the earth the fiend of fear?
+
+It does seem as though the most zealous Christians must at times
+entertain some doubt as to the divine origin of his religion. For
+eighteen hundred years the doctrine has been preached.  For more than a
+thousand years the church had, to a great extent, the control of the
+civilized world, and what has been the result? Are the Christian nations
+patterns of charity and forbearance? On the contrary, their principal
+business is to destroy each other.  More than five millions of
+Christians are trained and educated and drilled to murder their fellow-
+Christians.  Every nation is groaning under a vast debt incurred in
+carrying on war against other Christians, or defending itself from
+Christian assault.  The world is covered with forts to protect
+Christians from Christians, and every sea is covered with iron monsters
+ready to blow Christian brains into eternal froth.  Millions upon
+millions are annually expended in the effort to construct still more
+deadly and terrible engines of death.  Industry is crippled, honest toil
+is robbed, and even beggary is taxed to defray the expenses of Christian
+murder.  There must be some other way to reform this world.  We have
+tried creed and dogma, and fable, and they have failed--and they have
+failed in all the nations dead.
+
+Nothing but education--scientific education--can benefit mankind. We
+must find out the laws of nature and conform to them.  We need free
+bodies and free minds, free labor and free thought, chainless hands and
+fetterless brains.  Free labor will give us wealth.  Free thought will
+give us truth.  We need men with moral courage to speak and write their
+real thoughts, and to stand by their convictions, even to the very
+death.  We need have no fear of being too radical.  The future will
+verify all grand and brave predictions.  Paine was splendidly in advance
+of his time, but he was orthodox compared to the infidels of today.
+
+Science, the great iconoclast, has been very busy since 1809, and by the
+highway of progress are the broken images of the past.  On every hand
+the people advance.  The vicar of God has been pushed from the throne of
+the Caesars, and upon the roofs of the Eternal city falls once more the
+shadow of the eagle.  All has been accomplished by the heroic few.  The
+men of science have explored heaven and earth, and with infinite
+patience have furnished the facts.  The brave thinkers have aided them.
+The gloomy caverns of superstition have been transformed into temples of
+thought, and the demons of the past are the angels of today.
+
+Science took a handful of sand, constructed a telescope, and with it
+explored the starry depths of heaven.  Science wrested from the gods
+their thunderbolts; and now, the electric spark freighted with thought
+and love, flashes under all the waves of the sea.  Science took a tear
+from the cheek of unpaid labor, converted it into steam, and created a
+giant that turns with tireless arm the countless wheels of toil.
+
+Thomas Paine was one of the intellectual heroes, one of the men to whom
+we are indebted.  His name is associated forever with the great
+republic.  He lived a long, laborious, and useful life. The world is
+better for his having lived.  For the sake of truth he accepted hatred
+and reproach for his portion.  He ate the bitter bread of neglect and
+sorrow.  His friends were untrue to him because he was true to himself
+and true to them.  He lost the respect of what is called society, but
+kept his own.  His life is what the world calls failure, and what
+history calls success.
+
+If to love your fellow-men more than self is goodness, Thomas Paine was
+good.  If to be in advance of your time, to be a pioneer in the
+direction of right, is greatness, Thomas Paine was great.  If to avow
+your principles and discharge your duty in the presence of death is
+heroic, Thomas Paine was a hero.
+
+At the age of 73, death touched his tired heart.  He died in the land
+his genius defended, under the flag he gave to the skies. Slander can
+not touch him now; hatred can not reach him more. He sleeps in the
+sanctuary of the tomb, beneath the quiet of the stars.  A few more
+years, a few more brave men, a few more rays of light, and mankind will
+venerate the memory of him who said:
+
+"Any system of religion that shocks the mind of a child can not be a
+true system.  The world is my country, and to do good my religion."
+
+The next question is:  Did Thomas Paine recant?  Mr. Paine had
+prophesied that fanatics would crawl and cringe around him during his
+last moments.  He believed that they would put a lie in the mouth of
+death.  When the shadow of the coming dissolution was upon him, two
+clergymen, Messrs. Milledollar and Cunningham, called to annoy the dying
+man.  Mr. Cunningham had the politeness to say:  "You have now a full
+view of death; you can not live long; whoever does not believe in the
+Lord Jesus Christ, will assuredly be damned."  Mr. Paine replied:  "Let
+me have none of your popish stuff.  Get away with you.  Good morning."
+On another occasion a Methodist minister obtruded himself.  Mr. Willet
+Hicks was present.  The minister declared to Mr. Paine that "unless he
+repented of his unbelief he would be damned." Paine, although at the
+door of death, rose in his bed and indignantly requested the clergyman
+to leave the room.  On another occasion, two brothers by the name of
+Pigott sought to convert him.  He was displeased, and requested their
+departure. Afterward, Thomas Nixon and Capt. Daniel Pelton visited him
+for the express purpose of ascertaining whether he had, in any manner,
+changed his religious opinions.  They were assured, by the dying man
+that he still held the principles he had expressed in his writings.
+
+Afterward, these gentlemen, hearing that William Cobbet was about to
+write a life of Paine, sent him the following note:  I must tell you now
+that it is of great importance to find out whether Paine recanted.  If
+he recanted, then the Bible is true--you can rest assured that a spring
+of water gushed out of a dead dry bone.  If Paine recanted, there is not
+the slightest doubt about that donkey making that speech to Mr. Baalam--
+not the slightest--and if Paine did not recant, then the whole thing is
+a mistake.  I want to show that Thomas Paine died as he has lived, a
+friend of man and without superstition, and if you will stay here I will
+do it.
+
+
+"New York, April 21, 1818.--Sir:  Having been informed that you have a
+design to write a history of the life and writings of Thomas Paine, if
+you have been furnished with materials in respect to his religious
+opinions, or rather of his recantation of his former opinions before his
+death, all you have heard of his recanting is false.  Being aware that
+such reports would be raised after his death by fanatics who infested
+his house at the time it was expected he would die, we, the subscribers,
+intimate acquaintances of Thomas Paine since the year 1776, went to his
+house.  He was sitting up in a chair, and apparently in full vigor and
+use of all his mental faculties.  We interrogated him upon his religious
+opinions, and if he had changed his mind, or repented of anything he had
+said or wrote on that subject.  He answered, "Not at all," and appeared
+rather offended at our supposition that any change should take place in
+his mind.  We took down in writing the questions put to him and his
+answers thereto, before a number of persons then in his room, among whom
+were his doctor, Mrs. Bonneville, etc.  This paper is mislaid and can
+not be found at present, but the above is the substance, which can be
+attested by many living witnesses.--Thomas Nixon, Daniel Pelton"
+
+
+Mr. Jarvis, the artist, saw Mr. Paine one or two days before his death.
+To Mr. Jarvis he expressed his belief in his written opinions upon the
+subject of religion.  B.F. Haskin, an attorney of the City of New York,
+also visited him, and inquired as to his religious opinions.  Paine was
+then upon the threshold of death, but he did not tremble, he was not a
+coward.  He expressed his firm and unshaken belief in the religious
+ideas he had given to the world.
+
+Dr. Manly was with him when he spoke his last words.  Dr. Manly asked
+the dying man, and Dr. Manly was a Christian, if he did not wish to
+believe that Jesus was the Son of God, and the dying philosopher
+answered:  "I have no wish to believe on that subject."  Amasa
+Woodsworth sat up with Thomas Paine the night before his death.  In 1839
+Gilbert Vale, hearing that Woodsworth was living in or near Boston,
+visited him for the purpose of getting his statement, and the statement
+was published in The Beacon of June 5, 1830, and here it is:
+
+
+"We have just returned from Boston.  One object of our visit to that
+city was to see Mr. Amasa Woodsworth, an engineer, now retired in a
+handsome cottage and garden at East Cambridge, Boston.  This gentleman
+owned the house occupied by Paine at his death, while he lived next
+door.  As an act of kindness, Mr. Woodsworth visited Mr. Paine every day
+for six weeks before his death.  He frequently sat up with him and did
+so on the last two nights of his life.  He was always there with Dr.
+Manly, the physician, and assisted in removing Mr. Paine while his bed
+was prepared.  He was present when Dr. Manly asked Mr. Paine if he
+wished to believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God.  He said that
+lying on his back he used some action and with much emphasis replied:
+'I have no wish to believe on that subject.'  He lived some time after
+this, but was not known to speak, for he died tranquilly.  He accounts
+for the insinuating style of Dr. Manly's letter by stating that that
+gentleman, just after its publication, joined a church.  He informs us
+that he has openly proved the doctor for the falsity contained in the
+spirit of that letter, boldly declaring before Dr. Manly, who is still
+living, that nothing which he saw justified the insinuations.  Mr.
+Woodsworth assures us that he neither heard nor saw anything to justify
+the belief of any mental change in the opinions of Mr. Paine previous to
+his death; but that being very ill and in pain, chiefly arising from the
+skin being removed in some parts by long lying, he was generally too
+uneasy to enjoy conversation on abstract subjects.  This, then, is the
+best evidence that can be procured on this subject, and we publish it
+while the contravening parties are yet alive, and with the authority of
+Mr. Woodsworth.--Gilbert Vale"
+
+
+A few weeks ago I received the following letter, which confirms the
+statement of Mr. Vale:
+
+
+"Near Stockton, Cal., Greenwood Cottage, July 9. 1877.--Col. Ingersoll:
+In 1812 I talked with a gentleman in Boston.  I have forgotten his name;
+but he was then an engineer of the Charleston navy yard.  I am thus
+particular so that you can find his name on the books.  He told me that
+he nursed Thomas Paine in his last illness and closed his eyes when
+dead.  I asked him if he recanted and called upon God to save him.  He
+replied:  No; he died as he had taught.  He had a sore upon his side,
+and when we turned him it was very painful, and he would cry out, 'O
+God!' or something like that.  'But,' said the narrator, 'that was
+nothing, for he believed in a God.'  I told him that I had often heard
+it asserted from the pulpit that Mr. Paine had recanted in his last
+moment.  The gentleman said that it was not true, and he appeared to be
+an intelligent, truthful man.  With respect, I remain, etc., Philip
+Graves, M.D."
+
+
+The next witness is Willet Hicks, a Quaker preacher.  He says that
+during the last illness of Mr. Paine he visited him almost daily, and
+that Paine died firmly convinced of the truth of the religious opinions
+that he had given to his fellow-men.  It was to this same Willet Hicks
+that Paine applied for permission to be buried in the cemetery of the
+Quakers.  Permission was refused. This refusal settles the question of
+recantation.  If he had recanted, of course there would have been no
+objection to his body being buried by the side of the best hypocrites in
+the earth.  If Paine recanted, why should he denied "a little earth for
+charity?"  Had he recanted, it would have been regarded as a vast and
+splendid triumph for the gospel.  It would, with much noise and pomp and
+ostentation, have been heralded about the world.
+
+Here is another letter:
+
+"Peoria, Ill., Oct. 8, 1877.--Robert G. Ingersoll--Esteemed Friend:  My
+parents were Friends (Quakers).  My father died when I was very young.
+The elderly and middle-aged Friends visited at my mother's house.  We
+lived in the City of New York.  Among the number I distinctly remember
+Elias Hicks, Willet Hicks, and a Mr. -- Day, who was a bookseller in
+Pearl St.  There were many others whose names I do not now remember.
+The subject of the recantation of Thomas Paine of his views about the
+Bible in his last illness, or any other time, was discussed by them in
+my presence at different times.  I learned from them that some of them
+had attended upon Thomas Paine in his last sickness, and ministered to
+his wants up to the time of his death.  And upon the question of whether
+he did recant there was but one expression.  They all said that he did
+not recant in any manner. I often heard them say they wished he had
+recanted.  In fact, according to them, the nearer he approached death
+the more positive he appeared to be in his convictions.  These
+conversations were from 1820 to 1822.  I was at that time from ten to
+twelve years old, but these conversations impressed themselves upon me
+because many thoughtless people then blamed the society of Friends for
+their kindness to that "arch-infidel," Thomas Paine.  Truly yours, A.C.
+Hankenson"
+
+
+A few days ago I received the following:
+
+
+"Albany, N.Y., Sept. 27, 1877.--Dear Sir:  It is over twenty years ago
+that, professionally, I made the acquaintance of John Hogeboom, a
+justice of the peace of the County Rensselaer, New York.  He was then
+over seventy years of age, and had the reputation of being a man of
+candor and integrity.  He was a great admirer of Paine.  He told me he
+was personally acquainted with him, and used to see him frequently
+during the last years of his life in the City of New York, where
+Hogeboom then resided.  I asked him if there was any truth in the charge
+that Paine was in the habit of getting    drunk.  He said that it was
+utterly false; that he never heard of such a thing during the lifetime
+of Mr. Paine, and did not believe anyone else did.  I asked him about
+the recantation of his religious opinions on his deathbed, and the
+revolting deathbed scenes that the world heard so much about.  He said
+there was no truth in them; that he had received his information from
+persons who attended Paine in his last illness, and that he passed
+peacefully, as we may say, in the sunshine of a great soul.  Yours
+truly, W.J. Hilton"
+
+
+The witnesses by whom I substantiate the fact that Thomas Paine did not
+recant, and that he died holding the religious opinions he had published
+are:
+
+1.  Thomas Nixon, Capt. Daniel Pelton, B.F. Haskin.  These gentlemen
+visited him during his last illness for the purpose of ascertaining
+whether he had, in any respect, changed his views upon religion.  He
+told them that he had not.
+
+2.  James Cheetham.  This man was the most malicious enemy Mr. Paine
+had, and yet he admits that "Thomas Paine died placidly, and almost
+without a struggle."--Life of Thomas Paine, by James Cheetham.
+
+3.  The ministers, Milledollar and Cunningham.  These gentleman told Mr.
+Paine that if he died without believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, he
+would be damned, and Paine replied:  "Let me have none of your popish
+stuff.  Good morning."--Sherwin's Life of Paine, page 220.
+
+4.  Mrs. Hedden.  She told these same preachers, when they attempted to
+obtrude themselves upon Mr. Paine again, that the attempt to convert Mr.
+Paine was useless; "that if God did not change his mind, no human power
+could."
+
+5.  Andrew A. Dean.  This man lived upon Paine's farm, at New Rochelle,
+and corresponded with him upon religious subjects.--Paine's Theological
+Works, page 308.
+
+6.  Mr. Jarvis, the artist with whom Paine lived.  He gives an account
+of an old lady coming to Paine, and telling him that God Almighty had
+sent her to tell him that unless he repented and believed in the blessed
+savior he would be damned.  Paine replied that God would not send such a
+foolish old woman with such an impertinent message.--Clio Rickman's Life
+of Paine.
+
+7.  William Carver, with whom Paine boarded.  Mr. Carver said again and
+again that Paine did not recant.  He knew him well, and had every
+opportunity of knowing.--Life of Paine, by Vale.
+
+8.  Dr. Manly, who attended him in his last sickness, and to whom Paine
+spoke his last words.  Dr. Manly asked him if he did not wish to believe
+in Jesus Christ. and he replied:  "I have no wish to believe on that
+subject."
+
+9.  Willet Hicks and Elias Hicks, who were with him frequently during
+his last sickness, and both of whom tried to persuade him to recant.
+According to their testimony Mr. Paine died as he lived--a believer in
+God and a friend to man.  Willet Hicks was offered money to say
+something false against Paine.  He was even offered money to remain
+silent, and allow others to slander the dead.  Mr. Hicks, speaking of
+Thomas Paine, said:  "He was a good man.  Thomas Paine was an honest
+man."
+
+10.  Amasa Woodsworth, who was with him every day for some six weeks
+immediately preceding his death, and sat up with him the last two nights
+of his life.  This man declares that Paine did not recant, and that he
+died tranquilly.  The evidence of Mr. Woodsworth is conclusive.
+
+11.  Thomas Paine himself.  The will of Mr. Paine, written by himself,
+commences as follows:  "The last will and testament of me, the
+subscriber, Thomas Paine, reposing confidence in my Creator, God, and in
+no other being, for I know of no other, nor believe in any other," and
+closes with these words:  "I have lived an honest and useful life to
+mankind.  My time has been spent in doing good, and I die in perfect
+composure and resignation to the will of my Creator, God."
+
+12.  If Thomas Paine recanted, why do you pursue him?  If he recanted he
+died in your belief.  For what reason, then, do you denounce his death
+as cowardly?  If upon his death-bed he renounced the opinions he had
+published, the business of defaming him should be done by infidels, not
+by Christians.  I ask Christians if it is honest to throw away the
+testimony of his friends, the evidence of fair and honorable men, and
+take the putrid words of avowed and malignant enemies?  When Thomas
+Paine was dying he was infested by fanatics, by the snaky spies of
+bigotry.  In the shadows of death were the unclean birds of prey waiting
+to tear, with beak and claw, the corpse of him who wrote the "Rights of
+Man," and there lurking and crouching in the darkness, were the jackals
+and hyenas of superstition, ready to violate his grave.  These birds of
+prey--these unclean beasts--are the witnesses produced and relied upon
+to malign the memory of Thomas Paine.  One by one the instruments of
+torture have been wrenched from the cruel clutch of the church, until
+within the armory of orthodoxy there remains but one weapon--Slander.
+
+Against the witnesses that I have produced there can be brought just
+two--Mary Roscoe and Mary Hinsdale.  The first is referred to in the
+memoir of Stephen Grellet.  She had once been a servant in his house.
+Grellet tells what happened between this girl and Paine.  According to
+this account, Paine asked her if she had ever read any of his writings,
+and on being told that she had read very little of them, he inquired
+what she thought of them, adding that from such an one as she he
+expected a correct answer.
+
+Let us examine this falsehood.  Why would Paine expect a correct answer
+about his writings from one who read very little of them? Does not such
+a statement devour itself?  This young lady further said that the "Age
+of Reason" was put in her hands, and that the more she read in it, the
+more dark and distressed she felt, and that she threw the book into the
+fire.  Whereupon Mr. Paine remarked:  "I wish all had done as you did,
+for if the devil ever had any agency in any work, he had in my writing
+that book."
+
+The next is Mary Hinsdale.  She was a servant in the family of Willet
+Hicks.  The church is always proving something by a nurse. She, like
+Mary Roscoe, was sent to carry some delicacy to Mr. Paine.  To this
+young lady Paine, according to his account, said precisely the same that
+he did to Mary Roscoe, and she said the same thing to Mr. Paine.
+
+My own opinion is that Mary Roscoe and Mary Hinsdale are one and the
+same person, or the same story has been, by mistake, put in the mouths
+of both.  It is not possible that the identical conversation should have
+taken place between Paine and Mary Roscoe and between him and Mary
+Hinsdale.  Mary Hinsdale lived with Willet Hicks, and he pronounced her
+story a pious fraud and fabrication.
+
+Another thing about this witness.  A woman by the name of Mary Lockwood,
+a Hicksite Quaker, died.  Mary Hinsdale met her brother about that time
+and told him that his sister had recanted, and wanted her to say so at
+her funeral.  This turned out to be a lie.
+
+It has been claimed that Mary Hinsdale made her statement to Charles
+Collins.  Long after the alleged occurrence Gilbert Vale, one of the
+biographers of Paine, had a conversation with Collins concerning Mary
+Hinsdale.  Vale asked him what he thought of her. He replied that some
+of the Friends believed that she used opiates, and that they did not
+give credit to her statements.  He also said that he believed what the
+Friends said, but thought that when a young Roman she might have told
+the truth.
+
+In 1818 William Cobbett came to New York.  He began collecting material
+for a life of Thomas Paine.  In this way he became acquainted with Mary
+Hinsdale and Charles Collins.  Mr. Cobbett gave a full account of what
+happened in a letter addressed to The Norwich Mercury in 1819.  From
+this account it seems that Charles Collins told Cobbett that Paine had
+recanted.  Cobbett called for the testimony, and told Mr. Collins that
+he must give time, place, and circumstances.  He finally brought a
+statement that he stated had been made by Mary Hinsdale.  Armed with
+this document, Cobbett, in October of that year, called upon the said
+Mary Hinsdale, at No. 10 Anthony Street, New York, and showed her the
+statement.  Upon being questioned by Mr. Cobbett she said that it was so
+long ago that she could not speak positively to any part of the matter;
+that she would not say that any part of the paper was true; that she
+had never seen the paper, and that she had never given Charles Collins
+authority to say anything about the matter in her name.  And so in the
+month of October, in the year of grace 1818, in the mist of fog and
+forgetfulness, disappeared forever one Mary Hinsdale, the last and only
+witness against the intellectual honesty of Thomas Paine.
+
+A letter was written to the editor of The New York World by the Rev.
+A.W. Cornell, in which he says:
+
+
+"Sir: I see by your paper that Bob Ingersoll discredits Mary Hinsdale's
+story of the scenes which occurred at the death bed of Thomas Paine.  No
+one who knew that good old lady would for one moment doubt her veracity,
+or question her testimony.  Both she and her husband were Quaker
+preachers, and well known and respected inhabitants of New York City.
+
+"Ingersoll is right in his conjecture that Mary Roscoe and Mary Hinsdale
+were the same person.  Her maiden name was Roscoe and she married Henry
+Hinsdale.  My mother was a Roscoe, a niece of Mary Roscoe, and lived
+with her for some time.--Rev. A.W. Cornell, Harpersville, N.Y."
+
+
+The editor of the New York Observer took up the challenge that I had
+thrown down.  I offered $1000 in gold to any minister who would prove,
+or to any person who would prove that Thomas Paine recanted in his last
+hours.  The New York Observer accepted the wager, and then told a
+falsehood about it.  But I kept after the gentlemen until I forced them,
+in their paper, published on the 1st of November, 1877; to print these
+words:
+
+
+"We have never stated in any form, nor have we ever supposed, that Paine
+actually renounced his infidelity.  The accounts agree in stating that
+he died a blaspheming infidel."
+
+
+This, I hope, for all coming time will refute the slanders of the
+churches yet to be.
+
+The next charge they make is that Thomas Paine died in destitution and
+want.  That, of course, would show that he was wrong.  They boast that
+the founder of their religion had not whereon to lay his head, but when
+they found a man who stood for the rights of man, when they say that he
+did, that is an evidence that this doctrine was a lie.  Won't do!  Did
+Thomas Paine die in destitution and want?  The charge has been made over
+and over again that Thomas Paine died in want and destitution; that he
+was an abandoned pauper--an outcast, without friends and without money.
+This charge is just as false as the  rest.  Upon his return to this
+country, in 1802, he was worth $30,000, according to his own statement,
+made at that time in the following letter, and addressed to Clio
+Rickman:
+
+
+"My dear friend, Mr. Monroe, who is appointed minister extraordinary to
+France, takes charge of this, to be delivered to Mr. Este, banker, in
+Paris, to be forwarded to you.
+
+"I arrived in Baltimore, 30th of October, and you can have no idea of
+the agitation which my arrival occasioned.  From New Hampshire to
+Georgia (an extent of 1,500 miles), every newspaper was filled with
+applause or abuse.
+
+"My property in this country has been taken care of by my friends, and
+is now worth six thousand pounds sterling, which, put in the funds, will
+bring about L400 sterling a year.
+
+"Remember me in affection and friendship to your wife and family, and in
+the circle of your friends.--Thomas Paine"
+
+
+A man in those days worth $30,000 was not a pauper.  That amount would
+bring an income of at least $2,000.  Two thousand dollars then would be
+fully equal to $5,000 now.  On the 12th of July, 1809, the year in which
+he died, Mr. Paine made his will.  From this instrument we learn that he
+was the owner of a valuable farm within twenty miles of New York.  He
+was also owner of thirty shares in the New York Phoenix Insurance
+Company, worth upward of $1,500.  Besides this, some personal property
+and ready money. By his will he gave to Walter Morton and Thomas Addis
+Emmet, a brother of Robert Emmet, $200 each, and $100 to the widow of
+Elihu Palmer.  Is it possible that this will was made by a pauper, by a
+destitute outcast, by a man who suffered for the ordinary necessities of
+life?
+
+But suppose, for the sake of argument, that he was poor, and that he
+died a beggar, does that tend to show that the Bible is an inspired
+book, and that Calvin did not burn Servetus?  Do you really regard
+poverty as a crime?  If Paine had died a millionaire, would Christians
+have accepted his religious opinions?  If Paine had drank nothing but
+cold water, would Christians have repudiated the five cardinal points of
+Calvinism? Does an argument depend for its force upon the pecuniary
+condition of the person making it?  As a matter of fact, most reformers
+--most men and women of genius--have been acquainted with poverty.
+Beneath a covering of rags have been found some of the tenderest and
+bravest hearts.  Owing to the attitude of the churches for the last
+fifteen hundred years, truth telling has not been a very lucrative
+business.  As a rule, hypocrisy has worn the robes, and honesty the
+rags.  That day is passing away. You can not now answer a man by
+pointing at the holes in his coat.  Thomas Paine attacked the church
+when it was powerful; when it had what is called honors to bestow; when
+it was the keeper of the public conscience; when it was strong and
+cruel. The church waited till he was dead, and then attacked his
+reputation and his clothes.  Once upon a time a donkey kicked a lion.
+The lion was dead.  You just don't know how happy I am tonight that
+justice so long delayed at last is going to be done, and to see so many
+splendid looking people come here out of deference to the memory of
+Thomas Paine.  I am glad to be here.
+
+The next thing is:  Did Thomas Paine live the life of a drunken beast,
+and did he die a drunken, cowardly, and beastly death? Well, we will
+see.  Upon you rests the burden of substantiating these infamous
+charges.  The Christians have, I suppose, produced the best evidence in
+their possession, and that evidence I will now proceed to examine.
+Their first witness is Grant Thorburn. He made three charges against
+Thomas Paine:
+
+1.  That his wife obtained a divorce from him in England for cruelty and
+neglect.
+
+2.  That he was a defaulter and fled from England to America.
+
+3. That he was a drunkard.
+
+These three charges stand upon the same evidence--the word of Grant
+Thorburn.  If they are not all true, Mr. Thorburn stands impeached.  The
+charge that Mrs. Paine obtained a divorce on account of the cruelty and
+neglect of her husband is utterly false.  There is no such record in the
+world, and never was. Paine and his wife separated by mutual consent.
+Each respected the other.  They remained friends.  This charge is
+without any foundation.  In fact, I challenge the Christian world to
+produce the record of this decree of divorce.  According to Mr.
+Thorburn, it was granted in England.  In that country public records are
+kept of all such decrees.  I will give $1,000 if they will produce a
+decree, showing that it was given on account of cruelty, or admit that
+Mr. Thorburn was mistaken.
+
+Thomas Paine was a just man.  Although separated from his wife, he
+always spoke of her with tenderness and respect, and frequently lent her
+money without letting her know the source from whence it came.  Was this
+the conduct of a drunken beast?
+
+The next is that he was a defaulter, and fled from England to America.
+As I told you in the first place, he was an exciseman; if he was a
+defaulter, that fact is upon the records of Great Britain.  I will give
+$1,000 in gold to any man who will show, by the records of England, that
+he was a defaulter of a single, solitary cent.  Let us bring these
+gentlemen to Limerick.
+
+And they charge that he was a drunkard.  That is another falsehood.  He
+drank liquor in his day, as did the preachers.  It was no unusual thing
+for a preacher going home to stop in a tavern and take a drink of hot
+rum with a deacon, and it was no unusual thing for the deacon to help
+the preacher home.  You have no idea how they loved the sacrament in
+those days.  They had communion pretty much all the time.
+
+Thorburn says that in 1802 Paine was an "old remnant of mortality,
+drunk, bloated, and half asleep."  Can anyone believe this to be a true
+account of the personal appearance of Mr. Paine in 1802?  He had just
+returned from France.  He had been welcomed home by Thomas Jefferson,
+who had said that he was entitled to the hospitality of every American.
+In 1802 Mr. Paine was honored with a public dinner in the City of New
+York.  He was called upon and treated with kindness and respect by such
+men as De Witt Clinton.  In 1806 Mr. Paine wrote a letter to Andrew A.
+Dean upon the subject of religion.  Read that letter and then say that
+the writer of it was an old remnant of mortality, drunk, bloated, and
+half asleep.  Search the files of Christian papers, from the first issue
+to the last, and you will find nothing superior to this letter.  In 1803
+Mr. Paine wrote a letter of considerable length, and of great force to
+his friend Samuel Adams.  Such letters are not written by drunken
+beasts, nor by remnants of old mortality, nor by drunkards.  It was
+about the same time that he wrote his "Remarks on Robert Hall's
+Sermons."  These "Remarks" were not written by a drunken beast, but by a
+clear-headed and thoughtful man.
+
+In 1804 he published an essay on the invasion of England and a treatise
+on gun-boats, full of valuable maritime information; in 1805 a treatise
+on yellow fever, suggesting modes of prevention. In short, he was an
+industrious and thoughtful man.  He sympathized with the poor and
+oppressed of all lands.  He looked upon monarchy as a species of
+physical slavery.  He had the goodness to attack that form of
+government.  He regarded the religion of his day as a kind of mental
+slavery.  He had the courage to give his reasons for his opinion.  His
+reasons filled the churches with hatred.  Instead of answering his
+arguments they attacked him.  Men who were not fit to blacken his shoes
+blackened his character.  There is too much religious cant in the
+statement of Mr. Thorburn.  He exhibits too much anxiety to tell what
+Grant Thorburn said to Thomas Paine.  He names Thomas Jefferson as one
+of the disreputable men who welcomed Paine with open arms.  The
+testimony of a man who regarded Thomas Jefferson as a disreputable
+person, as to the character of anybody, is utterly without value.
+
+Now, Grant Thorburn--this gentleman who was "four feet and a half high,
+and who weighed ninety-eight pounds three and one-half ounces"--says
+that he used to sit nights at Carver's, in New York, with Thomas Paine.
+Mrs. Ferguson, the daughter of William Carver, says that she knew
+Thorburn when she saw him, but that she never saw him in her father's
+house.  The denial of Mrs. Ferguson enraged Thorburn, and he at once
+wrote a few falsehoods about her.  Thereupon a suit was commenced by
+Mrs. Ferguson and her husband against Thorburn, the writer, and Fanshaw,
+the publisher, of the libel.  Thorburn ran away to Connecticut. Fanshaw
+wrote him for evidence of what he had written.  Thorburn replied that
+what he had written about Mrs. Ferguson could not be proved.  Fanshaw
+then settled with the Fergusons, paying them the amount demanded.
+
+In 1859 the Fergusons lived at 148 Duane Street, New York.  In The
+Commercial Advertiser of New York, in 1830, appeared the written
+acknowledgement of this same little Grant Thorburn that he did, on the
+22d of August, 1830, at half-past 6 in the morning, take four bottles of
+cider from the cellar of Mr. Comstock.
+
+Mr. Comstock says that Thorburn was arrested, and that when brought
+before him he pleaded guilty and threw himself upon his (Comstock's)
+mercy.
+
+The Philadelphia Tract Society gave Thorburn $100 to write his
+recollections of Thomas Paine.
+
+Let us dispose of this four feet and a half of wretch.  In October,
+1877, I received the following letter from James Parton:
+
+
+"Newburyport, Mass., Oct 27, 1877.--My dear Sir:  Touching Grant
+Thorburn, I personally knew him to have been a liar.  At the age of 92
+he copied with trembling hand a piece from a newspaper and brought it to
+the office of The Rome Journal as his own.  It was I who received it and
+detected the deliberate forgery..... James Parton"
+
+
+So much for Grant Thorburn.  In my judgment, the testimony of Mr.
+Thorburn should be thrown aside as utterly unworthy of belief.
+
+The next witness is the Rev. J.D. Wickham, D.D., who tells what an elder
+in his church said.  This elder said that Paine passed his last days on
+his farm at New Rochelle, with a solitary female attendant.  This is not
+true.  He did not pass his last days at New Rochelle, consequently, this
+pious elder did not see him during his last days at that place.  Upon
+this elder we prove an alibi.  Mr. Paine passed his last days in the
+City of New York, in a house upon Columbia Street.  The story of the
+Rev. J.D. Wickham, D.D., is simply false.
+
+The next competent false witness was the Rev. Charles Hawley, D.D., who
+proceeds to state that the story of the Rev. J.D. Wickham, D. D., is
+corroborated by older citizens of New Rochelle.  The names of these
+ancient residents are withheld. According to these unknown witnesses,
+the account given by the deceased elder was entirely correct.  But as
+the particulars of Mr. Paine's conduct "were too loathsome to be
+described in print," we are left entirely in the dark as to what he
+really did.
+
+While at New Rochelle, Mr. Paine lived with Mr. Purdy, Mr. Dean, with
+Capt. Pelton, and with Mr. Staple.  It is worthy of note that all of
+these gentlemen give the lie direct to the statements of "older
+residents" and ancient citizens spoken of by the Rev. Charles Hawley,
+D.D., and leave him with the "loathsome particulars" existing only in
+his own mind.
+
+The next gentleman brought upon the stand is W.H. Ladd, who quotes from
+the memoirs of Stephen Grellett.  This gentleman also has the misfortune
+to be dead.  According to his account, Mr. Paige made his recantation to
+a servant girl of his by the name of Mary Roscoe.  Mr. Paine uttered the
+wish that all who read his book had burned it.  I believe there is a
+mistake in the name of this girl.  Her name was probably Mary Hinsdale,
+as it was once claimed that Paine made the same remark to her.
+
+These are the witnesses of the church, and the only ones you bring
+forward to support your charge that Thomas Paine lived a drunken and
+beastly life, and died a drunken, cowardly, and beastly death.  All
+these calumnies are found in a life of Paine by James Cheetham, the
+convicted libeler already referred to. Mr. Cheetham was an enemy of the
+man whose life he pretended to write.  In order to show you the
+estimation in which this libeler was held by Mr. Paine, I will give you
+a copy of a letter that throws light upon this point:
+
+
+"Oct. 27, 1807.--Mr. Cheethan:  Unless you make a public apology for the
+abuse and falsehood in your paper of Tuesday, Oct. 27, respecting me, I
+will prosecute you for lying.--Thomas Paine"
+
+
+In another letter, speaking of this same man, Mr. Paine says: "If an
+unprincipled bully can not be reformed, he can be punished."  Cheetham
+has been so long in the habit of giving false information, that truth is
+to him like a foreign language. Mr. Cheetham wrote the life of Mr. Paine
+to gratify his malice and to support religion.  He was prosecuted for
+libel--was convicted and fined.  Yet the life of Paine, written by this
+liar, is referred to by the Christian world as the highest authority.
+
+As to the personal habits of Mr. Paine, we have the testimony of William
+Carver; with whom he lived; of Mr. Jarvis, the artist, with whom he
+lived; of Mr. Purdy, who was a tenant of Paine's; of Mr. Buyer, with
+whom he was intimate; of Thomas Nixon and Capt. Daniel Pelton, both of
+whom knew him well; of Amasa Woodsworth, who was with him when he died;
+of John Fellows, who boarded at the same house; of James Wilburn, with
+whom he boarded; of B.F. Haskins, a lawyer, who was well acquainted
+with him, and called upon him during h is last illness; of Walter
+Morton, President of the Phoenix Insurance Company; of Clio Rickman,
+who had known him for many years; of Willet and Elias Hicks, Quakers,
+who knew him intimately and well; of Judge Hertell, H. Margary, Elihu
+Palmer and many others.  All these testified to the fact that Mr. Paige
+was a temperate man.  In those days nearly everybody used spirituous
+liquors.  Paine was not an exception, but he did not drink to excess.
+Mr. Lovett, who kept the City Hotel, where Paine stopped, in a note to
+Caleb Bingham declared that Paine drank less than any boarder he had.
+
+Against all this evidence Christians produce the story of Grant
+Thorburn, the story of the Rev. J.D. Wickham, that an elder in his
+church told him that Paine was a drunkard, corroborated by the Rev.
+Charles Hawley, and an extract from Lossing's history to the same
+effect.  The evidence is overwhelmingly against them. Will you have the
+fairness to admit it?  Their witnesses are merely the repeaters of the
+falsehoods of James Cheetham, the convicted libeler.
+
+After all, drinking is not as bad as lying.  An honest drunkard is
+better than a calumniator of the dead.  "A remnant of old mortality
+drunk, bloated, and half-asleep," is better than a perfectly sober
+defender of human slavery.  To become drunk is a virtue compared with
+stealing a babe from the breast of its mother.  Drunkenness is one of
+the beatitudes, compared with editing a religious paper devoted to the
+defense of slavery upon the ground that it is a divine institution.  Do
+you think that Paine was a drunken beast when he wrote "Common Sense," a
+pamphlet that aroused three millions of people, as people were never
+aroused by words before?  Was he a drunken beast when he wrote the
+"Crisis?"  Was it to a drunken beast that the following letter was
+addressed:
+
+
+"Rocky Hill, September 10, 1783.--I have learned, since I have been at
+this place, that you are at Bordentown.  Whether for the sake of
+retirement or economy, I know not.  Be it for either, or both, or
+whatever it may, if you will come to this place and partake with me, I
+shall be exceedingly happy to see you at it. Your presence may remind
+Congress of your past services to this country; and if it is in my
+power to impress them, command my best exertions with freedom, as they
+will be rendered cheerfully by one who entertains a lively sense of the
+importance of your works, and who, with much pleasure, subscribes
+himself your sincere friend.--George Washington"
+
+
+Do you think that Paine was a drunken beast when the following letters
+were received by him:
+
+
+"You express a wish in your letter to return to America in a national
+ship.  Mr. Dawson, who brings over the treaty, and who will present you
+with this letter, is charged with orders to the Captain of the Maryland
+to receive and accommodate you back, if you can be ready to depart at
+such a short warning.  You will, in general, find us returned to
+sentiments worthy of former times; in these it will be your glory to
+have steadily labored, and with as much effect as any man living.  That
+you may live long to continue your useful labors, and reap the reward in
+the thankfulness of nations, is my sincere prayer.  Accept the
+assurances of my high esteem and affectionate attachment.--Thomas
+Jefferson"
+
+
+"It has been very generally propagated through the continent that I
+wrote the pamphlet "Common Sense."  I could not have written anything in
+so manly and striking a style.--John Adams"
+
+
+"A few more such flaming arguments as were exhibited at Falmouth and
+Norfolk, added to the sound doctrine and unanswerable reasoning
+contained in the pamphlet "Common Sense," will not leave numbers at a
+loss to decide on the propriety of a separation.--George Washington"
+
+
+"It is not necessary for me to tell you how much all your countrymen--I
+speak of the great mass of the people--are interested in your welfare.
+They have not forgotten the history of their own revolution, and the
+difficult scenes through which they passed; nor do they review its
+several stages without reviving in their bosoms a due sensibility of the
+merits of those who served them in that great and arduous conflict.  The
+crime of ingratitude has not yet stained, and I trust never will stain,
+our national character.  You are considered by them as not only having
+rendered important services in our revolution, but as being on a more
+extensive scale the friend of human right and a distinguished and able
+advocate in favor of public liberty.  To the welfare of Thomas Paine,
+the Americans are not, nor can they be, indifferent.--James Monroe"
+
+
+"No writer has exceeded Paine in ease and familiarity of style, in
+perspicuity of expression, happiness of elucidation, and in simple and
+unassuming language.--Thomas Jefferson"
+
+
+Was it in consideration of the services of a drunken beast that the
+Legislature of Pennsylvania presented Thomas Paine with L500 sterling?
+Did the State of New York feel indebted to a drunken beast, and confer
+upon Thomas Paine an estate of several hundred acres?  Did the Congress
+of the United States thank him for his services because he had lived a
+drunken and beastly life?  Was he elected a member of the French
+convention because he was a drunken beast?  Was it the act of a drunken
+beast to put his own life in jeopardy by voting against the death of the
+King?  Was it because he was a drunken beast that he opposed the "Reign
+of Terror "--that he endeavored to stop the shedding of blood, and did
+all in his power to protect even his own enemies?  Do the following
+extracts sound like the words of a drunken beast:
+
+
+"I believe in the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties
+consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our
+fellow creatures happy.
+
+"My own mind is my own church.
+
+"It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to
+himself.
+
+"Any system of religion that shocks the mind of a child can not be a
+true system.
+
+"The work of God is the creation which we behold.
+
+"The age of ignorance commenced with the Christian system.
+
+"It is with a pious fraud as with a bad action--it begets a calamitous
+necessity of going on.
+
+"To read the Bible without horror, we must undo everything that is
+tender, sympathizing, and benevolent in the heart of man.
+
+"The man does not exist who can say I have persecuted him, or that I
+have, in any case, returned evil for evil.
+
+"Of all the tyrants that afflict mankind, tyranny in religion is the
+worst.
+
+"The belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.
+
+"My own opinion is, that those whose lives have been spent in doing
+good, and endeavoring to make their fellow-mortals happy, will be happy
+hereafter.
+
+"The intellectual part of religion is a private affair between every man
+and his Maker, and in which no third party has any right to interfere.
+The practical part consists in our doing good to each other.
+
+"No man ought to make a living by religion.  One person can not act
+religion for another--every person must act for himself.
+
+"One good school-master is of more use than a hundred priests. Let us
+propagate morality, unfettered by superstition.
+
+"God is the power, or first cause; nature is the law, and matter is the
+subject acted upon.
+
+"I believe in one God and no more, and I hope for happiness beyond this
+life.
+
+"The key of happiness is not in the keeping of any sect, nor ought the
+road to it to be obstructed by any.
+
+"My religion, and the whole of it, is the fear and love of the Deity, and
+universal philanthropy.
+
+"I have yet, I believe, some years in store, for I have a good state of
+health and a happy mind.  I take care of both, by nourishing the first
+with temperance and the latter with abundance.
+
+"He lives immured within the Bastille of a word."
+
+
+How perfectly that sentence describes the orthodox.  The Bastille in
+which they are immured is the word "Calvinism."
+
+"Man has no property in man."
+
+"The world is my country, to do good my religion."
+
+I ask again whether these splendid utterances came from the lips of a
+drunken beast?
+
+"Man has no property in man."
+
+What a splendid motto that would make for the religious newspapers of
+this country thirty years ago.  I ask, again, whether these splendid
+utterances came from the lips of a drunken beast?
+
+Only a little while ago--two or three days--I read a report of an
+address made by Bishop Doane, an Episcopal Bishop in apostolic
+succession--regular line from Jesus Christ down to Bishop Doane. The
+Bishop was making a speech to young preachers--the sprouts, the
+theological buds.  He took it upon him to advise them all against early
+marriages.  Let us look at it.  Do you believe there is any duty that
+man owes to God that will prevent a man marrying the woman he loves?  Is
+there some duty that I owe to the clouds that will prevent me from
+marrying some good, sweet woman?  Now, just think of that!  I tell you,
+young man, you marry as soon as you can find her and support her.  I had
+rather have one woman that I know than any amount of gods that I am not
+acquainted with.  If there is any revelation from God to man, a good
+woman is the best revelation he has ever made; and I will admit that
+that revelation was inspired.
+
+Now, on the subject of marriage, let me offset the speech of Bishop
+Doane by a word from this "wretched infidel:"
+
+
+"Though I appear a sorry wanderer, the marriage state has not a sincerer
+friend than I.  It is the harbor of human life, and is, with respect to
+the things of this world, what the next world is to this.  It is home,
+and that one word conveys more than any other word can express.  For a
+few years we may glide along the tide of a single life, but it is a tide
+that flows but once, and, what is still worse, it ebbs faster than it
+flows, and leaves many a hapless voyager aground.  I am one, you see,
+that has experienced the fall I am describing.  I have lost my tide; it
+passed by while every throb of my heart was on the wing for the
+salvation of America, and I have now, as contentedly as I can, made
+myself a little tower of walls on that shore that has the solitary
+resemblance of home."
+
+
+I just want you to know what this dreadful infidel thought of home.  I
+just wanted you to know what Thomas Paine thought of home.  Then here is
+another letter that Thomas Paine wrote to congress on the 21st day of
+January, 1808, and I wanted you to know those two.
+
+It is only a short one:
+
+
+"To the Honorable Senate of the United States:  The purport of this
+address is to state a claim I feel myself entitled to make on the United
+States, leaving it to their representatives in congress to decide on its
+worth and its merits.  The case is as follows:
+
+"Toward the latter end of the year 1780 the continental money had become
+depreciated--the paper dollar being then not more than a cent--that it
+seemed next to impossible to continue the war.  As the United States was
+then in alliance with France it became necessary to make France
+acquainted with our real situation.  I therefore drew up a letter to the
+Count De Vergennes, stating undisguisedly the whole case, and concluding
+with a request whether France could not, either as a subsidy of a loan,
+supply the United States with a million pounds sterling, and continue
+that supply, annually, during the war.  "I showed this letter to Mr.
+Morbois, secretary of the French minister.  His remark upon it was that
+a million sent out of the nation exhausted it more than ten millions
+spent in it.  I then showed it to Mr. Ralph Izard, member of congress
+from South Carolina.  He borrowed the letter of me and said:  'We will
+endeavor to do something about it in congress.'  Accordingly, congress
+then appointed John A. Laurens to go to France and make representation
+for the purpose of obtaining assistance.  Col. Laurens wished to decline
+the mission, and asked that congress would appoint Col. Hamilton, who
+did not choose to do it.  Col. Laurens then came and stated the case to
+me, and said that he was well enough acquainted with the military
+difficulties of the army, but he was not acquainted with political
+affairs, or with the resources of the country, to undertake such a
+mission.  Said he, 'If you will go with me I will accept the mission.'
+This I agreed to do, and did do.  We sailed from Boston in the Alliance
+frigate February, 1781, and arrived in France in the beginning of March.
+The aid obtained from France was six millions of liyres, as at present,
+and ten millions as a loan, borrowed in Holland on the security of
+France.  We sailed from Brest in the French frigate Resolue the 1st of
+June, and arrived at Boston on the 25th of August, bringing with us two
+millions and a half in silver, and conveying a chip and a brig laden
+with clothing and military stores.
+
+"The money was transported with sixteen ox teams to the National bank at
+Philadelphia, which enabled our army to move to Yorktown to attack in
+conjunction with the French army under Rochambeau, the British army
+under Cornwallis.
+
+"As I never had a single cent for these services, I felt myself
+entitled, as the country is now in a state of prosperity, to state the
+case to congress.
+
+"As to my political works, beginning with the pamphlet 'Common Sense,'
+published the beginning of January 1776, which awakened America to a
+declaration of independence as the president and vice-president both
+know, as they were works done from principle I can not dishonor that
+principle by ever asking any reward for them.  The country has been
+benefited by them, and I make myself happy in the knowledge of that
+benefit.  It is, however, proper for me to add that the mere
+independence of America, were it to have been followed by a system of
+government modeled after the corrupt system of the English government,
+would not have interested me with the unabated ardor it did.  It was to
+bring forward and establish a representative system of government.  As
+the work itself will show, that was the leading principle with me in
+writing that work, and all my other works during the progress of the
+revolution, and I followed the same principle in writing in English the
+'Rights of Man.'
+
+"After the failure of the 5 percent duty recommended by congress to pay
+the interest of the loan to be borrowed in Holland, I wrote to
+Chancellor Livingston, then minister for foreign affairs, and Robert
+Morris, minister of finance, and proposed a method for getting over the
+difficulty at once, which was by adding a continental legislature which
+should be empowered to make laws for the whole union instead of
+recommending them. So the method proposed met with their future
+probation.  I held myself in reserve to take a step up whenever a direct
+occasion occurred.
+
+"In a conversation afterward with Gov. Clinton, of New York, now vice-
+president, it was judged that for the purpose of my going fully into the
+subject, and to prevent any misconstruction of my motive or object, it
+would be best that I received nothing from congress, but to leave it to
+the states individually to make the what acknowledgement they pleased.
+The State of New York presented me with a farm which since my return to
+America, I have found it necessary to sell, and the State of
+Pennsylvania voted me L500 of their currency, but none of the states to
+the east of New York, or the south of Pennsylvania, have made me the
+least acknowledgment.  They had received benefits from me which they
+accepted, and there the matter ended.  This story will not tell well in
+history.  All the civilized world knows I have been of great service to
+the United States, and have generously given away that which would
+easily have made me a fortune.  I much question if an instance is to be
+found in ancient or modern times of a man who had no personal interest
+in the case to take up that of the establishment of a representative
+government and who sought neither place nor office after it was
+established; that pursued the same undeviating principles that I had
+for more than thirty years, and that in spite of dangers, difficulties,
+and inconveniences of which I have had my share.--Thomas Paine"
+
+
+An old man in Pennsylvania told me once that his father hired a old
+revolutionary soldier by the name of Thomas Martin to work for him.
+Martin was then quite an old man; and there was an old Presbyterian
+preacher used to come there, by the name of Crawford, and he sat down by
+the fire and he got to talking one night, among other things about
+Thomas Paine--what a wretched, infamous dog he was; and while he was in
+the midst of this conversation the old soldier rose from the fireplace,
+and he walked over to the preacher, and he said to him "Did you ever see
+Thomas Paine?"  "No."  "Well," he says, "I have; I saw him at Valley
+Forge.  I heard read at the head of every regiment and company the
+letters of Thomas Paine.  I heard them read the 'Crisis,' and I saw
+Thomas Paine writing on the head of a drum, sitting at the bivouac fire,
+those simple words that inspired every patriot's bosom, and I want to
+tell you Mr. Preacher, that Thomas Paine did more for liberty than any
+priest that ever lived in this world."
+
+"And yet they say he was afraid to die!  Afraid of what?  Is there any
+God in heaven that hates a patriot?  If there is Thomas Paine ought to
+be afraid to die.  Is there any God that would damn a man for helping to
+free three millions of people?  If Thomas Paine was in hell tonight, and
+could get God's attention long enough to point him to the old banner of
+the stars floating over America, God would have to let him out.  What
+would he be afraid of?  Had he ever burned anybody?  No.  Had he ever
+put anybody in the inquisition?  No.  Ever put the thumb-screw on
+anybody?  No.  Ever put anybody in prison so that some poor wife and
+mother would come and hold her little babe up at the grated window that
+the man bound to the floor might get one glimpse of his blue-eyed babe?
+Did he ever do that?"
+
+"Did he ever light a fagot?  Did he ever tear human flesh?  Why, what
+had he to be afraid of?  He had helped to make the world free.  He had
+helped create the only republic then on the earth. What was he afraid
+of?  Was God a tory?  It won't do."
+
+One would think from the persistence with which the orthodox have
+charged for the last seventy years that Thomas Paine recanted, that
+there must be some evidence of some kind to support these charges.  Even
+with my ideas of the average honor of the believers in superstition, the
+average truthfulness of the disciples of fear, I did not believe that
+all those infamies rested solely upon poorly-attested falsehoods.  I had
+charity enough to suppose that something had been said or done by Thomas
+Paine capable of being tortured into a foundation of all these
+calumnies.  What crime had Thomas Paine committed that he should have
+feared to die?  The only answer you can give is that he denied the
+inspiration of the scriptures.  If that is crime, the civilized world is
+filled with criminals.  The pioneers of human thought, the intellectual
+leaders of this world, the foremost men in every science, the kings of
+literature and art, those who stand in the front of investigation, the
+men who are civilizing and elevating and refining mankind, are all
+unbelievers in the ignorant dogma of inspiration.
+
+Why should we think Thomas Paine was afraid to die? and why should the
+American people malign the memory of that great man? He was the first to
+advocate the separation from the mother country.  He was the first to
+write these words:  "The United States of America."  Think of maligning
+that man!  He was the first to lift his voice against human slavery, and
+while hundreds and thousands of ministers all over the United States not
+only believed in slavery, but bought and sold women and babes in the
+name of Jesus Christ, this infidel, this wretch who is now burning in
+the flames of hell, lifted his voice against human slavery and said:
+"It is robbery, and a slaveholder is a thief; the whipper of women is a
+barbarian; the seller of a child is a savage."  No wonder that the
+thieving hypocrite of his day hated him!  I have no love for any man who
+ever pretended to own a human being.  I have no love for a man that
+would sell a babe from the mother's throbbing, heaving, agonized breast.
+I have no respect for a man who considered a lash on the naked back as a
+legal tender for labor performed.  So write it down, Thomas Paine was
+the first great abolitionist of America.
+
+Now let me tell you another thing.  He was the first man to raise his
+voice for the abolition of the death penalty in the French convention.
+What more did he do?  He was the first to suggest a federal constitution
+for the United States.  He saw that the old articles of confederation
+were nothing; that they were ropes of water and chains of mist, and he
+said, "We want a federal constitution so that when you pass a law
+raising 5 percent you can make the states pay it."  Let us give him his
+due.  What were all these preachers doing at that time?
+
+He hated superstition; he loved the truth.  He hated tyranny; he loved
+liberty.  He was the friend of the human race.  He lived a brave and
+thoughtful life.  He was a good and true and generous man, and "he died
+as he lived."  Like a great and peaceful river with green and shaded
+banks, without a murmur, without a ripple, he flowed into the waveless
+ocean of eternal peace.  I love him; I love every man who gave me, or
+helped to give me the liberty I enjoy tonight; I love every man who
+helped me put our flag in heaven.  I love every man who has lifted his
+voice in any age for liberty, for a chainless body and a fetterless
+brain.  I love everyman who has given to every other human being every
+right that he claimed for himself.  I love every man who has thought
+more of principle than he has of position.  I love the men who have
+trampled crowns beneath their feet that they might do something for
+mankind, and for that reason I love Thomas Paine.
+
+I thank you all, ladies and gentlemen, every one--every one, for the
+attention you have given me this evening.
+
+
+
+
+
+Ingersoll's Lecture on Liberty of Man, Woman and Child
+
+
+
+Ladies and Gentlemen:  In my judgment slavery is the child of ignorance.
+Liberty is born of intelligence.  Only a few years ago there was a great
+awakening in the human mind.  Men began to inquire, By what right does a
+crowned robber make me work for him?  The man who asked this question
+was called a traitor. Others said, by what right does a robed priest rob
+me?  That man was called an infidel.  And whenever he asked a question
+of that kind, the clergy protested.  When they found that the earth was
+round, the clergy protested; when they found that the stars were not
+made out of the scraps that were left over on the sixth day of creation,
+but were really great, shining, wheeling worlds, the clergy protested
+and said:  "When is this spirit of investigation to stop?"  They said
+then, and they say now, that it is dangerous for the mind of man to be
+free.  I deny it.  Out on the intellectual sea there is room  for every
+sail. In the intellectual air, there is space enough for every wing.
+And the man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and does not do
+his duty to his fellow men.  For one, I expect to do my own thinking.
+And I will take my own oath this minute that I will express what
+thoughts I have, honestly and sincerely.  I am the slave of no man and
+of no organization.  I stand under the blue sky and the stars, under the
+infinite flag of nature, the peer of every human being.  Standing as I
+do in the presence of the Unknown, I have the same right to guess as
+though I had been through five theological seminary.  I have as much
+interest in the great absorbing questions of origin and destiny as
+though I had D.D., L. L. D. at the end of my name.
+
+All I claim, all I plead is simple liberty of thought.  That is all.  I
+do not pretend to tell what is true and all the truth.  I do not claim
+that I have floated level with the heights of thought, or that I have
+descended to the depths of things; I simply claim that what idea I have
+I have a right to express, and any man that denies it to me is an
+intellectual thief and robber. That is all.  I say, take those chains
+off from the human soul; I say, break these orthodox fetters, and if
+there are wings to the spirit let them be spread.  That is all I say.
+And I ask you if I have not the same right to think that any other human
+has? If I have no right to think, why have I such a thing as a thinker.
+Why have I a brain?  And if I have no right to think, who has?  If I
+have lost my right, Mr. Smith, where did you find yours?  If I have no
+right, have three or four men or 300 or 400, who get together and sign a
+card and build a house and put a steeple on it with a bell in it--have
+they any more right to think than they had before?  That is the
+question.  And I am sick of the whip and lash in the region of mind and
+intellect.  And I say to these men, "Let us alone.  Do your own
+thinking; express your own thoughts."  And I want to say tonight that I
+claim no right that I am not willing to give to every other human being
+beneath the stars--none whatever.  And I will fight tonight for the
+right of those who disagree with me to express their thoughts just as
+soon as I will fight for my own right to express mine.
+
+In the good old times, our fathers had an idea that they could make
+people believe to suit them.  Our ancestors in the ages that are gone
+really believed that by force you could convince a man. You cannot
+change the conclusion of the brain by force, but I will tell you what
+you can do by force, and what you have done by force.  You can make
+hypocrites by the million.  You can make a man say that he has changed
+his mind, but he remains of the same opinion still.  Put fetters all
+over him; crush his feet in iron boots; lash him to the stock; burn
+him if you please, but his ashes are of the same opinion still.  I say
+our fathers, in the good old times--and the best thing I can say about
+them is, they are dead--they had an idea they could force men to think
+their way, and do you know that idea is still prevalent even in this
+country?  Do you know they think they can make a man think their way if
+they say, "We will not trade with that man; we won't vote for that man;
+we won't hire him, if he is a lawyer; we will die before we take his
+medicine, if he is a doctor, we won't invite him; we will socially
+ostracize him; he must come to our church; he must think our way or he
+is not a gentleman."  There is much of that even in this blessed country
+--not excepting the city of Albany itself.
+
+Now in the old times of which I have spoken, they said, "We can make all
+men think alike."  All the mechanical ingenuity of this earth cannot
+make two clocks run alike, and how are you going to make millions of
+people of different quantities and qualities and amount of brain, clad
+in this living robe of passionate flesh--how are you going to make
+millions of them think alike? If the infinite God, if there is one, who
+made us, wished us to think alike, why did he give a spoonful of brains
+to one man, and a bushel to another?  Why is it that we have all degrees
+of humanity, from the idiot to the genius, if it was intended that all
+should think alike?  I say our fathers concluded they would do this by
+force, and I used to read in books how they persecuted mankind, and do
+you know I never appreciated it; I did not.  I read it, but it did not
+burn itself, as it were, into my very soul what infamies had been
+committed in the name of religion, and I never fully appreciated it
+until a little while ago I saw the iron arguments our fathers used to
+use.  I tell you the reason we are through that, is because we have
+better brains than our fathers had.  Since that day we have become
+intellectually developed, and there is more real brain and real good
+sense in the world today than in any other period of its history, and
+that is the reason we have more liberty, that is the reason we have more
+kindness.  But I say I saw these iron arguments our fathers used to use.
+I saw here the thumb-screw--two little innocent looking pieces of iron,
+armed on the inner surface with protuberances to prevent their slipping
+--and when some man denied the efficacy of baptism, or maybe said, "I do
+not believe that the whale ever swallowed a man to keep him from
+drowning," then they put these pieces of iron upon his thumb, and there
+was a screw at each end, and then, in the name of love and forgiveness,
+they began screwing these pieces of iron together.  A great many men,
+when they commenced, would say, "I recant."  I expect I would have been
+one of them.   I would have said, "Now you just stop that; I will admit
+anything on earth that you want.  I will admit there is one god or a
+million, one hell or a billion; suit yourselves, but stop that."  But I
+want to say, the thumbscrew having got out of the way, I am going to
+have my say.
+
+There was now and then some man who wouldn't turn Judas Iscariot to his
+own soul; there was now and then a man willing to die for his
+conviction, and if it were not for such men we would be savages tonight.
+Had it not been for a few brave and heroic souls in every age, we would
+have been naked savages this moment, with pictures of wild beasts
+tattooed upon our naked breasts, dancing around a dried snake fetish;
+and I tonight thank every good and noble man who stood up in the face of
+opposition, and hatred, and death for what he believed to be right.  And
+then they screwed this thumbscrew down as far as they could and threw
+him into some dungeon, where, in throbbing misery and the darkness of
+night, he dreams of the damned; but that was done in the name of
+universal love.
+
+I saw there at the same time what they called the "collar of torture."
+Imagine a circle of iron, and on the inside of that more than a hundred
+points as sharp as needles.  This being fastened upon the throat, the
+sufferer could not sit down, he could not walk, he could not stir
+without being punctured by those needles, and in a little while the
+throat would begin to swell, and finally suffocation would end the
+agonies of that man, when may be the only crime he had committed was to
+say, with tears upon his sublime cheeks, "I do not believe that God, the
+father of us all, will damn to eternal punishment any of the children of
+men."  Think of it!  And I saw there at the same time another
+instrument, called "the scavenger's daughter," which resembles a pair of
+shears, with handles where handles ought to be, but at the points as
+well.  And just above the pivot that fastens the blades, a circle of
+iron through which the hands would be placed, into the lower circles the
+feet, and into the center circle the head would be pushed, and in that
+position he would be thrown prone upon the earth, and kept there until
+the strain upon the muscles produced such agony that insanity and death
+would end his pain.  And that was done in the name of "Whosoever smiteth
+thee upon one cheek, turn him the other also." Think of it!
+
+And I saw also the rack, with the windlass and chains, upon which the
+sufferer was laid.  About his ankles were fastened chains, and about his
+wrists also, and then priests began turning this windlass, and they kept
+turning until the ankles, the shoulders and the wrists were all
+dislocated, and the sufferer was wet with the sweat of agony.  And they
+had standing by a physician to feel his pulse.  What for?  To save his
+life?  Yes.  What for?  In mercy?  No.  Simply that they might preserve
+his life, that they might rack him once again.  And this was done--
+recollect it--it was done in the name of civilization, it was done in
+the name of law and order, it was done in the name of morality, it was
+done in the name of religion, it was done in the name of God.
+
+Sometimes when I get to reading about it, and when I get to thinking
+about it, it seems to me that I have suffered all these horrors myself,
+as though I had stood upon the shore of exile and gazed with a tear-
+filled eye toward home and native land; as though my nails had been
+torn from my hands, and into my throat the sharp needles had been
+thrust; as though my feet had been crushed in iron boots; as though I
+had been chained in the cells of the Inquisition, and had watched and
+waited in the interminable darkness to hear the words of release; as
+though I had been taken from my fireside, from my wife and children, and
+taken to the public square, chained, and fagots had been piled around
+me; as though the flames had played around my limbs, and scorched the
+sight from my eyes; as though my ashes had been scattered to the four
+winds by the hands of hatred; as though I had stood upon the scaffold
+and felt the glittering ax fall upon me.  And while I feel and see all
+this, I swear that while I live I will do what little I can to augment
+the liberty of man, woman and child.
+
+My friends, it is all a question of sense; it is all a question of
+honesty.  If there is a man in this house who is not willing to give to
+everybody else what he claims for himself he is just so much nearer to
+the barbarian than I am.  It is a simple question of honesty; and the
+man who is not willing to give to every other human being the same
+intellectual rights he claims himself is a rascal, and you know it.  It
+is a simple question, I say, of intellectual development and of honesty.
+And I want to say it now, so you will see it.  You show me the narrow,
+contracted man; you show me the man who claims everything for himself
+and leaves nothing for others, and that man has got a distorted and
+deformed brain.  That is the matter with him.  He has no sense; not a
+bit.  Let me show you.
+
+A little while ago I saw models of everything man has made for his use
+and for his convenience.  I saw all the models of all the watercraft,
+from the dug-out, in which floated a naked savage--one of our ancestors
+--a naked savage, with teeth two inches long, with a spoonful of brains
+in the back of his head; I saw the watercraft of the world, from that
+dug-out up to a man-of-war that carries a hundred guns and miles of
+canvas; from that dug-out to the steamship that turns its brave prow
+from the port of New York through 3,000 miles of billows, with a compass
+like a conscience, that does not miss throb or beat of its mighty iron
+heart from one shore to the other.  I saw at the same time the weapons
+that man has made, from a rude club, such as was grasped by that savage
+when he crawled from his den, from his hole in the ground, and hunted a
+snake for his dinner--from that club to the boomerang, to the sword, to
+the cross-bow, to the blunderbuss, to the flint-lock, to the cap-lock,
+to the needle-gun, up to the cannon cast by Krupp, capable of hurling a
+ball of 2,000 pounds through eighteen inches of solid steel.  I saw,
+too, the armor from the turtle-shell that our ancestor lashed upon his
+skin when he went out to fight for his country, to the skin of the
+porcupine, with the quills all bristling, which he pulled over his
+orthodox head to defend himself from his enemies--I mean, of course, the
+orthodox head of that day--up to the shirts of mail that were worn in
+the middle ages, capable of resisting the edge of the sword and the
+point of the spear; up to the iron-clad, to the monitor completely clad
+in steel, capable only a few years ago of defying the navies of the
+globe.
+
+I saw at the same time the musical instruments, from the tomtom, which
+is a hoop with a couple of strings of rawhide drawn across it--from that
+tomtom up to the instruments we have today, which make the common air
+blossom with melody.  I saw, too, the paintings, from the daub of yellow
+mud up to the pieces which adorn the galleries of the world.  And the
+sculpture, from the rude gods, with six legs and a half dozen arms, and
+the rows of ears, up to the sculpture of now, wherein the marble is clad
+with such loveliness that it seems almost a sacrilege to touch it; and
+in addition I saw there ideas of books--books written upon skins of wild
+beasts, books written upon shoulder-blades of sheep; books written upon
+leaves, upon bark, up to the splendid volumes that adorn the libraries
+of our time.  When I think of libraries, I think of the remark of Plato,
+"The house that has a library in it has a soul."
+
+I saw there all these things, and also the implements of agriculture,
+from a crooked stick up to the plow which makes it possible for a man to
+cultivate the soil without being an ignoramus.  I saw at the same time a
+row of skulls, from the lowest skull that has ever been found; skulls
+from the central portion of Africa, skulls from the bushmen of
+Australia, up to the best skulls of the last generation.
+
+And I notice that there was the same difference between those skulls
+that there is between the products of those skulls.  And I said to
+myself:  "It is all a question of intellectual development.  It is a
+question of brain and sinew."  I noticed that there was the same
+difference between those skulls that there was between that dug-out, and
+that man-of-war and that steamship.  That skull was low.  It had not a
+forehead a quarter of an inch high.  But shortly after, the skulls
+became doming and crowning, and getting higher and grander.  That skull
+was a den in which crawled the base and meaner instincts of mankind, and
+this skull was a temple in which dwelt joy, liberty and love.  So said
+I:  "This is all a question of brain, and anything that tends to
+develop, intellectually, mankind, is the gospel we want."
+
+Now I want to be honest with you.  Honor bright!  Nothing like it in the
+world!  No matter what I believe.  Now, let us be honest. Suppose a
+king, if there was a king at the time this gentleman floated in the dugout
+and charmed his ears with the music of the tomtom; suppose the king
+at that time, if there was one, and the priest, if there was one, had
+said:  "That dug-out is the best boat that ever can be built.  The
+pattern of that came from on high, and any man who says he can improve
+it, by putting a log or a stick in the bottom of it, with a rag on the
+end, is an infidel."  Honor bright, what, in your judgment, would have
+been the effect upon the circumnavigation of the globe?  That is the
+question.  Suppose the king, if there was one, and the priest, if there
+was one--and I presume there was, because it was a very ignorant age--
+suppose they had said:  "That tomtom is the most miraculous instrument
+of music that any man can conceive of; that is the kind of music they
+have in heaven.  An angel, sitting upon the golden edge of a fleecy
+cloud, playing upon that tomtom became so enraptured, so entranced with
+her own music, that she dropped it, and that is how we got it--and any
+man that says that it can be improved by putting a back and front to it,
+and four strings and a bridge on it, and getting some horsehair and
+resin, is no better than one of the weak and unregenerate."
+
+I ask you what effect would that have had upon music?  I ask you, honor
+bright, if that course had been pursued, would the human ears ever have
+been enriched with the divine symphonies of Beethoven?  That is the
+question.  And suppose the king, if there was one, and the priest had
+said:  "That crooked stick is the best plow we can ever have invented.
+The pattern of that plow was given to a pious farmer in a holy dream,
+and that twisted straw is the ne plus ultra of all twisted things; and
+any man who says he can make an improvement, we will twist him."  Honor
+bright, what, in your judgment, would have been the effect upon the
+agricultural world?
+
+Now, you see, the people said, "We want better weapons with which to
+kill our enemies;" so the people said, "we want better plows;"  the
+people said, "we want better music;"  the people said, "we want better
+paintings;"  and they said, "whoever will give us better plows, and
+better arms, and better paintings, and better music, we will give him
+honor; we will crown him with glory; we will robe him in the garments
+of wealth;" and every incentive has been held out to every human being
+to improve something in every direction.  And that is the reason the
+club is a cannon; that the reason the dugout is a steamship; that the
+reason the daub is a painting, and that is the reason that that piece of
+stone has finally become a glorified statue.
+
+Now, then, this fellow in the dug-out had a religion.  That fellow was
+orthodox.  He had no doubt; he was settled in his mind.  He did not
+wish to be insulted.  He wanted the bark of his soul to lie at the wharf
+of orthodoxy, and rot in the sun.  He wanted to hear the sails of old
+opinions flap against the mast of old creeds.  He wanted to see the
+joints in the sides open and gape, as though thirsty for water, and he
+said:  "Now don't disturb my opinions; you'll get my mind unsettled; I
+have got it all made up, and I don't want to hear any infidelity,
+either." As far as I am concerned, I want to be out on the high sea; I
+Want to take my chance with wind and wave and star; and I had rather go
+down in the glory and grandeur of the storm than to rot at any orthodox
+wharf.  Of course I mean by orthodoxy all that don't agree with my doxy.
+Do you understand?
+
+Now this man had a religion.  That fellow believed in hell.  Yes, sir;
+and he thought he would be happier in heaven if he could just lean over
+and see certain people that he disliked, broiled. That fellow has had a
+great many intellectual descendents.  It is an unhappy fact in nature
+that the ignorant multiply much faster than the intellectual.  This
+fellow believed in the devil, and his devil had a cloven hoof.  (Many
+people think I have the same kind of footing.)  He had a long tail,
+armed with a fiery dart, and he breathed brimstone.  And do you know
+there has not been a patentable improvement made on that devil for 4,000
+years?  That fellow believed that God was a tyrant.  That fellow
+believed that the earth was flat.  That fellow believed, as I told you,
+in a literal burning, seething lake of fire and brimstone.  That is what
+he believed in.  That fellow, too, had his idea of politics, and his
+idea was, "Might makes right."  And it will take thousands of years
+before the world will believingly say, "Right makes might."  Now all I
+ask is the same privilege of improving on that gentleman's theology as
+upon his musical instrument; the same right to improve upon his
+politics as upon his dug-out. That is all.  I ask for the human soul the
+same liberty in every direction.  And that is all.  That is the only
+crime that I have committed.  That is all.  I say, let us have a chance.
+Let us think, and let each one express his thoughts.  Let us become
+investigators, not followers; not cringers and crawlers.  If there is
+in heaven an infinite being, he never will be satisfied with the worship
+of cowards and hypocrites.  Honest unbelief will be a perfume in heaven
+when hypocrisy, no matter however religious it may be outwardly, will be
+a stench.  That is my doctrine.  That is all there is to it; give every
+other human being all the chance you claim for yourself.  To keep your
+mind open to the voices of nature, to new ideas, to new thoughts, and to
+improve upon your doctrine whenever you can; that is my doctrine.
+
+Do you know we are improving all the time?  Do you know that the most
+orthodox people in this town today, three hundred years ago would have
+been burned for heresy?  Do you know some ministers who denounce me
+would have been in the Inquisition themselves two hundred years ago?  Do
+you know where once burned and blazed the bivouac fires of the army of
+progress, the altars of the church glow today?  Do you know that the
+church today occupies about the same ground that unbelievers did one
+hundred years ago?  Do you know that while they have followed this army
+of progress, protesting and denouncing, they have had to keep within
+protesting and denouncing distance, but they have followed it? They have
+been the men, let me say, in the valley; the men in swamps, shouting to
+and cursing the pioneers on the hills; the men upon whose forehead was
+the light of the coming dawn, the coming day--but they have advanced.
+In spite of themselves, they have advanced!  If they had not, I would
+not speak here to night.  If they had not, not a solitary one of you
+could have expressed your real and honest thought.  But we are
+advancing, and we are beginning to hold all kinds of slavery in utter
+contempt; do you know that?  And we are beginning to question wealth
+and power; we are questioning all creeds and all dogmas; and we are not
+bowing down, as we used to, to a man simply because he is in the robe of
+a clergyman, and we are not bowing down to a man now simply because he
+is a king.  No!  We are not bowing down simply because he is rich.  We
+used to worship the golden calves, but we do not now.  The worst you can
+say of an American, is, he worships the gold of the calf, not the calf;
+and even the calves are beginning to see this distinction.
+
+It no longer fills the ambition of a man to be emperor or king. The last
+Napoleon was not satisfied with being Emperor of the French; he was not
+satisfied with having a circlet of gold about his head; he wanted some
+evidence that he had something within his head, so he wrote the life of
+Julius Caesar, that he might become a member of the French Academy.
+Compare, for instance, in the German Empire, King William and Bismarck.
+King William is the one anointed of the most high, as they claim--the
+one upon whose head has been poured the divine petroleum of authority.
+Compare him with Bismarck, who towers, an intellectual Colossus, above
+this man.  Go into England and compare George Eliot with Queen Victoria
+--Queen Victoria, clothed in the garments given to her by blind fortune
+and by chance.  George Elliot, robed in garments of glory, woven in the
+loom of her own genius.  Which does the world pay respect to?  I tell
+you we are advancing! The pulpit does not do all the thinking; the pews
+do it; nearly all of it.  The world is advancing, and we question the
+authority of those men who simply say "it is so."  Down upon your knees
+and admit it!  When I think of how much this world has suffered, I am
+amazed.  When I think of how long our fathers were slaves, I am amazed.
+Why, just think of it!  This world has only been fit for a gentleman to
+live in fifty years.  No, it has not.  It was not until the year 1808
+that Great Britain abolished the slave trade. Up to that time her judge,
+sitting upon the bench in the name of justice; her priests, occupying
+the pulpit in the name of universal love, owned stock in slave ships and
+luxuriated in the profits of piracy and murder.  It was not until the
+year 1808 that the United States abolished the slave trade between this
+and other countries, but preserved it as between the States.  It was not
+until the 28th day of August, 1833, that Great Britain abolished human
+slavery in her colonies; and it was not until the 1st day of January,
+1863, that Abraham Lincoln wiped from our flag the stigma of disgrace.
+Abraham Lincoln--in my judgment, the grandest man ever president of the
+United States, and upon whose monument these words could truthfully be
+written:  "Here lies the only man in the history of the world who,
+having been clothed with almost absolute power, never abused it except
+on the side of mercy."
+
+Think, I say, how long we clung to the institution of human slavery;
+how long lashes upon the naked back were the legal tender for labor
+performed!  Think of it! when the pulpit of this country deliberately
+and willfully changed the Cross of Christ into the whipping-post.  Think
+of it!  And tell me then if I am right when I say this world has only
+been fit for a gentleman to live in fifty years.  I hate with every drop
+of my blood every form of tyranny.  I hate every form of slavery.  I
+hate dictation--I want something like liberty; and what do I mean by
+that?  The right to do anything that does not interfere with the
+happiness of another, physically.  Liberty of thought includes the right
+to think right and the right to think wrong.  Why? Because that is the
+means by which we arrive at truth; for if we knew the truth before, we
+needn't think.  Those men who mistake their ignorance for facts, never
+do think.  You may say to me, "How far is it across this room?"  I say
+100 feet.  Suppose it is 105; have I committed any crime?  I made the
+best guess I could. You ask me about any thing; I examine it honestly,
+and when I get through, what should I tell you--what I think or what you
+think?  What should I do?
+
+There is a book put in my hands.  They say "That is the Koran; that was
+written by inspiration; read it."  I read it.  Chapter VII, entitled
+"The Cow," chapter IX, entitled "The Bee," and so on.  I read it.  When
+I get through with it, suppose I think in my heart and in my brain, "I
+don't believe a word of it;"  and you ask me, "What do you think of it?"
+Now, admitting that I live in Turkey, and have a chance to get an
+office, what should I say?  Now, honor bright, should I just make a
+clean breast of it and say "Upon my honor, I don't believe it?"  Then is
+it right for you to say "That fellow will steal--that fellow is a
+dangerous man--he is a robber?"  Now, suppose I read the book called the
+bible (and I read it, honor bright), and when I get through with it I
+make up my mind that book was written by men; and along comes the
+preacher of my church, and he says "Did you read that book?"  "I did."
+"Do you think it is divinely inspired?"  I say to myself, "Now if I say
+it is not, they will never send me to Congress from this district on
+earth."  Now, honor bright, what ought I to do?  Ought I to say, "I have
+read it.  I have been honest about it; don't believe it?" Now, ought I
+to say that, if that is a real transcript of my mind, or ought I to
+commence hemming and hawing and pretend that I do believe it, and go
+away with the respect of that man, hating myself for a cringing coward?
+Now which?  For my part I would rather a man would tell me what he
+honestly thinks, and he will preserve his manhood.  I had rather be a
+manly unbeliever than an unmanly believer.  I think I will stand higher
+at the judgment day, if there is one, and stand with as good a chance to
+get my case dismissed without costs as a man who sneaks through life
+pretending he believes what he does not.  I tell you one thing; there is
+going to be one free fellow in this world.  I am going to say my say, I
+tell you.  I am going to do it kindly, I am going to do it distinctly,
+but I am going to do it.
+
+Now, if men have been slaves, what about women?  Women have been the
+slaves of slaves; and that's a pretty hard position to occupy for life.
+They have been the slaves of slaves; and in my judgment it took
+millions of ages for women to come from the condition of abject slavery
+up to the institution of marriage. Let me say right here, tonight, I
+regard marriage as the holiest institution among men.  Without the
+fireside there is no human advancement; without the family relation,
+there is no life worth living.  Every good government is made up of good
+families.  The unit of government is family, and anything that tends to
+destroy the family is perfectly devilish and infamous.  I believe in
+marriage, and I hold in utter contempt the opinions of long-haired men
+and short-haired women who denounce the institution of marriage.  Let me
+say right here--and I have thought a good deal about it--let me say
+right here, the grandest ambition that any man can possibly have is to
+so live and so improve himself in heart and brain as to be worthy of the
+love of some splendid woman; and the grandest ambition of any girl is
+to make herself worthy of the love and adoration of some magnificent
+man.  That is my idea, and there is no success in life without it.  If
+you are the grand emperor of the world, you had better be the grand
+emperor of one loving and tender heart, and she the grand empress of
+yours.  The man who has really won the love of one good woman in this
+world, I do not care if he dies in the ditch a beggar, his life has been
+a success.
+
+I say it took millions of years to come from the condition of abject
+slavery up to the condition of marriage.  Ladies, the ornaments you bear
+upon your person tonight are but the souvenirs of your mothers' bondage.
+The chains around your necks and the bracelets clasped upon your wrists
+by the thrilling hand of love, have been changed by the wand of
+civilization from iron to shining, glittering gold.  But nearly every
+religion has accounted for the devilment in this world by the crime of
+woman. What a gallant thing that is!  And if it is true, I had rather
+live with the woman I love in a world full of trouble, than to live in
+heaven with nobody but men.
+
+I say that nearly every religion has accounted for all the trouble in
+this world by the crime of woman.  I read in a book--and I will say now
+that I cannot give the exact language; my memory does not retain the
+words--but I can give the substance.  I read in a book that the supreme
+being concluded to make a world and one man; that he took some nothing
+and made a world and one man, and put this man in a garden:  but he
+noticed that he got lonesome; he wandered around as if he was waiting
+for a train; there was nothing to interest him; no news; no papers;
+no politics; no policy; and as the devil had not yet made his
+appearance, there was no chance for reconciliation; not even for civil
+service reform.  Well, he would wander about this garden in this
+condition until finally the supreme being made up his mind to make him a
+companion; and having used up all the nothing he originally took in
+making the world and one man, he had to take a part of the man to start
+a woman with, and so he caused a deep sleep to fall upon this man--now,
+understand me. I didn't say this story is true. After the sleep fell
+upon this man, he took a rib, or, as the French would call it, a cutlet
+out of this man, and from that he made a woman; and considering the raw
+material, I look upon it as the most successful job ever performed.
+Well, after He got the woman done, she was brought to the man; not to
+see how she liked him, but to see how he liked her.  He liked her, and
+they started housekeeping; and they were told of certain things they
+might do, and one thing they could not do--and of course they did it.  I
+would have done it in fifteen minutes, and I know it.  There wouldn't
+have been an apple on that tree half an hour from date, and the limbs
+could have been full of clubs.  And then they were turned out of the
+park, and an extra force was put on to keep them from getting back.
+Then devilment commenced.  The mumps, and the measles, and the whooping
+cough and the scarlet fever started in their race for man, and they
+began to have the toothache, the roses began to have thorns, and snakes
+began to have poisoned teeth, and people began to divide about religion
+and politics; and the world has been full of trouble from that day to
+this. Now, nearly all of the religions of this world account for the
+existence of evil by such a story as that.
+
+I read in another book what appeared to be an account of the same
+transaction.  It was written about 4,000 years before the other; but all
+commentators agree that the one that was written last was the original,
+and that the one that was written first was copied from the one that was
+written last; but I would advise you all not to allow your creed to be
+disturbed by a little matter of four or five thousand years.  In this
+other story the Supreme Brahma made up his mind to make the world and
+man and woman; and he made the world, and be made the man and he made
+the woman, and he put them on the island of Ceylon; and according to
+the account, it was the most beautiful island of which man can conceive.
+Such birds, such songs, such flowers and such verdure! And the branches
+of the trees were so arranged that when the wind swept through them
+every tree was a thousand aeolian harps.  The Supreme Brahma when he put
+them there said, "Let them have a period of courtship, for it is my
+desire and will that true love should forever precede marriage."  When I
+read that, it was so much more beautiful and lofty than the other, that
+I said to myself, "If either one of these stories ever turns out to be
+true, I hope it will be this one."
+
+Then they had their courtship, with the nightingales singing and the
+stars shining and the flowers blooming, and they fell in love.  Imagine
+the courtship!  No prospective fathers or mothers in law; no prying and
+gossiping neighbors, nobody to say, "Young man, how do you expect to
+support her?"  Nothing of that kind. They were married by the Supreme
+Brahma, and he said to them:  "Remain here; you must never leave this
+island."  Well, after a little while the man--and his name was Amend,
+and the woman's name was Heva--and the man said to Heva:  "I believe
+I'll look about a little;"  and he went to the northern extremity of the
+island, where there was a little, narrow neck of land connecting it with
+the mainland; and the devil, who is always playing pranks with us, got
+up a mirage, and when he looked over to the mainland, such hills and
+dells, vales and dales; such mountains, crowned with silver; such
+cataracts, clad in robes of beauty, did he see there, that he went back
+and told Heva:  "The country over there is a thousand times better than
+this; let us migrate."  She, like every other woman that ever lived,
+said: "Let well enough alone; we have all we want; let us stay here."
+But he said, "No, let us go;" so she followed him, and when they came to
+this narrow neck of land he took her on his back like a gentleman and
+carried her over.  But the moment they got over they heard a crash, and,
+looking back, discovered that this narrow neck of land had fallen into
+the sea, with the exception of now and then a rock, and the mirage had
+disappeared and there was naught but rocks and sand; and then a voice
+called out, cursing them.  Then it was that the man spoke up--and I have
+liked him ever since for it--"Curse me, but curse not her; it was not
+her fault, it was mine."  That's the kind of man to start a world with.
+The Supreme Brahma said, "I will save her but not thee."  She spoke up
+out of her feelings of love, out of a heart in which there was love
+enough to make all of her daughters rich in holy affection, and said,
+"If thou wilt not spare him, spare neither me; I do not wish to live
+without him; I love him." Then the Supreme Brahma said--and I have
+liked him first-rate ever since I read it--"I will spare you both and
+watch over you."
+
+Honor bright, isn't that the better story?
+
+And from that same book I want to show you what ideas some of these
+miserable heathen had--the heathen we are trying to convert.  We send
+missionaries over yonder to convert heathen there, and we send soldiers
+out on the plains to kill heathen there.  If we can convert the heathen,
+why not convert those nearest home?  Why not convert those we can get
+at?  Why not convert those who have the immense advantage of the example
+of the average pioneer?  But to show you the men we are trying to
+convert--in this book it says:  "Man is strength, woman is beauty; man
+is courage, woman is love.  When the one man loves the one woman and the
+one woman loves the one man, the very angels leave heaven and come and
+sit in that house and sing for joy."  They are the men we are
+converting.  Think of it!  I tell you when I read these things I begin
+to say, "Love is not of any country; nobility does not belong
+exclusively here;"  and through all the ages there have been a few great
+and tender souls lifted far above their fellows.
+
+Now, my friends, it seems to me that the woman is the equal of the man.
+She has all the rights I have, and one more, and that is the right to be
+protected.  That's my doctrine.  You are married; try and make the
+woman you love happy; try and make the man you love happy.  Whoever
+marries simply for himself will make a mistake; but whoever loves a
+woman so well that he says "I will make her happy," makes no mistake;
+and so with the woman who says "I will make him happy."  There is only
+one way to be happy, and that is to make somebody else so, and you can't
+be happy cross-lots; you have got to go the regular turnpike road.
+
+If there is any man I detest, it is the man who thinks he is the head of
+the family--the man who thinks he is "boss".  That fellow in the dug-out
+used that word "boss;"  that was one of his favorite expressions--that
+he was "boss".  Imagine a young man and a young woman courting, walking
+out in the moonlight, and the nightingale singing a song of pain and
+love, as though the thorn touched her heart--imagine them stopping there
+in the moonlight and starlight and song, and saying "Now here, let's
+settle who's boss!"  I tell you it is an infamous word, and an infamous
+feeling--a man who is "boss," who is going to govern his family, and
+when he speaks let all the rest of them be still--some mighty idea is
+about to be launched from his mouth.  Do you know I dislike this man
+unspeakably; and a cross man I hate above all things.
+
+What right has he to murder the sunshine of the day?  What right has he
+to assassinate the joy of life?  Where you go home you ought to feel the
+light there is in the house; if it is in the night it will burst out of
+doors and windows and illuminate the darkness.  It is just as well to go
+home a ray of sunshine as an old sour, cross curmudgeon, who thinks he
+is the head of the family.  Wise men think their mighty brains have been
+in a turmoil; they have been thinking about who will be alderman from
+the fifth ward; they have been thinking about politics; great and
+mighty questions have been engaging their minds; they have bought
+calico at 8 cents, or 6, and want to sell it for 7.  Think of the
+intellectual strain that must have been upon a man, and when he gets
+home everybody else in the house must look out for his comfort.  A woman
+who has only taken care of five or six children, and one or two of them
+may be sick; has been nursing them and singing to them, and taking care
+of them, and trying to make one yard of cloth do the work of two--she,
+of course, is fresh and fine, and ready to wait upon this great
+gentleman--the head of the family I don't like him a bit!
+
+Do you know another thing?  I despise a stingy man.  I don't see how it
+is possible for a man to die worth fifty millions of dollars, or ten
+millions of dollars, in a city full of want, when he meets almost every
+day the withered hand of beggary and the white lips of famine.  How a
+man can withstand all that, and hold in the clutch of his greed twenty
+or thirty millions of dollars, is past my comprehension.  I do not see
+how he can do it.  I should not think he could do it any more than he
+could keep a pile of lumber where hundreds and thousands of men were
+drowning in the sea.  I should not think he could do it.
+
+Do you know I have known men who would trust their wives with their
+hearts and their honor, but not with their pocketbook; not with a
+dollar.  When I see a man of that kind I always think he knows which of
+these articles is the most valuable.  Think of making your wife a
+beggar!  Think of her having to ask you every day for a dollar, or for
+two dollars, or for fifty cents!  "What did you do with that dollar I
+gave you last week?"  Think of having a wife that was afraid of you!
+What kind of children do you expect to have with a beggar and a coward
+for their mother? Oh, I tell you, if you have but a dollar in the world,
+and you have got to spend it, spend it like a king; spend it as though
+it were a dry leaf and you the owner of unbounded forests! That's the
+way to spend it!  I had rather be a beggar and spend my last dollar like
+a king, than be a king and spend my money like a beggar.  If it's got to
+go, let it go.
+
+Get the best you can for your family--try to look as well as you can
+yourself.  When you used to go courting, how nice you looked! Ah, your
+eye was bright, your step was light, and you just put on the very best
+look you could.  Do you know that it is insufferable egotism in you to
+suppose that a woman is going to love you always looking as bad as you
+can?  Think of it!  Any woman on earth will be true to you forever when
+you do your level best.  Some people tell me, "Your doctrine about
+loving, and wives, and all that is splendid for the rich, but it won't
+do for the poor."  I tell you tonight there is on the average more love
+in the homes of the poor than in the palaces of the rich; and the
+meanest but with love in it is fit for the gods, and a palace without
+love is a den only fit for wild beasts.  That's my doctrine!
+
+You can't be so poor but that you can help somebody.  Good nature is the
+cheapest commodity in the world; and love is the only thing that will
+pay 10 percent to borrower and lender both. Don't tell me that you have
+got to be rich!  We have all a false standard of greatness in the United
+States.  We think here that a man to be great, must be notorious; must
+be extremely wealthy, or his name must be between the lips of rumor.  It
+is all nonsense!  It is not necessary to be rich to be great, or to be
+powerful to be happy; and the happy man is the successful man.
+Happiness is the legal tender of the soul.  Joy is wealth.
+
+A little while ago I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon, a
+magnificent tomb, fit for a dead deity almost, and gazed into the great
+circle at the bottom of it.  In the sarcophagus, of black Egyptian
+marble, at last rest the ashes of that restless man.  I looked over the
+balustrade, and I thought about the career of Napoleon.  I could see him
+walking upon the banks of the Seine contemplating suicide.  I saw him at
+Toulon.  I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris.  I saw
+him at the head of the army of Italy.  I saw him crossing the bridge at
+Lodi.  I saw him in Egypt, fighting the battle of the pyramids.  I saw
+him cross the Alps, and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of
+the crags.  I saw him at Austerlitz.  I saw him with his army scattered
+and dispersed before the blast.  I saw him at Leipsic when his army was
+defeated and he was taken captive.  I saw him escape.  I saw him land
+again upon French soil, and retake an empire by the force of his own
+genius.  I saw him captured once more, and again at St. Helena, with his
+arms behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea; and I thought
+of the orphans and Widows he had made.
+
+I thought of the tears that had been shed for his glory.  I thought of
+the only woman who ever loved him, who had been pushed from his heart by
+the cold hand of ambition; and as I looked at the sarcophagus, I said,
+"I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes; I
+would rather have lived in a hut, with a vine growing over the door, and
+the grapes growing and ripening in the autumn sun; I would rather have
+been that peasant, with my wife by my side and my children upon my
+knees, twining their arms of affection about me; I would rather have
+been that poor French peasant, and gone down at last to the eternal
+promiscuity of the dust, followed by those who loved me; I would a
+thousand times rather have been that French peasant than that imperial
+personative of force and murder."  And so I would, ten thousand times.
+
+It is not necessary to be great to be happy; it is not necessary to be
+rich to be just and generous, and to have a heart filled with divine
+affection.  No matter whether you are rich or poor, use your wife as
+though she were a splendid creation, and she will fill your life with
+perfume and joy.  And do you know, it is a splendid thing for me to
+think that the woman you really love will never grow old to you?
+Through the wrinkles of time, through the music of years, if you really
+love her, you will always see the face you loved and won.  And a woman
+who really loves a man, does not see that he grows older; he is not
+decrepit; he does not tremble; he is not old; she always sees the
+same gallant gentleman who won her hand and heart.  I like to think of
+it in that way.  I like to think of all passions; love is eternal, and,
+as Shakespeare says, "Although Time, with his sickle, can rob ruby lips
+and sparkling eyes, let him reach as far as he can, he cannot quite
+touch love; that reaches even to the end of the tomb."  And to love in
+that way, and then go down the hill of life together, and as you go down
+hear, perhaps, the laughter of grandchildren--the birds of joy and love
+sing once more in the leafless branches of age.  I believe in the
+fireside. I believe in the democracy of home.  I believe in the
+republicanism of the family.  I believe in liberty and equality with
+those we love.
+
+If women have been slaves, what shall I say of children; of the little
+children in the alleys and sub-cellars; the little children who turn
+pale when they hear their father's footsteps; little children who run
+away when they only hear their names called by the lips of another;
+little children--the children of poverty, the children of crime, the
+children of brutality wherever you are--flotsam and jetsam upon the
+wild, mad sea of life, my heart goes out to you, one and all.  I tell
+you the children have the same rights that we have, and we ought to
+treat them as though they were human beings; and they should be reared
+by love, by kindness, by tenderness, and not by brutality.  That is my
+idea of children.  When your little child tells a lie, don't rush at him
+as though the world were about to go into bankruptcy.  Be honest with
+him.  A tyrant father will have liars for children; do you know that?
+A lie is born of tyranny upon the one hand and weakness upon the other,
+and when you rush at a poor little boy with a club in your hand, of
+course he lies.  I thank Mother Nature that she has put ingenuity enough
+in the breast of a child, when attacked by a brutal parent, to throw up
+a little breastwork in the shape of a lie.  When one of your children
+tells a lie, be honest with him; tell him you have told hundreds of
+them yourself. Tell him it is not the best way; you have tried it.
+Tell him, as the man did in Maine when his boy left home:  "John,
+honesty is the best policy; I have tried both."  Just be honest with
+him.  Imagine now; you are about to whip a child five years of age.
+What is the child to do? Suppose a man, as much larger than you are
+larger than a child five years old, should come at you with liberty-pole
+in hand, and in a voice of thunder shout, "Who broke the plate?"  There
+is not a solitary one of you who wouldn't swear you never saw it, or
+that it was cracked when you found it.  Why not be honest with these
+children?  Just imagine a man who deals in stocks putting false rumors
+afloat!
+
+Think of a lawyer beating his own flesh and blood for evading the truth,
+when he makes half of his own living that way!  Think of a minister
+punishing his child for not telling all he thinks!  Just think of it!
+When your child commits a wrong, take it in your arms; let it feel your
+heart beat against its heart; let the child know that you really and
+truly and sincerely love it.  Yet some Christians, good Christians, when
+a child commits a fault, drive it from the door, and say, "Never do you
+darken this house again."  Think of that!  And then these same people
+will get down on their knees and ask God to take care of the child they
+have driven from home.  I will never ask God to take care of my children
+unless I am doing my level best in that same direction. But I will tell
+you what I say to my children:  "Go where you will; commit what crime
+you may; fall to what depth of degradation you may; you can never
+commit any crime that will shut my door, my arms, my heart to you; as
+long as I live you shall have no more sincere friend."
+
+Do you know, I have seen some people who acted as though they thought
+when the Savior said, "Suffer little children to come unto me, for such
+is the Kingdom of Heaven," that he had a rawhide under his mantle and
+made that remark to get the children within striking distance.  I don't
+believe in the government of the lash.  If any one of you ever expect to
+whip your children again after you hear me, I want you to have a
+photograph taken of yourself when you are in the act, with your face red
+with vulgar anger; and then the face of the little child, with eyes
+swimming in tears, and the little chin dimpled with fear, like a piece
+of water struck by a sudden, cold wind.  Have the picture taken.  If
+that little child should die, I cannot find a sweeter way to spend an
+autumn afternoon than to go out to the cemetery, when the maples are
+clad in bright colors, and little scarlet runners are coming, like poems
+of regret, from the sad heart of the earth--than to go out to the
+cemetery and sit down upon the grave and look at this photograph, and
+think of the flesh, now dust, that you beat.
+
+I tell you it is wrong; it is no way to raise children!  Make your home
+happy.  Be honest with them, divide fairly with them in everything.
+Give them a little liberty, and you cannot drive them out of the house.
+They will want to stay there.  Make home pleasant.  Let them play any
+game they want to.  Don't be so foolish as to say:  "You may roll balls
+on the ground, but you must not roll them on green cloth.  You may knock
+them with a mallet, but you must not push them with a cue.  You may play
+with little pieces of paper which have 'Authors' written on them, but
+you must not have 'keerds.'"  Think of it!  "You may go to a minstrel
+show, where people blacken themselves up and degrade themselves, and
+imitate humanity below themselves, but you must not go to the theater
+and see the characters of immortal genius put upon the stage."  Why?
+Well, I can't think of any reason in the world except "minstrel" is a
+word of two syllables and theater has three.  Let children have some
+daylight at home if you want to keep them there, and don't commence at
+the cradle and yell, "Don't!"  "Don't!"  "Stop!"  That is nearly all
+that is said to a young one from the cradle until he is twenty one years
+old, and when he comes of age other people begin saying "Don't!" And the
+church says "Don't!"  And the party that he belongs to says "Don't!"  I
+despise that way of going through this world. Let us have a little
+liberty--just a little bit.  There is another thing.  In old times, you
+know, they thought some days were too good for a child to enjoy himself
+in.  When I was a boy Sunday was considered altogether too good to be
+happy in; and Sunday used to commence then when the sun went down
+Saturday night.  That was to get good ready--a kind of running jump;
+and when the sun went down, a darkness ten thousand times deeper than
+that of night fell on that house.  Nobody said a word then; nobody
+laughed; and the child that looked the sickest was regarded the most
+pious.  You couldn't crack hickory nuts; you couldn't chew gum; and if
+you laughed, it was only another evidence of the total depravity of man.
+That was a solemn night; and the next morning everybody looked sad,
+mournful, dyspeptic--and thousands of people think they have religion
+when they have only got dyspepsia--thousands!  But there is nothing in
+this world that would break up the old orthodox churches as quick as
+some specific for dyspepsia--some sure cure.
+
+Then we went to church, and the minister was up in a pulpit about twenty
+feet high, with a little sounding-board over him, and he commenced with
+Firstly and went on to about twenty-thirdly, and then around by way of
+application, and then divided it off again once or twice, and after
+having put in about two hours, he got to Revelations.  We were not
+allowed to have any fire, even if it was in the winter.  It was thought
+to be outrageous to be comfortable while you are thanking the Lord, and
+the first church that ever had a stove put in it in New England was
+broken up on that account.  Then we went a-nooning, and then came the
+catechism, the chief end of man.  We went through that; and then this
+same sermon was preached, commencing at the other end, and going back.
+After that was over we started for home, solemn and sad--"not a soldier
+discharged his farewell shot;"  not a word was said--and when we got
+home, if we had been good boys, they would take us up to the graveyard
+to cheer us up a little.
+
+It did cheer me!  When I looked at those tombs the comforting reflection
+came to my mind that this kind of thing couldn't last always.  Then we
+had some certain books that we read just by way of cheerfulness.  There
+was Milner's "History of the Wilderness," Baxter's "Call to the
+Unconverted," and Jenkins' "On the Atonement."  I used to read Jenkins'
+"On the Atonement;"  and I have often thought the atonement would have
+to be very broad in its provisions to cover the case of a man who would
+write a book like that for a boy to read.  Well, you know, the Sunday
+had to go at last; and the moment the sun went down Sunday night we
+were free.  About 4 or 5 o'clock we would go to see how the sun was
+coming out.  Sometimes it seemed to me that it was just stopping from
+pure cussedness; but finally it had to go down, and when the last rim
+of light sank below the horizon, out would come our traps, and we would
+give three cheers for liberty once more.  In those times it was thought
+wrong for a child to laugh on Sunday.  Think of that!  A little child--a
+little boy--could go out in the garden, and there would be a tree laden
+with blossoms, and this little fellow would lean up against the tree,
+and there would be a bird singing and swinging, and thinking about four
+little speckled eggs, warmed by the breast of its mate--singing and
+swinging, and the music coming rippling out of its throat, and the
+flowers blossoming and the air full of perfume, and the great white
+clouds floating in the sky; and that little boy would lean up against
+that trunk, and think of hell.
+
+That's true!  I have heard them preach when I sat in the pew, and my
+feet didn't come within eighteen inches of the floor, about that hell.
+And they said, "Suppose that once in a million years a bird would come
+from some far distant planet, and carry in its bill a grain of sand, the
+time would finally come when the last atom composing this earth would be
+carried away;"  and the old preacher said, in order to impress upon the
+boys the length of time they would have to stay, "it wouldn't be sun-up
+in hell yet."
+
+Think of that to preach to children!  I tell you, my friends, no day can
+be so sacred but that the laugh of a little child will make it holier
+still--no day!  And yet, at that time, the minds of children were
+polluted by this infamous doctrine of eternal punishment; and I
+denounce it today as an infamous doctrine beyond the power of language
+to express.  Where did that doctrine of eternal punishment for the
+children of men come from?  It came from that wretch in the dug-out.
+Where did he get it?  It was a souvenir from the animals, and the
+doctrine of eternal punishment was born in the eyes of snakes when they
+hung in fearful coils watching for their prey.  It was a doctrine born
+of the howling and barking and growling of wild beasts; it was born in
+the grin of the hyenas, and of the depraved chatter of the baboons; and
+I despise it with every drop of my blood.  Tell me there is a God in the
+serene heaven that will damn his children for the expression of an
+honest belief!
+
+There have been more men who died in their sins, according to your
+orthodox religion, than there are leaves on all the forests of this
+world ten thousand times over.  Tell me they are in hell! Tell me they
+are to be punished for ever and ever!  I denounce it as an infamous lie!
+
+And when the great ship containing the hope and aspiration of the world,
+when the great ship freighted with mankind goes down in the night of
+death and disaster, I will go down with the ship.  I don't want to
+paddle off in any orthodox canoe.  I will go down with the ship; and if
+there is a God who will damn his children forever I had rather go to
+hell than to go to heaven and keep the society of such an infamous
+Deity.  I make my choice now.  I despise that doctrine, and I'll tell
+you why.  It has covered the cheeks of this world with tears.  It has
+polluted the heart of children.  It has been a pain and terror to every
+man that ever believed it.  It has filled the good with horror and fear,
+but it has had no effect upon the infamous and base.  I tell you it is a
+bad doctrine.  I read in the papers today what Henry Ward Beecher, whom
+I regard as the most intellectual preacher in the pulpit of the United
+States--I will read from the paper what he said yesterday, and you will
+see an abstract of it in the New York Times of today.  He has had the
+courage, and he has had the magnificent manhood, to say:
+
+"I say to you, and I swear to you, by the wounds in the hands of Christ
+--I swear to you by the wounds in the body and feet of Christ, that this
+doctrine of eternal hell is a most infamous nightmare of theology!  It
+never should be preached again."
+
+What right have you, sir; you, minister, as you are, to stand at the
+portal of eternity, or the portal of the tomb, and fill the future with
+horror and with fear?  You have no right to do it.  I don't believe it,
+and neither do you.  You would not sleep one night.  Any man who
+believes it, who has got a decent heart in his bosom, will go insane.
+Yes, sir, a man that really believes that doctrine and does not go
+insane, has got the conscience of a snake and the intellect of a hyena.
+O! I thank my stars that you do not believe it.  You cannot believe it,
+and you never will believe it.  Old Jonathan Edwards, the dear old soul,
+he is in heaven I suppose, said:  "Can the believing husband in heaven
+be happy with his unbelieving wife in hell?  Can the believing father in
+heaven be happy with his unbelieving children in hell? Can the loving
+wife in heaven be happy with her unbelieving husband in hell?  I tell
+you yea.  Such will be their sense of justice that it will increase
+rather than diminish their happiness."
+
+Think of these infamous doctrines that have been taught in the name of
+religion!  Do not stuff these things into the minds of your children.
+Give them a chance.  Let them read.  Let them think.  Do not treat your
+children like posts, to be set in the orthodox road, but like trees,
+that need light and sun and air. Be honest with them.  Be fair with
+them.  In old times they used to make all children go to bed when they
+were not sleepy, and all of them got up when they were sleepy.  I say
+let them go to bed--when they are sleepy and get up when they are not.
+But they say that will do for the rich, but not for the poor.  Well, if
+the poor have to wake their children early in the morning, it is as easy
+to wake them with a kiss as with a club.  I believe in letting children
+commence at which end of the dinner they want to.
+
+Let them eat what they want.  It is their business.  They know what they
+want to eat.  And if they have had their liberty from the first, they
+can beat any doctor in the world.  All the improvement that has ever
+been made in medicine has been made by the recklessness of patients.
+Yes, sir.  Thousands and thousands of years the doctors wouldn't let a
+man have water in fever. Every now and then some fellow got reckless and
+said:  "I will die, I am so thirsty," and drank two or three quarts of
+water and got well.  And they kept that up until finally the doctors
+said, "that is the best thing for a fever you can do."
+
+I have more confidence to agree with nature about these things than any
+of the conclusions of the schools.  Just let your children have freedom,
+and they will fall right into your ways and do just as you do.  But you
+try to make them, and there is some magnificent, splendid thing in the
+human heart that will not be driven.  And do you know it is the luckiest
+thing for this world that ever happened that people are so.  What would
+we have been if the people in any age of the world had done just as the
+doctors told them?  They would have been all dead.  What would we have
+done if, at any age of the world, we had followed implicitly the
+direction of the church?  We would have been all idiots, every one.
+
+It is a splendid thing that there is always some fellow who won't mind,
+and will think for himself.  And I believe in letting children think for
+themselves.  I believe in having a family like a democracy.  If there is
+anything splendid in this world it is a home of that kind.  They used to
+tell us, "Let your victuals close your mouth."  We used to eat as though
+it was a religious performance.  I like to see the children about, and
+every one telling what he has seen and heard.  I like to hear the
+clatter of the knives and spoons mingling with the laughter of their
+voices.  I had rather hear it than any opera that has ever been put upon
+the boards.  Let them have liberty; let them have freedom, and I tell
+you your children will love you to death.
+
+Now, I have some excuses to offer for the race to which I belong. I have
+two.  My first excuse is that this is not a very good world to raise
+folks in anyway.  It is not very well adapted to raising magnificent
+people.  There's only a quarter of it land to start with.  It is three
+times better fitted for raising fish than folks, and in that one quarter
+of land there is not a tenth part fit to raise people on.  You can't
+raise people without a good climate.  You have got to have the right
+kind of climate, and you have got to have certain elements in the soil,
+or you can't raise good people.  Do you know that there is only a little
+zig-zag strip around the world within which have been produced all men
+of genius?
+
+The southern hemisphere has never produced a man of genius, never; and
+never will until civilization, fighting the heat that way and the cold
+this, widens this portion of the earth until it is capable of producing
+great men and great women.  It is the same with men that it is with
+vegetation; you go into a garden, and find there flowers growing.  And
+as you go up the mountain, the birch and the hemlock and the spruce are
+to be found.  And as you go toward the top, you find little, stunted
+trees getting a miserable subsistence out of the crevices of the rocks,
+and you go on up and up and up, until finally you find at the top little
+moss-like freckles.  You might as well try to raise flowers where those
+freckles grow as to raise great men and women where you haven't got the
+soil.
+
+I don't believe man ever came to any high station without woman. There
+has got to be some restraint, something to make you prudent, something
+to make you industrious.  And in a country where you don't need any bed
+quilt but a cloud, revolution is the normal condition of the people.
+You have got to have the fireside; you have got to have the home, and
+there by the fireside will grow and bloom the fruits of the human race.
+I recollect a while ago I was in Washington when they were trying to
+annex Santo Domingo.  They said:  "We want to take in Santo Domingo."
+Said I:   "We don't want it."  "Why," said they, "it is the best climate
+the earth can produce.  There is everything you want."  "Yes," said I,
+"but it won't produce men. We don't want it.  We have got soil enough
+now.  Take 5,000 ministers from New England, 5,000 presidents of
+colleges, and 5,000 solid business men, and their families, and take
+them to Santo Domingo; and then you will see the effect of climate. The
+second generation, you will see barefooted boys riding bareback on a
+mule, with their hair sticking out of the top of their sombreros, with a
+rooster under each arm, going to a cock-fight on Sunday."
+
+You have got to have the soil; you have got to have the climate, and
+you have got to have another thing--you have got to have the fireside.
+That is one excuse I have for us.
+
+The next excuse is that I think we came up from the lower animals.  Else
+how can you account for all this snake and hyena and jackal in man?
+Now, when I first heard that doctrine, I didn't like it.  I felt sorry
+for people who had nothing but ancestors to be proud of.  It touched my
+heart to think that they would have to go back to the Duke Orangutan or
+the Duchess Chimpanzee.  I was sorry, and I hated to believe it.  I
+don't know that it is the truth now.  I am not satisfied upon that
+question; I stand about eight to seven.  I thought it over.  I read
+about it.  I read about these rudimentary bones and muscles. I didn't
+like that.  I read that everybody had rudimentary muscles coming from
+the ear right down here (indicating); that the most intellectual people
+in the world have got them.  I say, "What are they?"  "Rudimentary
+muscles."  "What kind of muscles?" "Muscles that your ancestors used to
+have fully developed." "What for?"  "To flap their ears with."
+
+Well, whether we ever had them or not, I know of lots of men who ought
+to have them yet.  And finally I said, "Well, I guess we came up from
+the lower animals."  I thought it all over; the best I could, and I
+said, "I guess we did."  And after a while I began to like it, and I
+like it better now than I did before.
+
+Do you know that I would rather belong to a race that started with
+skull-less vertebrae in the dim Laurentian seas, wiggling without
+knowing why they wiggled, swimming without knowing where they were
+going; but kept developing and getting a little further up and a little
+further up, all through the animal world, and finally striking this chap
+in the dug-out.  A getting a little bigger, and this fellow calling that
+fellow a heretic, and that fellow calling the other an infidel, and so
+on.  For in the history of the world, the man who has been ahead has
+always been called a heretic.  Recollect this!  I would rather come from
+a race that started from that skull-less vertebrae, and came up and up
+and up, and finally produced Shakespeare, who found the human intellect
+wallowing in a hut, and touched it with a wand of his genius, and it
+became a palace--dome and pinnacle.  I would rather belong to a race
+that commenced then, and produced Shakespeare, with the eternal hope of
+an infinite future for the children of progress leading from the far
+horizon, beckoning men forward--forward and onward forever.  I had
+rather belong to this race, and commence there, with that hope, than to
+have sprung from a perfect pair on which the Lord has lost money every
+day since.
+
+These are the excuses I have for my race.
+
+Now, my friends, let me say another thing.  I do not pretend to have
+floated even with the heights of thought; I do not pretend to have
+fathomed the abyss.  All I pretend is to give simply my honest thought.
+Every creed that we have today has upon it the mark of whip and chain
+and fagot.  I do not want it.  Free labor will give us wealth, and has
+given us wealth, and why?  Because a free brain goes into partnership
+with a free hand.  That is why. And when a man works for his wife and
+children, the problem of liberty is, how to do the most work in the
+shortest space of time; but the problem of slavery is, how to do the
+least work in the longest space of time.  Slavery is poverty; liberty
+is wealth.
+
+It is the same in thought.  Free thought will give us truth; and the
+man who is not in favor of free thought occupies the same relation to
+those he can govern that the slaveholder occupied to his slaves,
+exactly.  Free thought will give us wealth.  There has not been a
+generation of free thought yet.
+
+It will be time to write a creed when there have been a few generations
+of free-brained men and splendid women in this world. I don't know what
+the future may bring forth; I don't know what inventions are in the
+brain of the future; I don't know what garments may be woven, with the
+years to come; but I do know, coming from the infinite sea of the
+future, there will never touch this "bank and shoal of time" a greater
+blessing, a grander glory, than liberty for man, woman and child.
+
+Oh, liberty!  Float not forever in the far horizon!  Remain not forever
+in the dream of the enthusiast and the poet and the philanthropist!  But
+come and take up thine abode with the children of men forever!
+
+
+
+
+
+Ingersoll's Lecture on "Orthodoxy"
+
+
+
+Ladies and Gentlemen:   It is utterly inconceivable that any man
+believing in the truth of the Christian religion could publicly deny it,
+because he who believes in that religion would believe that, by a public
+denial, he would peril the eternal salvation of his soul.  It is
+conceivable, and without any great effort of the mind, that millions who
+don't believe in the Christian religion should openly say that they did.
+In a country where religion is supposed to be in power--where it has
+rewards for pretense, where it pays a premium upon hypocrisy, where it
+at least is willing to purchase silence--it is easily conceivable that
+millions pretend to believe what they do not.  And yet I believe it has
+been charged against myself, not only that I was insincere, but that I
+took the side I am on for the sake of popularity; and the audience
+tonight goes far toward justifying the accusation.
+
+It gives me immense pleasure to say to this immense audience that
+orthodox religion is dying out of the civilized world.  It is a sick
+man.  It has been attacked with two diseases--softening of the brain and
+ossification of the heart.  It is a religion that no longer satisfies
+the intelligence of this county; a religion that no longer satisfies
+the brain; a religion against which the heart of every civilized man
+and woman protests.  It is a religion that gives hope only to a few; a
+religion that puts a shadow upon the cradle; a religion that wraps the
+coffin in darkness and fills the future of mankind with flame and fear.
+It is a religion that I am going to do what little I can while I live to
+destroy; and in its place I want humanity, I want good-fellowship, I
+want a brain without a chain, I want a religion that every good heart
+will cheerfully applaud.
+
+We must remember that this is a world of progress, a world of change.
+There is perpetual death and there is perpetual birth. By the grave of
+the old forever stands youth and joy; and, when an old religion dies, a
+better one is born.  When we find out that an assertion is a falsehood,
+a shining truth takes its place, and we need not fear the destruction of
+the false.  The more false we destroy the more room there will be for
+the true. There was a time when the astrologer sought to read in the
+stars the fate of men and nations.  The astrologer has faded from the
+world, but the astronomer has taken his place.  There was a time when
+the poor alchemist, bent and wrinkled and old, over his crucible,
+endeavored to find some secret by which he could change the baser metals
+into purest gold.  The alchemist is gone; the chemist took his place;
+and, although he finds nothing to change metals into gold, he finds
+something that covers the earth with wealth.  There was a time when the
+soothsayer and auger flourished, and after them came the parson and the
+priest; and the parson and priest must go.  The preacher must go, and
+in his place must come the teacher--that real interpreter of nature. We
+are done with the supernatural.  We are through with the miraculous and
+the wonderful.  There was once a prophet who pretended to read in the
+book of the future.  His place was taken by the philosopher, who reasons
+from cause to effect--a man who finds the facts by which he is
+surrounded and endeavors to reason from these premises, and to tell what
+in all probability will happen in the future.  The prophet is gone, the
+philosopher is here.  There was a time when man sought aid entirely from
+heaven--when he prayed to the deaf sky.  There was a time when the
+world depended upon the supernaturalist.  That time in Christendom has
+passed.  We now depend upon the naturalist--not upon the disciple of
+faith, but upon the discoverer of facts--upon the demonstrator of truth.
+At last we are beginning to build upon a solid foundation, and just as
+we progress the supernatural must die.
+
+Religion of the supernatural kind will fade from this world, and in its
+place we will have reason.  In the place of the worship of something we
+know not of, will be the religion of mutual love and assistance--the
+great religion of reciprocity.  Superstition must go.  Science will
+remain.  The church, however, dies a little hard.  The brain of the
+world is not yet developed.  There are intellectual diseases the same as
+diseases of the body. Intellectual mumps and measles still afflict
+mankind.  Whenever the new comes, the old protests, and the old fights
+for its place as long as it has a particle of power.  And we are now
+having the same warfare between superstition and science that there was
+between the stagecoach and the locomotive.  But the stage-coach had to
+go.  It had its day of glory and power, but it is gone. It went West.
+In a little while it will be driven into the Pacific, with the last
+Indian aboard.  So we find that there is the same conflict between the
+different sects and the different schools, not only of philosophy, but
+of medicine.  Recollect that everything except the demonstrated truth is
+liable to die.  That is the order of nature.  Words die.  Every language
+has a cemetery.  Every now and then a word dies and a tombstone is
+erected, and across it is written the word "obsolete."  New words are
+continually being born.  There is a cradle in which a word is rocked.  A
+thought is molded to a sound, and the child-word is born.  And then
+comes a time when the word gets old, and wrinkled, and expressionless,
+and is carried mournfully to the grave, and that is the end of it.  So
+in the schools of medicine. You can remember, so can I, when the old
+alopathists reigned supreme.  If there was anything the matter with a
+man, they let out his blood.  Called to the bedside, they took him to
+the edge of eternity with medicine, and then practiced all their art to
+bring him back to life.  One can hardly imagine how perfect a
+constitution it took a few years ago to stand the assault of a doctor.
+And long after it was found to be a mistake, hundreds and thousands of
+the old physicians clung to it, carried around with them, in one pocket,
+a bottle of jalap, and in the other a rusty lancet, sorry that they
+couldn't find some patient idiotic enough to allow the experiment to be
+made again.
+
+So these schools, and these theories, and these religions die hard.
+What else can they do?  Like the paintings of the old masters, they are
+kept alive because so much money has been invested in them.  Think of
+the amount of money that has been invested in superstition!  Think of
+the schools that have been founded for the more general diffusion of
+useless knowledge! Think of the colleges wherein men are taught that it
+is dangerous to think, and that they must never use their brains except
+in an act of faith!  Think of the millions and billions of dollars that
+have been expended in churches, in temples and in cathedrals! Think of
+the thousands and thousands of men who depend for their living upon the
+ignorance of mankind!  Think of those who grow rich on credulity and who
+fatten on faith!  Do you suppose they are going to die without a
+struggle?  They will die if they don't struggle.  What are they to do?
+From the bottom of my heart I sympathize with the poor clergyman that
+has had all his common sense educated out of him, and is now to be
+thrown out upon the cold and uncharitable world.  His prayers are not
+answered; he gets no help from on high, and the pews are beginning to
+criticize the pulpit.  What is the man to do?  If he suddenly change, he
+is gone.  If he preaches what he really believes, he will get notice to
+quit.  And yet if he and the congregation would come together and be
+perfectly honest, they would all admit they didn't believe anything of
+it.
+
+Only a little while ago a couple of ladies were riding together from a
+revival in a carriage late at night, and one said to the other; as they
+rode along:  "I am going to say something that will shock you, and I beg
+of you never to tell it to anybody else.  I am going to tell it to you."
+"Well, What is it?"  Says she:  "I don't believe in the bible."  The
+other replied: "Neither do I."  I have often thought how splendid it
+would be if the ministers could but come together and say:  "Now let us
+be honest.  Let us tell each other, honor bright--like Dr. Currie did in
+the meeting here the other day--let us tell just what we believe."  They
+tell a story that in the old time a lot of people, about twenty, were in
+Texas in a little hotel, and one fellow got up before the fire, put his
+hands behind him, and says he:  "Boys, let us all tell our real names."
+If the ministers and the congregations would only tell their real
+thoughts they would find that they are nearly as bad as I am, and that
+they believe just about as little.
+
+Now, I have been talking a great deal about the orthodox religion; and,
+after having delivered a lecture, I would meet some good, religious
+person, and he would say to me:  "You don't tell it as we believe it."
+"Well, but I tell it as you have it written in your creed."  "Oh,
+well," he says, "we don't mind that any more."  "Well, why don't you
+change it?"  "Oh, well," he says, "we understand it."  Possibly the
+creed is in the best possible condition for them now.  There is a tacit
+understanding that they don't believe it.  There is a tacit
+understanding that they have got some way to get around it, that they
+read between the lines; and if they should meet now to form a creed,
+they might fail to agree; and the creed is now so that they can say as
+they please, except in public.  Whenever they do so in public, the
+church, in self-defense, must try them; and I believe in trying every
+minister that doesn't preach the doctrine as he agrees to.  I have not
+the slightest sympathy with a Presbyterian preacher who endeavors to
+preach infidelity from his pulpit and receive Presbyterian money.  When
+he changes his views, he should step down and out like a man, and say:
+"I don't believe your doctrine, and I will not preach it.  You must hire
+some bigger fool than I am."
+
+But I find that I get the creed very nearly right.  Today there was put
+into my hands the new Congregational creed.  I have just read it, and I
+thought I would call your attention to it tonight, to find whether the
+church has made any advance; to find whether it has been affected by
+the light of science; to find whether the sun of knowledge has risen in
+the heavens in vain; whether they are still the children of
+intellectual darkness; whether they still consider it necessary for you
+to believe something that you by no possibility, can understand, in
+order to be a winged angel forever.  Now, let us see what their creed
+is.  I will read a little of it.  They commence by saying that they
+"believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven, and of earth,
+and of all things visible and invisible."  I am perfectly willing that
+He should make the invisible, if they want Him to. They say, now, that
+there is this one personal God; that He is the maker of the universe,
+and its ruler.  I again ask the old question:  of what did He make it?
+If matter has not existed through eternity, then this God made it.  Of
+what did He make it? What did He use for the purpose?  There was nothing
+in the universe except this God.  What had the God been doing for the
+eternity He had been living?  He had made nothing--called nothing into
+existence; never had had an idea, because it is impossible to have an
+idea unless there is something to excite an idea.  What had He been
+doing?  Why doesn't the Congregational Church tell us?  How do they know
+about this infinite being?  And if He is infinite, how can they
+comprehend Him?  What good is it to believe something that you don't
+understand--that you never can understand?  In the old creeds they
+described this God as a being without body and parts or passions.  Think
+of that! Something without body and parts or passions.  I defy any man
+in the world to write a letter descriptive of nothing.  You can not
+conceive of a finer word-painting of a vacuum than a something without
+body and parts or passions.  And yet this God, without passions, is
+angry at the wicked every day; this God, without passions, is a jealous
+God, whose anger burneth to the lowest hell.  This God, without
+passions, loves the whole human race, and this God, without passions,
+damns a large majority of the same.  So, too, He is the ruler of the
+world, and I find here that we find His providence in the government of
+the nations. What nations?  What evidence can you find, if you are
+absolutely honest and not frightened, in the history of nations, that
+this universe is presided over by an infinitely wise and good God? How
+do you account for Russia?  How do you account for Siberia? How do you
+account for the fact that whole races of men toiled beneath the master's
+lash for ages without recompense and without reward?  How do you account
+for the fact that babes were sold from the arms of mothers--arms that
+had been reached toward God in supplication?  How do you account for it?
+How do you account for the existence of martyrs?  How do you account for
+the fact that this God allows people to be burned simply for loving Him?
+How do you account for the fact that justice doesn't always triumph?
+How do you account for the fact that innocence is not a perfect shield?
+How do you account for the fact that the world has been filled with
+pain, and grief, and tears?  How do you account for the fact that people
+have been swallowed by volcanoes, swept from the earth by storms, dying
+by famine, if there is above us a ruler who is infinitely good and
+infinitely powerful?
+
+I don't say there is none.  I don't know.  As I have said before, this
+is the only planet I was ever on.  I live in one of the rural districts
+of the universe.  I know not about these things as much as the clergy.
+And if they know no more about the other world than they do about this,
+it is not worth mentioning.  How do they answer all this?  They say that
+God "permits it."  What would you say to me if I stood by and saw a
+ruffian beat out the brains of a child, when I had full and perfect
+power to prevent it?  You would say truthfully that I was as bad as the
+murderer. That is what you would say.  Is it possible for this God to
+prevent it?  Then, if He doesn't, He is a fiend; He is not good. But
+they say He "permits it."  What for?  So we may have freedom of choice.
+What for?  So that God may find, I suppose, who are good and who are
+bad.  Didn't He know that when He made us?  Did He not know exactly just
+what He was making?  Why should He make those whom He knew would be
+criminals?  If I should make a machine that would walk your streets and
+commit murder, you would hang me.  Why not?  And if God made a man whom
+He knew would commit murder, then God is guilty of that murder.  If God
+made a man, knowing he would beat his wife, that he would starve his
+children, that he would strew on either side of his path of life the
+wrecks of ruined homes, then, I say, the being who called that wretch
+into existence is directly responsible.  And yet we are to find the
+providence of God in the history of nations. What little I have read
+shows me that when man has been helped, man had to do it; when the
+chains of slavery have been broken, they have been broken by man; when
+something bad has been done in the government of mankind, it is easy to
+trace it to man, and to fix the responsibility upon human beings.  You
+will not look to the sky; you need throw neither praise nor blame; you
+can find the efficient causes nearer home--right here.
+
+What is the next thing I find in this creed?  "We believe that man was
+made in the image of God, that he might know, love and obey God, and
+enjoy Him for ever."  I don't believe that anybody ever did love God,
+because nobody ever knew anything about Him. We love each other.  We
+love something that we know.  We love something that our experience
+tells us is good and great, and good and beautiful.  We cannot by any
+possibility love the unknown.  We can love truth, because truth adds to
+human happiness.  We can love justice, because it preserves human joy.
+We can love charity.  We can love every form of goodness that we know,
+or of which we can conceive, but we cannot love the infinitely unknown.
+And how can we be made in the image of something that has neither body
+and parts nor passions?
+
+"That our first parents, by disobedience, fell under the condemnation of
+God, and that all men are so alienated from God that there is no
+salvation from the guilt and power of sin except through God's redeeming
+power."  Is there an intelligent man or woman now in the world who
+believes in the Garden of Eden story? If there is, strike here (tapping
+his forehead) and you will hear an echo.  Something is for rent.  Does
+any human being now believe that God made man of dust and a woman of a
+rib, and put them in a garden, and put a tree in the middle of it?
+Wasn't there room outside of the garden to put His tree, if He didn't
+want people to eat His apple?  If I didn't want a man to eat my fruit I
+would not put him in my orchard.
+
+Does anybody now believe in the snake story?  I pity any man or woman
+who, in this nineteenth century, believes in that childish fable.  Why
+did they disobey?  Why, they were tempted.  Who by? The devil.  Who made
+the devil?  What did He make him for?  Why didn't He tell Adam and Eve
+about this fellow?  Why didn't he watch the devil instead of watching
+Adam and Eve?  Instead of turning them out, why didn't He keep him from
+getting in?  Why didn't He have His flood first and drown the devil,
+before He made man and woman?
+
+And yet people who call themselves intelligent--professors in colleges
+and presidents of venerable institutions--teach children, and young men
+who ought to be children, that the Garden of Eden story is an absolute,
+historical fact!  Well, I guess it will not be long until that will fade
+from the imagination of men.  I defy any man to think of a more childish
+thing.  This God waiting around there, knowing all the while what would
+happen, made them on purpose so it would happen; and then what does he
+do?  Holds all of us responsible; and we were not there.  Here is a
+representative before the constituency had been born. Before I am bound
+by a representative, I want a chance to vote for or against him; and if
+I had been there, and known all the circumstances, I should have voted
+against him.  And yet, I am held responsible.
+
+What did Adam do?  I cannot see that it amounted to much anyway. A god
+that can create something out of nothing ought not to have complained of
+the loss of an apple.  I can hardly have the patience to speak upon such
+a subject.  Now, that absurdity gave birth to another--that, while we
+could be rightfully charged with the rascality of somebody else, we
+could also be credited with the virtues of somebody else; and the
+atonement is the absurdity which offsets the other absurdity of the fall
+of man. Let us leave them both out; it reads a great deal better with
+both of them out; it makes better sense.
+
+Now, in consequence of that, everybody is alienated from God. How?  Why?
+Oh, we are all depraved, you know; we all want to do wrong.  Well, why?
+Is that because we are depraved?  No.  Why do we make so many mistakes?
+Because there is only one right way, and there is an almost infinite
+number of wrong ones; and as long as we are not perfect in our
+intellects we must make mistakes.  There is no darkness but ignorance;
+and alienation, as they call it, from God, is simply a lack of intellect
+upon our part.  Why were we not given better brains?  That may account
+for the alienation.  But the church teaches that every soul that finds
+its way to the shore of this world is against God--naturally hates God;
+that the little dimpled child in the cradle is simply a chunk of
+depravity.  Everybody against God!  It is a libel upon the human race;
+it is a libel upon all the men who have worked for wife and child; it
+is a libel upon all the wives who have suffered and labored, wept and
+worked for children; it is a libel upon all the men who have died for
+their country; it is a libel upon all who have fought for human
+liberty; it is a libel upon the human race.  Leave out the history of
+the church, and there is nothing in this world to prove the depravity of
+man left.
+
+Everybody that comes is against God.  Every soul, they think, is like
+the wrecked Irishman.  He was wrecked in the sea and drifted to an
+unknown island, and as he climbed up the shore he saw a man, and said to
+him, "Have you a government here?"  The man said, "We have."  "Well,"
+said he, "I am agin it!"   The church teaches us that that is the
+attitude of every soul in the universe of God.  Ought a god to take any
+credit to himself for making depraved people?  A god that cannot make a
+soul that is not totally depraved, I respectfully suggest, should retire
+from the business.  And if a god has made us, knowing that we would be
+totally depraved, why should we go to the same being for repairs?
+
+What is the next?  "That all men are so alienated from God that there is
+no salvation from the guilt and power of his sin except through God's
+redeeming grace."
+
+Reformation is not enough.  If the man who steals becomes perfectly
+honest, that is not enough; if the man who hates his fellow-man changes
+and loves his fellowman, that is not enough; he must go through the
+mysterious thing called the second birth; he must be born again.  That
+is not enough unless he has faith; he must believe something that he
+does not understand. Reformation is not enough; there must be what they
+call conversion.  I deny it.  According to the church, nothing so
+excites the wrath of God--nothing so corrugates the brows of Jehovah
+with revenge--as a man relying on his own good works. He must admit that
+he ought to be damned, and that of the two he prefers it, before God
+will consent to save him.  I saw a man the other day, and he said to me,
+"I am a Unitarian Universalist; that is what I am."  Said I, "What do
+you mean by that?"  "Well," said he, "here is what I mean:  the
+Unitarian thinks he is too good to be damned, and the Universalist
+thinks God is too good to damn him, and I believe them both."
+
+What is the next thing in this great creed?
+
+"We believe that the scriptures of the old and new testaments are the
+records of God's revelation of Himself in the work of redemption; that
+they are written by men, under the special guidance of the Holy Spirit,
+and that they constitute an authoritative standard by which religious
+teaching and human conduct are to be regulated and judged."
+
+This is the creed of the Congregational Church; that is, it is the
+result of the high-joint commission appointed to draw up a creed for
+churches; and there we have the statement that the bible was written
+"by men, under the special guidance of the Holy Spirit."  What part of
+the bible?  All of it; all of it; and yet what is this old testament
+that was written by an infinitely good God?  The being who wrote it did
+not know the shape of the world He had made.  The being who wrote it
+knew nothing of human nature; He commands men to love Him, as if one
+could love upon command.  The same God upheld the institution of human
+slavery; and the church says the bible that upholds that institution was
+written by men under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  Then I disagree
+with the Holy Ghost upon that institution.
+
+The church tells us that men, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost,
+upheld the institution of polygamy--I deny it; that under the guidance
+of the Holy Ghost these men upheld wars of extermination and conquest--I
+deny it; that under the guidance of the Holy Ghost these men wrote that
+it was right for a man to destroy the life of his wife if she happened
+to differ with him on the subject of religion--I deny it.  And yet that
+is the book now upheld in this creed of the Congregational Church.  If
+the devil had written upon the subject of slavery, which side would he
+have taken?  Let every minister answer, honor bright.  If you knew the
+devil had written a little work on human slavery, in your judgment would
+he uphold slavery or denounce it?  Would you regard it as any evidence
+that he ever wrote it if he upheld slavery?  And yet, here you have a
+work upholding slavery, and you say that it was written by an infinitely
+good, wise and beneficent God!  If the devil upheld polygamy would you
+be surprised?  If the devil wanted to kill somebody for differing with
+him would you be surprised?  If the devil told a man to kill his wife,
+would you be astonished?  And yet, you say, that is exactly what the God
+of us all did.  If there be a God, then that creed is blasphemy.  That
+creed is a libel upon Him who sits upon heaven's throne.  I want--if
+there he a God--I want Him to write in the book of his eternal
+remembrance that I denied these lies for Him.
+
+I do not believe in a slave-holding God; I do not worship a polygamous
+Holy Ghost; I do not get upon my knees before any being who commands a
+husband to slay his wife because she expresses her honest thought.
+
+Did it ever occur to you that if God wrote the old testament, and told
+the Jews to crucify or kill anybody that disagreed with them on
+religion, and that God afterward took upon Himself flesh and came to
+Jerusalem, and taught a different religion, and the Jews killed Him--did
+it ever occur to you that He reaped exactly what he had sown?  Did it
+ever occur to you that He fell a victim to His own tyranny, and was
+destroyed by His own law!  Of course I do not believe that any God ever
+was the author of the bible, or that any God was ever crucified, or that
+any God was ever killed or ever will be, but I want to ask you that
+question.
+
+Take this old testament, then, with all its stories of murder and
+massacre; with all its foolish and cruel fables; with all its infamous
+doctrines; with its spirit of caste; with its spirit of hatred, and
+tell me whether it was written by a good God. Why, if you will read the
+maledictions and curses of that book, you would think that God, like
+Lear, had divided heaven among his daughters, and then, in the insanity
+of despair, had launched his curses upon the human race.
+
+And yet, I must say--I must admit--that the old testament is better than
+the new.  In the old testament, when God got a man dead, He let him
+alone.  When He saw him quietly in his grave He was satisfied.  The
+muscles relaxed, and a smile broke over the Divine face.  But in the new
+testament the trouble commences just at death.  In the new testament God
+is to wreak His revenge forever and ever.  It was reserved for one who
+said, "Love your enemies," to tear asunder the veil between time and
+eternity and fix the horrified gaze of men upon the gulfs of eternal
+fire. The new testament is just as much worse than the old, as hell is
+worse than sleep; just as much worse as infinite cruelty is worse than
+annihilation; and yet, the new testament is pointed to as a gospel of
+love and peace.
+
+But "more of that hereafter," as the ministers say.
+
+"We believe that Jesus Christ came to establish among men the Kingdom of
+God, the reign of truth and love, of righteousness and peace."
+
+Well, that may have been the object of Jesus Christ.  I do not deny it.
+But what was the result?  The Christian world has caused more war than
+all the rest of the world besides; all the cunning instruments of death
+have been devised by Christians; all the wonderful machinery by which
+the brains are blown out of a man, by which nations are conquered and
+subdued--all these machines have been born in Christian brains.  And yet
+He came to bring peace, they say.  But the testament says otherwise:  "I
+came not to bring peace, but a sword."  And the sword was brought.  What
+are the Christian nations doing today in Europe? Is there a solitary
+Christian nation that will trust any other? How many millions of
+Christians are in the uniform of everlasting forgiveness, loving their
+enemies?  There was an old Spaniard upon the bed of death, and he sent
+for a priest, and the priest told him that he would have to forgive his
+enemies before he died.  He says, "I have not any."  "What! no enemies?"
+"Not one," said the dying man, "I killed the last one three weeks ago."
+
+How many millions of Christians are now armed and equipped to destroy
+their fellow-Christians?  Who are the men in Europe crying out against
+war?  Who wishes to have the nations disarmed? Is it the church?  No;
+it is the men who do not believe in what they call this religion of
+peace.  When there is a war, and when they make a few thousand widows
+and orphans, when they strew the plain with dead patriots, then
+Christians assemble in their churches and sing "Te Deum Laudamus" to
+God.  Why?  Because He has enabled a few of His children to kill some
+others of His children.  This is the religion of peace--the religion
+that invented the Krupp gun, that will hurl a bullet weighing 2,000
+pounds through twenty-four inches of solid steel.  This is the religion
+of peace, that covers the sea with men-of-war, clad in mail, all in the
+name of universal forgiveness.
+
+What effect had this religion upon the nations of the earth? What have
+the nations been fighting about?  What was the Thirty Years' War in
+Europe for?  What was the war in Holland for?  Why was it that England
+persecuted Scotland?  Why is it that England persecutes Ireland even
+unto this day?  At the bottom of every one of these conflicts you will
+find a religious question.  The religion of Jesus Christ, as preached by
+His church, causes war, bloodshed, hatred, and all uncharitableness;
+and why?  Because they say a certain belief is necessary to salvation.
+They do not say, if you behave yourself pretty well you will get there;
+they do not say, if you pay your debts and love your wife, and love your
+children, and are good to your friends, and your neighbors, and your
+country, you will get there; that will do you no good; you have got to
+believe a certain thing.  Oh, yes, no matter how bad you are, you can
+instantly be forgiven then; and no matter how good you are, if you fail
+to believe that, the moment you get to the day of judgment nothing is
+left but to damn you forever, and all the angels will shout
+"Hallelujah!"
+
+What do they teach today?  Every murderer goes to heaven; there is only
+one step from the gallows to God; only one jerk between the halter and
+heaven.  That is taught by this same church.  I believe there ought to
+be a law to prevent the slightest religious consolation being given to
+any man who has been guilty of murder.  Let a Catholic understand that
+if he imbrues his hands in his brother's blood, he can have no extreme
+unction; let it be understood that he can have no forgiveness through
+the church; and let the Protestant understand that when he has
+committed that crime, the community will not pray him into heaven.  Let
+him go with his victim.  The victim, you know, dying in his sins, goes
+to hell, and the murderer has the happiness of seeing him there.  And if
+heaven grows dull and monotonous, the murderer can again give life to
+the nerve of pleasure by watching the agony of his victim.  I am opposed
+to that kind of forgiveness.  And yet that is the religion of universal
+peace to everybody.
+
+Now, what is the next thing that I wish to call your attention to?
+
+"We believe in the ultimate prevalence of the Kingdom of Christ over all
+the earth."
+
+What makes you?  Do you judge from the manner in which you are getting
+along now?  How many people are being born a year?  About fifty
+millions.  How many are you converting a year; really, truthfully?
+Five or six thousand.  I think I have overestimated the number.  Is
+orthodox Christianity on the increase?  No. There are a hundred times as
+many unbelievers in orthodox Christianity as there were ten years ago.
+What are you doing in the missionary World?  How long is it since you
+converted a Chinaman?  A fine missionary religion, to send missionaries,
+with their bibles and tracts, to China, but if a Chinaman comes here,
+mob him, simply to show him the difference between the practical and
+theoretical workings of the Christian religion.  How long since you have
+had a convert in India?  In my judgment, never; there never has been an
+intelligent Hindoo converted from the time the first missionary put his
+foot upon that soil; and never, in my judgment, has an intelligent
+Chinaman been converted since the first missionary touched that shore.
+Where are they? We hear nothing of them, except in the reports.  They
+get money from poor old ladies, trembling on the edge of the grave, and
+go and tell them stories how hungry the average Chinaman is for a copy
+of the new testament, and paint the sad condition of a gentleman in the
+interior of Africa, without the work of Dr. McCosh, longing for a copy
+of the Princeton Review.  In my judgment, it is a book that would suit a
+savage. Thus money is scared from the dying and frightened from the old
+and feeble. About how long is it before this kingdom is to be
+established?
+
+What is the next thing here?  They all also believe in the resurrection
+of the dead, and in their confession of faith hereto attached I find
+they also believe in the resurrection of the body.  Does anybody believe
+that, that has ever thought?  Here is a man, for instance, that weighs
+200 pounds, and gets sick and dies weighing 120; how much will he weigh
+in the morning of the resurrection?  Here is a cannibal, who eats
+another man; and we know that the atoms that you eat go into your body
+and become a part of you.  After the cannibal has eaten the missionary,
+and appropriated his atoms to himself, and then he dies, who will the
+atoms belong to in the morning of the resurrection in an action of
+replevin brought by the missionary against the cannibal? It has been
+demonstrated again and again that there is no creation in nature, and no
+destruction in nature.  It has been demonstrated again and again that
+the atoms that are in us have been in millions of other beings; grown
+in the forest, in the grass, blossomed in the flowers, been in the
+metals; in other words, there are atoms in each one of us that have
+been in millions of others, and when we die these atoms return to the
+earth, and again spring in vegetation, taken up in the leaves of the
+trees, turned into wood.  And yet we have a church, in the nineteenth
+century, getting up this doctrine, presided over by professors, by
+presidents of colleges, and by theologians, who tell us that they
+believe in the resurrection of the body.
+
+They know better.  There is not one so ignorant but what knows better.
+
+And what is the next thing?  "And in a final judgment."  It will be a
+set day.  All of us will be there, and the thousands, and millions, and
+billions, and trillions, and quadrillions that have died will be there.
+It will be the day of judgment, and the books will be opened and our
+case will be called.  Does anybody believe in that now that has got the
+slightest sense?--one who knows enough to chew gum without a string?"
+
+"The issues of which are everlasting punishment for the wicked and
+everlasting life for the redeemed.   "That is the doctrine today of the
+Congregational church, and that is the doctrine that I oppose.  That is
+the doctrine that I defy and deny.
+
+But I must hasten on.  Now this comes to us after all the discussion
+that has been, and we are told that this religion is finally to conquer
+this world.  This is the same religion that failed to successfully meet
+the hordes of Mohammed.  Mohammed wrested from the disciples of the
+cross the fairest part of Europe.  It was known that he was an impostor.
+They knew he was because the people of Mecca said so, and they knew that
+Christ was not because the people of Jerusalem said he was.  This
+impostor wrested from the disciples of Christ the fairest part of
+Europe, and that fact sowed the seeds of distrust and infidelity in the
+minds of the Christian world.  And the next was an effort to rescue from
+the infidels the empty sepulchre of Christ.  That commenced in the
+eleventh century and ended in 1291.  Europe was almost depopulated.  For
+every man owed a debt, the debt was discharged if he put a cross upon
+his breast and joined the Crusades.  No matter what crime he had
+committed the doors of the prison were open for him to join the
+Crusades.  And what was the result?  They believed that God would give
+them victory over the infidel, and they carried in front of the first
+Crusade a goat and a goose, believing that both those animals had been
+blessed by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost.  And I may say that those
+same animals are in the lead today in the orthodox world.  Until 1291
+they endeavored to get that sepulchre, until finally the hosts of Christ
+were driven back, baffled, beaten, and demoralized--a poor, miserable
+religious rabble.  They were driven back, and that fact sowed the seeds
+of distrust in Christendom.  You know at that time the world believed in
+trial by battle--that God would take the side of right--and there had
+been a trial by battle between the Cross and Mohammed, and Mohammed had
+been victorious.
+
+Well, what was the next?  You know when Christianity came into power it
+destroyed every statue it could lay its ignorant hands upon.  It defaced
+and obliterated every painting; it destroyed every beautiful building;
+it destroyed the manuscripts, both Greek and Latin; it destroyed all
+the history, all the poetry, all the philosophy it could find, and
+burned every library that it could reach with its torch.  And the result
+was the night of the middle ages fell upon the human race.  But by
+accident, by chance, by oversight, a few of the manuscripts escaped the
+fury of religious zeal; a few statues had been buried; and the result
+was, that these manuscripts became the seed, the fruit of which is our
+civilization of today.  A few forms of beauty were dug from the earth
+that had protected them, and now the civilized world is filled with art,
+with painting, and with statuary, in spite of the rage of the early
+church.
+
+What is the next blow that that this church received?  The discovery of
+America.  That is the next.  The Holy Ghost, who inspired a man to write
+the bible, did not know of the existence of this continent, never
+dreamed of it; the result was that His bible never spoke of it.  He did
+not dream that the earth is round.  He believed it was flat, although He
+made it Himself, and at that time heaven was just up there beyond the
+clouds. There was where the gods lived, there was where the angels were,
+and it was against that heaven that Jacob's ladder was that the angels
+ascended and descended.  It was to that heaven that Christ ascended
+after His resurrection.  It was up there where the New Jerusalem was,
+with its streets of gold, and under this earth was perdition; there was
+where the devils lived; there was where a pit was dug for all
+unbelievers, and for men who had brains, and I say that for this reason:
+That just in proportion that you have brains, just in that proportion
+your chances for eternal joy are lessened, according to this religion.
+And just in proportion that you lack brains, your chances are increased.
+They believe, under there that they discovered America. They found that
+the earth is round.  It was circumnavigated by Magellan. In 1519 that
+brave man set sail.  The church told him: "The earth is flat, my friend;
+don't go off.  You will go off the edge." Magellan said: "I have seen
+the shadow of the earth upon the moon, and I have more confidence in the
+shadow even than I have in the church."  The ship went round.  The earth
+was circumnavigated.  Science passed its hand above it and beneath it,
+and where was the heaven, and where was the hell?  Vanished forever!
+And they dwell now only in the religion of superstition.  We found there
+was no place for Jacob's ladder to lean against; no place there for the
+gods and angels to live; no place there to empty the waters of the
+deluge; no place there to which Christ could have ascended; and the
+foundations of the New Jerusalem crumbled, and the towers and domes fell
+and became simply space--space sown with an infinite number of stars;
+not with New Jerusalems, but with constellations.
+
+Then man began to grow great, and with that you know came astronomy.
+Now just see what they did in that.  In 1473 Copernicus was born.  In
+1543 his great work.  In 1616 the system of Copernicus was condemned by
+the pope, by the infallible Catholic church, and the church is about as
+near right upon that subject as upon any other.  The system of
+Copernicus was denounced.  And how long do you suppose the church fought
+that? Let me tell you.  It was revoked by Pius VII. in the year of grace
+1821.  For 205 years after the death of Copernicus the church insisted
+that that system was false, and that the old idea was true.  Astronomy
+is the first help that we ever received from heaven.  Then came Kepler
+in 1609, and you may almost date the birth of science from the night
+that Kepler discovered his first law.  That was the dawn of the day of
+intelligence--his first law, that the planets do not move in circles;
+his second law, that they described equal spaces in equal times; his
+third law, that there was a direct relation between weight and velocity.
+That man gave us a key to heaven.  That man opened its infinite book,
+and we now read it, and he did more good than all the theologians that
+ever lived.  I have not time to speak of the others--of Galileo, of
+Leonardo da Vinci, and of hundreds of others that I could mention.
+
+The next thing that gave this church a blow was statistics.  Away went
+special providence.  We found by taking statistics that we could tell
+the average length of human life; that this human life did not depend
+upon infinite caprice; that it depended upon conditions, circumstances,
+laws and facts, and that those conditions, circumstances, and facts were
+ever active.  And now you will see the man who depends entirely upon
+special providence gets his life insured.  He has more confidence even
+in one of these companies than he has in the whole Trinity.  We found by
+statistics that there were just so many crimes on an average committed;
+just so many crimes of one kind and so many of another; just so many
+suicides, so many deaths by drowning; just so many accidents on an
+average; just so many men marrying women, for instance, older than
+themselves; just so many murders of a particular kind; just the same
+number of accidents; and I say tonight statistics utterly demolish the
+idea of special providence.  Only the other day a gentleman was telling
+me of a case of special providence.  He knew it.  He had been the
+subject of it.  Yes, sir!  A few years ago he was about to go on a ship
+when he was detained; he didn't go, and the ship was lost and all on
+board.  Yes!  I said, "Do you think the fellows that were drowned
+believed in special providence?"  Think of the infinite egotism of such
+a doctrine.  Here is a man that fails to go upon a ship with 500
+passengers, and they go down to the bottom of the sea--fathers, mothers,
+children, and loving husbands, and wives waiting upon the shores of
+expectation.  Here is one poor little wretch that didn't happen to go!
+And he thinks that God, the infinite being, interfered in his poor
+little withered behalf and let the rest all go.  That is special
+providence!
+
+You know we have a custom every year of issuing a proclamation of
+thanksgiving.  We say to God, "Although You have afflicted all the other
+countries, although You have sent war, and desolation, and famine on
+everybody else, we have been such good children that you have been kind
+to us, and we hope you will keep on."  It don't make a bit of difference
+whether we have good times or not--not a bit; the thanksgiving is
+always exactly the same.  I remember a few years ago a governor of Iowa
+got out a proclamation of that kind.  He went on to tell how thankful
+the people were, how prosperous the State had been; and there was a
+young fellow in the State who got out another proclamation, saying:
+"Fearing that the Lord might be misled by official correspondence," he
+went on to say that the governor's proclamation was entirely false;
+that the State was not prosperous; that the crops had been an almost
+entire failure; that nearly every farm in the state was mortgaged; that
+if the Lord did not believe him, all he asked was He would send some
+angel in whom he had confidence to look the matter over for himself.
+
+Of course I have not time to recount the enemies of the church. Every
+fact is an enemy of superstition.  Every fact is a heretic. Every
+demonstration is an infidel.  Everything that ever happened testified
+against the supernatural.  I have only spoken of a few of the blows that
+shattered the shield and shivered the lance of superstition.  Here is
+another one--the doctrine of Charles Darwin.  This century will be
+called Darwin's century, one of the greatest men who ever touched this
+globe.  He has explained more of the phenomena of life than all of the
+religious teachers. Write the name of Charles Darwin there (on the one
+hand) and the name of every theologian that ever lived there (on the
+other hand), and from that name has come more light to the world than
+from all those.  His doctrine of evolution, his doctrine of the survival
+of the fittest, his doctrine of the origin of species, has removed in
+every thinking mind the last vestige of orthodox Christianity.  He has
+not only stated, but he has demonstrated, that the inspired writer knew
+nothing of this world, nothing of the origin of man, nothing of geology,
+nothing of astronomy, nothing of nature; that the bible is a book
+written by ignorance--by the instigation of fear!  Think of the man who
+replied to him.  Only a few years ago there was no parson too ignorant
+to successfully answer Charles Darwin; and the more ignorant he was the
+more cheerfully he undertook the task.  He was held up to the ridicule,
+the scorn, and the contempt of the Christian world, and yet when he died
+England was proud to put his dust with that of her noblest and her
+grandest.
+
+Charles Darwin conquered the intellectual world, and the doctrine of
+evolution is now an accepted fact.  His light has broken in on some of
+the early clergy, and the greatest man who today occupies the pulpit is
+a believer in the evolution theory of Charles Darwin--and that is Henry
+Ward Beecher--a man of more brains than the entire clergy of that entire
+church put together.  And yet we are told in this little creed that
+orthodox religion is about to conquer the world.  It will be driven to
+the wilds of Africa.  It must go to some savage country; it has lost
+its hold upon civilization, and I tell you it is unfortunate to have a
+religion that cannot be accepted by the intellect of a nation. It is
+unfortunate to have a religion against which every good and noble heart
+protests.  Let us have a good one or none.  O! my pity has been excited
+by seeing these ministers endeavor to warp and twist the passages of
+scripture to fit some demonstration in science.  These pious evasions!
+These solemn pretenses!  When they are caught in one way they give a
+different meaning to the words and say the world was not made in seven
+days.  They say "good whiles"--epochs.  And in this same confession here
+of faith and creeds they believe the Lord's day is holy--every seventh
+day.  Suppose you lived near the north pole, where the day is three
+months long.  Then which day will you keep?  Suppose you could get to
+the north pole, you could prevent Sunday from ever overtaking you.  You
+could walk around the other way faster than the world could revolve.
+How would you keep Sunday then? Suppose we ever invent any thing that
+can go 1,000 miles an hour? We can just chase Sunday clear around the
+globe.  Is there anything that can be more perfectly absurd than that a
+space of time can be holy!  You might as well talk about a pious vacuum.
+These pious evasions.  I heard the other night of an old man.  He was
+not very well educated, you know, and he got into the notion that he
+must have reading of the bible and have family worship; and there was a
+bad boy in the family--a pretty smart boy--and they were reading the
+bible by course, and in the fifteenth chapter of Corinthians is this
+passage:  "Behold, brethren, I show you a mystery; we shall not all
+die, but we shall be changed."  And this boy rubbed out the "c" in the
+"changed."  So next night the old man got on his specs and got down his
+bible and said:  "Behold, brethren, I show you a mystery; we shall not
+all die, but we shall be hanged."  The old lady said, "Father, I don't
+think it reads that way."  He says, "Who is reading this?" "Yes, mother,
+it says be hanged, and, more than that, I see the sense of it.  Pride is
+the besetting sin of the human heart, and if there is anything
+calculated to take the pride out of a man it is hanging."
+
+I keep going back to this book; I keep going back to the miracles, to
+the prophecies, to the fables, and people ask me, if I take away the
+bible, what are we going to do?  How can we get along without the
+revelation that no one understands?  What are we going to do if we have
+no bible to quarrel about?  What are we to do without hell?  What are we
+going to do with our enemies? What are we going to do with the people we
+love but don't like? They tell me that there never would have been any
+civilization if it had not been for this bible.  Um!  The Jews had a
+bible; the Romans had not.  Which had the greater and the grander
+government?  Let us be honest.  Which of those nations produced the
+greatest poets, the greatest soldiers, the greatest orators, the
+greatest statesmen, the greatest sculptors?  Rome had no bible.  God
+cared nothing for the Roman Empire.  He let the men come up by chance.
+His time was taken up by the Jewish people. And yet Rome conquered the
+world, and even conquered God's chosen people.  The people that had the
+bible were defeated by the people who had not.  How was it possible for
+Lucretius to get along without the bible?  How did the great and
+glorious of that empire?  And what shall we say of Greece?  No bible.
+Compare Athens with Jerusalem.  From Athens comes the beauty and
+intellectual grace of the world.  Compare the mythology of Greece with
+the mythology of Judea.  One covering the earth with beauty, and the
+other filling heaven with hatred and injustice.  The Hindoos had no
+bible; they had been forsaken by the creator, and yet they became the
+greatest metaphysicians of the world.  Egypt had no bible.  Compare even
+Egypt with Judea.  What are we to do without the bible?  What became of
+the Jews who had no bible; their temple was destroyed and their city was
+taken; and, as I said before, they never found real prosperity until
+their God deserted them.  Do without the bible?
+
+Now I come again to the new testament.  There are a few things in there,
+I give you my word, I cannot believe.  I cannot--I cannot believe in the
+miraculous origin of Jesus Christ.  I believe He was the son of Joseph
+and Mary; that Joseph and Mary had been duly and legally married; that
+He was the legitimate offspring of that marriage, and nobody ever
+believed the contrary until He had been dead 150 years.  Neither
+Matthew, Mark nor Luke ever dreamed that He was of divine origin.  He
+did not say to either Matthew, Mark or Luke, or to any one in their
+hearing, that He was the son of God, or that He was miraculously
+conceived.  He did not say it.  The angel Gabriel, who, they say,
+brought the news, never wrote a word upon the subject.  His mother never
+wrote a word upon the subject.  His father never wrote a word upon the
+subject.  We are lacking in the matter of witnesses.  I would not
+believe it now!  I cannot believe it then.  I would not believe people I
+know, much less would I believe people I don't know.  I say that at that
+time Matthew, Mark and Luke believed that He was the son of Joseph and
+Mary.  And why?  They say He descended from the blood of David, and in
+order to show that He was of the blood of David they gave the genealogy
+of Joseph.  And if Joseph was not his father, why not give the genealogy
+of Pontius Pilate or Herod?  Could they, by giving the genealogy of
+Joseph, show that He was of the blood of David if Joseph was in no way
+related to David; and yet that is the position into which the Christian
+world is now driven.  It says the son of Joseph, and then interpolated
+the words "as was supposed."  Why, then, do they give a supposed
+genealogy.  It will not do.  And that is a thing that cannot in any way,
+by any human testimony, be established; and if it is important for us
+to know that He was the Son of God, I say then that it devolves upon God
+to give us evidence.  Let Him write it across the face of the heavens,
+in every language of mankind.  If it is necessary for us to believe it,
+let it grow on every leaf next year.  No man should be damned for not
+believing unless the evidence is overwhelming.  And he ought not to be
+made to depend upon say-so.  He should have it directly for himself.  A
+man says God told him so and so, and he tells me, and I haven't anyone's
+word but that fellow's.  He may have been deceived.  If God has a
+message for me He ought to tell it to me, and not somebody that has been
+dead 4,000 or 5,000 years, and in another language; God may have
+changed His mind on many things; He has on slavery at least, and
+polygamy; and yet His church now wants to go out here and destroy
+polygamy in Utah with a sword.  Why don't they send missionaries there
+with copies of the old testament?  By reading the lives of Abraham, and
+Isaac, and Lot, and a few other fellows that ought to have been in the
+penitentiary, they can soften their hearts.
+
+Now, there is another miracle I do not believe.  I want to speak about
+it as we would about any ordinary transaction in the world. In the first
+place, I do not believe that any miracle was ever performed, and if
+there was, you can't prove it.  Why?  Because it is altogether more
+reasonable that the people lied about it than that it happened.  And
+why?  Because, according to human experience, we know that people will
+not always tell the truth, and we never saw a miracle, and we have got
+to be governed by our experience, and if we go by our experience, it is
+in favor that the thing never happened; that the man is mistaken.  Now,
+I want you to remember it.  Here is a man that comes into Jerusalem, and
+the first thing he does he cures the blind.  He lets the light of day
+visit the darkness of blindness.  The eyes are opened and the whole
+world is again pictured upon the brain.  Another man is clothed with
+leprosy.  He touches him, and the disease falls from him, and he stands
+pure, and clean, and whole.  Another man is deformed, wrinkled, bent.
+He touches him and throws upon him again the garment of youth.  A man is
+in his grave, and He says, "Come forth!" and he again walks in life,
+feeling his heart throb and beat, and his blood going joyously through
+his veins.  They say that happened.  I don't know.  There is one
+wonderful thing about the dead people that were raised--we don't hear of
+them any more.  What became of them?  Why, if there was a man in this
+town that had been raised from the dead, I would go to see him tonight.
+I would say, "Where were you when you got the notice to come back?  What
+kind of country is it?  What kind of opening there for a young man?  How
+did you like it?"  But nobody ever paid the slightest attention to them
+there.  They didn't even excite interest when they died the second time.
+Nobody said, "Why, that man isn't afraid.  He has been there."  Not a
+word. They pass away quietly.  You see I don't believe it.  There is
+something wrong somewhere about that business.  And then there is
+another trouble in my mind.  Now, you know I may suffer eternal
+punishment for all this.
+
+Here is a man that does all these things, and thereupon they crucify
+Him.  Now, then, let us be honest.  Suppose a man came into Chicago and
+he should meet a funeral procession, and he should say, "Who is dead?"
+and they should say, "The son of a widow; her only support," and he
+should say to the procession, "Halt!"  And to the undertaker, "Take out
+that coffin, unscrew that lid."  "Young man, I say unto thee, arise!"
+And the latter should step from the coffin, and in one moment after hold
+his mother in his arms.  Suppose he should go to your cemetery and
+should find some woman holding a little child in each hand, while the
+tears fell upon a new-made grave, and he should say to her, "Who lies
+buried here?" and she should reply, "My husband," and he should say, "I
+say unto thee, oh grave, give up thy dead," and the husband should rise
+and in a moment after have his lips upon his wife's, and the little
+children with their arms around his neck.  Suppose that it is so.  Do
+you think that the people of Chicago would kill him?  Do you think any
+one would wish to crucify him?  Do you not rather believe that every one
+who had a loved one out in that cemetery would go to him, even upon
+their knees, and beg him and implore him to give back their dead?  Do
+you believe that any man was ever crucified who was the master of death?
+Let me tell you tonight if there shall ever appear on this earth the
+master, the monarch of death, all human knees will touch the earth; he
+will not be crucified, he will not be touched.  All the living who fear
+death; all the living who have lost a loved one will stand and cling to
+him.  And yet we are told that this worker of miracles, this worker of
+wonders, this man who could clothe the dead in the throbbing flesh of
+life, was crucified by the Jewish people.  It was never dreamed that he
+did a miracle until 100 years after he was dead.
+
+There is another miracle I do not believe, I cannot believe it, and that
+is the resurrection.  And why?  If it was the fact, if the dead got out
+of the grave, why did He not show himself to his enemies?  Why did He
+not again visit Pontius Pilate?  Why did He not call upon Caiaphas, the
+high priest?  Why did He not make another triumphal entry into
+Jerusalem?  Why did He not again enter the temple and dispute with the
+doctors?  Why didn't He say to the multitude:  "Here are the wounds in
+My feet, and in My hands, and in My side.  I am the one you endeavored
+to kill, but Death is My slave."  Why didn't He?  Simply because the
+thing never happened.  I cannot believe it.  But recollect, it makes no
+difference with its teachings. They are exactly as good whether He
+wrought miracles or not.  Twice two are four; that needs no miracle.
+Twice two are five--a miracle would not help that. Christ's teachings
+are worth their effect upon the human race. It makes no difference about
+miracle or about wonder, but you must remember in that day every one
+believed in miracles.  Nobody had any standing as a teacher, a
+philosopher, a governor, or a king, about whom there was not a something
+miraculous.  The earth was then covered with the sons and daughters of
+the gods and goddesses.  That was believed in Greece, in Rome, in Egypt,
+in Hindustan; everybody, nearly, believed in such things.
+
+Then there is another miracle that I cannot believe in, and that is the
+ascension--the bodily ascension of Jesus Christ.  Where was He going?
+Since the telescope has been pointed at the stars, where was He going?
+The New Jerusalem is not there.  The abode of the gods is not there.
+Where was He going?  Which way did He go?  That depends upon the time of
+day that He left.  If He left in the night He went exactly the opposite
+way from what He would in the day.  Who saw this miracle?  They say the
+disciples.  Let us see what they say about it.  Matthew did not think it
+was worth mentioning.  He doesn't speak of it at all.  On the contrary,
+he says that the last words of Christ were:  "Lo, I am with you always,
+even unto the end of the world."  That is what he says.  Mark, he saw
+it.  "So, then, after the Lord had spoken unto them He was received up
+into heaven and sat on the right hand of God."  That is all he has to
+say about the most wonderful thing that ever blessed human vision--about
+a miracle great enough to have stuffed credulity to bursting; and yet
+we have one poor, little meagre verse.  So, then, after He had quit
+speaking,  He was caught up and sat on the right hand of God.  How does
+he know He was on the right hand?  Did he see Him after He had sat down?
+Luke says:  "And it came to pass while He blessed them He was parted from
+them and was carried up into heaven."  But John does not mention it.  He
+gives as His last words this address to Peter:  "Follow thou Me."  Of
+course He did not say that as He ascended.  In the Acts we have another
+account.  A conversation is given not spoken of in any of the others,
+and we find there two men clad in white apparel, who said:  "Men of
+Galilee, why stand ye here gazing up into heaven?  This same Jesus that
+was taken up into heaven shall so come in like manner as ye have seen
+Him go up into Heaven."  Matthew didn't see that; Mark forgot it; Luke
+didn't think it was worth mentioning, and John didn't believe it; and
+yet upon that evidence we are led to believe that the most miraculous of
+all miracles actually occurred.  I cannot believe it.
+
+I may be mistaken; but the church is now trying to parry, and when they
+come to the little miracles of the new testament all they say is:
+"Christ didn't cast out devils; these men had fits."  He cured fits.
+Then I read in another place about the fits talking.  Christ held a
+dialogue with the fits, and the fits told Him his name, and the fits at
+that time were in a crazy man. And the fits made a contract that they
+would go out of the man provided they would be permitted to go into
+swine.  How can fits that attack a man take up a residence in swine?
+The church must not give up the devil.  He is the right bower.  No
+devil, no hell; no hell, no preacher; no fire, no insurance.  I read
+another miracle--that this devil took Christ and put him on the pinnacle
+of a temple.  Was that fits, too?  Why is not the theological world
+honest?  Why do they not come up and admit what they know the book
+means?  They have not the courage.  Now, their next doctrine is the
+absolute necessity of belief.  That depends upon this:  Can a man
+believe as he wants to?  Can you?  Can anybody?  Does belief depend at
+all upon the evidence?  I think it does somewhat in some cases.  How is
+it that when a jury is sworn to try a case, hearing all the evidence--
+hearing both sides, hearing the charge of the judge, hearing the law,
+and upon their oaths, are equally divided, six for the plaintiff and six
+for the defendant?  It is because evidence does not have the same effect
+upon all people.  Why?  Our brains are not alike--not the same shape;
+we have not the same intelligence or the same experience, the same
+sense.  And yet I am held accountable for my belief.  I must believe in
+the Trinity--three times one is one, once one is three--and my soul is
+to be eternally damned for failing to guess an arithmetical conundrum.
+And that is the poison part of Christianity--that salvation depends upon
+belief--that is the poison part, and until that dogma is discarded
+religion will be nothing but superstition.  No man can control his
+belief.  If I hear certain evidence I will believe a certain thing.  If
+I fail to hear it I may never believe it.  If it is adapted to my mind I
+may accept it; if it is not, I reject it.  And what am I to go by?  My
+brain.  That is the only light I have from nature, and if there be a
+God, it is the only torch that this God has given me by which to find my
+way through the darkness and the night called life.  I do not depend
+upon hearsay for that.  I do not have to take the word of any other man,
+nor get upon my knees before a book.  Here, in the temple of the mind, I
+go and consult the God--that is to say, my reason--and the oracle
+speaks to me, and I obey the oracle.  What should I obey?  Another man's
+oracle? Shall I take another man's word and not what he thinks, but what
+God said to him?
+
+I would not know a god if I should see one.  I have said before, and I
+say again, the brain thinks in spite of me, and I am not responsible for
+my thought.  No more can I control the beating of my heart, the
+expansion and contraction of my lungs for a moment; no more can I stop
+the blood that flows through the rivers of the veins.  And yet I am held
+responsible for my belief.  Then why does not the God give me the
+evidence?  They say He has.  In what?  In an inspired book.  But I do
+not understand it as they do.  Must I be false to my understanding?
+They say:  "When you come to die you will be sorry you did not."  Will I
+be sorry when I come to die that I did not live a hypocrite?  Will I be
+sorry I did not say I was a Christian when I was not?  Will the fact
+that I was honest put a thorn in the pillow of death?  God cannot
+forgive me for that.  They say when He was in Jerusalem, He forgave His
+murderers.  Now He won't forgive an honest man for differing with Him on
+the subject of the Trinity.  They say that God says to me, "Forgive your
+enemies."  I say, "All right, I do;"  but he says, "I will damn mine."
+God should be consistent. If He wants me to forgive my enemies, He
+should forgive His.  I am asked to forgive enemies who can hurt me.  God
+is only asked to forgive enemies who cannot hurt Him.  He certainly
+ought to be as generous as He asks us to be.  And I want no God to
+forgive me unless I do forgive others.  All I ask, if that be true, is
+that this God should live according to His own doctrine.  If I am to
+forgive my enemies I ask Him to forgive His.  That is justice, that is
+right.  Here are these millions today who say:  "We are to be saved by
+belief, by faith; but what are we to believe?"
+
+In St. Louis last Sunday I read an interview with a Christian minister--
+one who is now holding a revival.  They call him the boy preacher--a
+name that he has borne for fifty or sixty years. The question was
+whether in these revivals, when they were trying to rescue souls from
+eternal torture, they would allow colored people to occupy seats with
+white people, and that revivalist, preaching the unsearchable richness
+of Christ, said he would not allow the colored people to sit with white
+people; they must go to the back of the church.  The same people go and
+sit right next to them in heaven, swap harps with them, and yet this
+man, believing as he says he does, that if he did not believe in the
+Lord Jesus Christ he would eternally perish, was not willing that the
+colored man should sit by a white man while he heard the gospel of
+everlasting peace.  He was not willing that the colored man should get
+into the lifeboat of Christ, although those white men might be totally
+depraved, and if they had justice done them, according to his doctrine.
+would be eternally damned--and yet he has the impudence to put on airs,
+although he ought to be eternally damned, and go and sit by the colored
+man.  His doctrine of religion, the color line, has not my respect.  I
+believe in the religion of humanity, and it is far better to love our
+fellow-men than to love God, because we can help them, and we cannot
+help Him.  You had better do what you can than to be always pretending
+to do what you cannot.
+
+Now I come to the last part of the bible--this creed--and that is,
+eternal punishment, and I have concluded; and I have said I will never
+deliver a lecture that I do not give the full benefit of its name.  That
+part of the Congregational creed would disgrace the lowest savage that
+crouches and crawls in the jungles of Africa.  The man who now, in the
+nineteenth century, preaches the doctrine of eternal punishment, the
+doctrine of eternal hell, has lived in vain.  Think of that doctrine!
+The eternity of punishment!  Why, I find in that same creed that Christ
+is finally going to triumph in this world and establish His kingdom;
+but if their doctrine is true, He will never triumph in the other world.
+He will have billions in hell forever.  In this world we never will be
+perfectly civilized as long as a gallows casts its shadow upon the
+earth.  As long as there is a penitentiary, behind the walls of which a
+human being is immured, we are not a civilized people.  We will never be
+perfectly civilized until we do away with crime and criminals. And yet,
+according to this Christian religion, God is to have an eternal
+penitentiary; He is to be an everlasting jailor, an everlasting
+turnkey, a warden of an infinite dungeon, and He is going to keep
+prisoners there, not for the purpose of reforming them--because they are
+never going to get any better, only getting worse--just for the purpose
+of punishing them.  And what for?  For something they did in this world;
+born in ignorance, educated it may be in poverty, and yet responsible
+through the countless ages of eternity.  No man can think of a greater
+horror; no man can think of a greater absurdity.  For the growth of
+that doctrine, ignorance was soil and fear was rain.  That doctrine came
+from the fanged mouths of wild beasts, and yet it is the "glad tidings
+of great joy."
+
+"God so loved the world" He is going to damn most everybody, and, if this
+Christian religion be true, some of the greatest, and grandest, and best
+who ever lived upon this earth, are suffering its torments tonight.  It
+don't appear to make much difference, however, with this church.  They
+go right on enjoying themselves as well as ever.  If their doctrine is
+true, Benjamin Franklin, one of the wisest, and best of men, who did so
+much to give us here a free government, is suffering the tyranny of God
+tonight, while he endeavored to establish freedom among men.  If the
+churches were honest, their preachers would tell their hearts, "Benjamin
+Franklin is in hell, and we warn any and all the youth not to imitate
+Benjamin Franklin.  Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of
+Independence, with its self-evident truths, has been damned these many
+years."  That is what all the ministers ought to have the courage to
+say.  Talk as you believe. Stand by your creed or change it.  I want to
+impress it upon your mind, because the thing I wish to do in this world
+is to put out the fires of hell I want to keep at it just as long as
+there is one little coal red in the bottomless pit.  As long as the
+ashes are warm, I shall denounce this infamous doctrine.
+
+I want you to know that the men who founded this great and glorious
+government are there.  The most of the men who fought in the
+Revolutionary War and wrested from the clutch of Great Britain this
+continent; have been rewarded by the eternal wrath of God.  The old
+Revolutionary soldiers are in hell by the thousands.  Let the preachers
+have the courage to say so.  The men who fought in 1812, and gave to the
+United States the freedom of the seas, nearly all of them have been
+damned since 1815--all that were killed.  The greatest of heroes, they
+are there.  The greatest of poets, the greatest scientists, the men who
+have made the world beautiful and grand, they are all, I tell you, among
+the damned, if this creed is true.  Humboldt, who shed light, and who
+added to the intellectual wealth of mankind, Goethe, and Schiller, and
+Lessing, who almost created the German language--all gone!  All
+suffering the wrath of God tonight, and every time an angel thinks of
+one of those men he gives his harp an extra twang.
+
+La Place, who read the heaven like an open book--he is there. Robert
+Burns, the poet of human love--he is there because he wrote the "Prayer
+of Holy Willie;"  because he fastened upon the cross the Presbyterian
+creed, and made a lingering crucifixion. And yet that man added to the
+tenderness of human heart. Dickens, who put a shield of pity before the
+flesh of childhood God is getting even with him.  Our own Ralph Waldo
+Emerson, although he had a thousand opportunities to hear Methodist
+clergymen, scorned the means of grace, and the Holy Ghost is delighted
+that he is in hell tonight.
+
+Longfellow refined hundreds and thousands of homes, but he did not
+believe in the miraculous origin of the Savior.  No, sir; he doubted
+the report of Gabriel.  He loved his fellow-men; he did what he could
+to free the slaves; he did what he could to make mankind happy; but
+God was just waiting for him.  He had His constable right there.  Thomas
+Paine, the author of the "Rights of Man," offering his life in both
+hemispheres for the freedom of the human race, and one of the founders
+of the Republic--it has often seemed to me that if we could get God's
+attention long enough to point Him to the American flag, He would let
+him out. Compte, the author of the "Positive Philosophy," who loved his
+fellow-men to that degree that he made of humanity a God, who wrote his
+great work in poverty, with his face covered with tears--they are
+getting their revenge on him now.  Voltaire, who abolished torture in
+France; who did more for human liberty than any other man, living or
+dead; who was the assassin of superstition, and whose dagger still
+rusts in the heart of Catholicism--all the priests who have been
+translated have their happiness increased by looking at Voltaire.
+Glorious country where the principal occupation is watching the miseries
+of the lost.  Geordani Bruno, Benedict Spinoza, Diderot, the
+encyclopedist, who endeavored to get all knowledge in a small compass so
+that he could put the peasant on an equality with the prince
+intellectually; the man who wished to sow all over the world the seeds
+of knowledge; who loved to labor for mankind. While the priests wanted
+to burn, he did all he could to put out the fire--he has been lost long,
+long ago.  His cry for water has, become so common that his voice is now
+recognized through all the realms of hell, and they say to one another,
+"That is Diderot."  David Hume, the philosopher, he is there with the
+rest.
+
+Beethoven, the Shakespeare of music, he has been lost, and Wagner, the
+master of melody, and who has made the air of this world rich forever,
+he is there, and they have better music in hell than in heaven.
+
+Shelley, whose soul, like his own skylark, was a winged joy--he has been
+damned for many, many years; and Shakespeare, the greatest of the human
+race, who has done more to elevate mankind than all the priests who ever
+lived and died--he is there; and all the founders of Inquisitions, the
+builders of dungeons, the makers of chains, the inventors of instruments
+of torture, tearers, and burners, and branders of human flesh, stealers
+of babes and sellers of husbands, and wives, and children, the drawers
+of the swords, of persecution, and they who kept the horizon lurid with
+the fagot's flame for a thousand years--they are in heaven tonight.
+Well, I wish heaven joy of such company.
+
+And that is the doctrine with which we are polluting the souls of
+children.  That is the doctrine that puts a fiend by their dying bed and
+a prophesy of hell over every cradle.  That is "glad tidings of great
+joy."  Only a little while ago, when the great flood came upon the Ohio,
+sent by him who is ruling in the world and paying particular attention
+to the affairs of nations, just in the gray of the morning they saw a
+house floating down, and on its top a human being; and a few men went
+out to the rescue in a little boat, and they found there a mother, a
+woman, and they wanted to rescue her, and she said:  "No, I am going to
+stay where I am.  I have three dead babes in this house."  Think of a
+love so limitless, stronger and deeper than despair and death, and yet
+the Christian religion says that if that woman did not happen to believe
+in their creed, God would send that mother's soul to eternal fire.  If
+there is another world, and if in heaven they wear hats, when such a
+woman climbs up the opposite bank of the Jordan, Christ should lift His
+to her.
+
+That is the trouble I had with this Christian religion--its infinite
+heartlessness; and I cannot tell them too often that during our last
+war Christians who knew that if they were shot they would go right to
+heaven, went and hired wicked men to take their places, perfectly
+willing the men should go to hell, provided they could stay at home.
+You see they are not honest in it; they do not believe it, or, as the
+people say, "They don't sense it;"  they have not religion enough to
+conceive what it is they believe and what a terrific falsehood they
+assert.  And I beg of every one who hears me tonight, I beg, I implore,
+I beseech you never give another dollar to build a church in which that
+lie is preached.  Never give another cent to send a missionary with his
+mouth stuffed with that falsehood to a foreign land.  Why, they say, the
+heathen will go to heaven anyway if you let them alone; what is the use
+of sending them to hell by enlightening them.  Let them alone.  The idea
+of going and telling a man a thing that if he does not believe he will
+be damned, when the chances are ten to one that he won't believe it.
+Don't tell him, and as quick as he gets to the other world and finds it
+necessary to believe, he will say "yes."  Give him a chance.
+
+My objection to the Christian religion is that it destroys human love,
+and tells you and me that the love of your dear-ones is not necessary in
+this world to make a heaven in the next.  No matter about your wife,
+your children, your brother, your sister--no matter about all the
+affections of the human heart--when you get there you will be alone with
+the angels.  I don't know whether I would like the angels.  I don't know
+whether the angels would like me.  I would rather stand by the folks who
+have loved me and whom I know; and I can conceive of no heaven without
+the love of this earth.  That is the trouble with the Christian
+religion; leave your father, leave your mother, leave your wife, leave
+your children, leave everything and follow Jesus Christ.  I will not. I
+will stay with the folks.  I will not sacrifice on the altar of a
+selfish fear all the grandest and noblest promptings of my heart.  You
+do away with human love, and what are we without it? What would we be in
+another world, and what would we be here without it?  Can any one
+conceive of music without human love? Human love builds every home--
+human love is the author of all the beauty in this world.  Love paints
+every picture, and chisels every statue; love, I tell you, builds every
+fireside.  What would heaven be without love?  And yet that is what we
+are promised--a heaven with your wife lost, your mother lost, some of
+your children gone.  And you expect to be made happy by falling in with
+some angel.
+
+Such a religion is demoralizing; and how are you to get there? On the
+efforts of another.  You are to be perpetually a heavenly pauper, and
+you will have to admit through all eternity that you never would have
+got here if you hadn't got frightened.  "I am here," you will say, "I
+have these wings, I have this musical instrument, because I was scared."
+What a glorious world; and then think of it!  No reformation in the
+next world--not the slightest.  If you die in Arkansas that is the end
+of you.  At the end you will be told that being born in Arkansas you had
+a fair chance.  Think of telling a boy in the next world, who lived and
+died in Delaware, that he had a fair show!  Can anything be more
+infamous?  All on an equality--the rich and the poor, those with parents
+loving them, those with every opportunity for education, on an equality
+with the poor, the abject, and the ignorant--and the little ray called
+life, this little moment with a shadow and a tear, this little space
+between your mother's arms and the grave, that balances an entire
+eternity.  And God can do nothing for you when you get there.  A little
+Methodist preacher can do no more for the soul here than its creator can
+when you get there.  The soul goes to heaven, where there is nothing but
+good society; no bad examples; and they are all there, Father, Son and
+Holy Ghost, and yet they can do nothing for that poor unfortunate except
+to damn him.  Is there any sense in that?  Why should this be a period
+of probation?  It says in the bible, I believe, "Now is the accepted
+time."  When does that mean?  That means whenever the passage is
+pronounced.  Now is the accepted time.  It will be the same tomorrow,
+won't it?  And just as appropriate then as today, and if appropriate at
+any time, appropriate through all eternity.  What I say is this:  There
+is no world--there can be no world--in which every human being will not
+have an opportunity of doing right.  That is my objection to this
+Christian religion, and if the love of earth is not the love of heaven,
+if those who love us here are to be separated there, then I want eternal
+sleep.  Give me a good cold grave rather than the furnace of Jehovah's
+wrath.  Gabriel, don't blow!  Let me alone!  If, when the grave bursts,
+I am not to meet faces that have been my sunshine in this life, let me
+sleep on. Rather than that the doctrine of endless punishment should be
+tried, I would like to see the fabric of our civilization crumble and
+fall to unmeaning chaos and to formless dust, where oblivion broods and
+where even memory forgets.  I would rather a Samson of some unprisoned
+force, released by chance, should so wreck and strain the mighty world
+that man in stress and strain of want and fear should shudderingly crawl
+back to savage and barbaric night. I would rather that every planet
+would in its orbit wheel a barren star rather than that the Christian
+religion should be true.
+
+I think it is better to love your children than to love God, a thousand
+times better, because you can help them, and I am inclined to think that
+God can get along without you.  I believe in the religion of the family.
+I believe that the roof-tree is sacred from the smallest fibre held in
+the soft, moist clasp of the earth to the little blossom on the topmost
+bough that gives its fragrance to the happy air.  The family where
+virtue dwells with love is like a lily with a heart of fire--the fairest
+flower in all this world.  And I tell you God cannot afford to damn a
+man in the next world who has made a happy family in this. God cannot
+afford to cast over the battlements of heaven the man who has built a
+happy home here.  God cannot afford to be unpitying to a human heart
+capable of pity.  God cannot clothe with fire the man who has clothed
+the naked here; and God cannot send to eternal pain a man who has done
+something toward improving the condition of his fellow-man.  If he can,
+I had rather go to hell than to heaven and keep the company of such a
+God.
+
+They tell me the next terrible thing I do is to take away the hope of
+immortality.  I do not, I would not, I could not. Immortality was first
+dreamed of by human love, and yet the church is going to take human love
+out of immortality.  We love it; therefore we wish to love.  A loved
+ones dies, and we wish to meet again, and from the affection of the
+human heart grew the great oak of the hope of immortality.  And around
+that oak has climbed the poisonous vine, superstition.  Theologians,
+pretenders, soothsayers, parsons, priests, popes, bishops, have taken
+all that hope, and they have had the impudence to stand by the grave and
+prophesy a future of pain.  They have erected their toll-gates on the
+highway to the other world, and have collected money from the poor
+people on the way, and they have collected it from their fear.  The
+church did not give us the idea of immortality; the bible did not give
+us the idea of immortality. Let me tell you now that the old testament
+tells you how you lost immortality; it does not say another word about
+another world from the first mistake in Genesis to the last curse in
+Malachi. There is not in the old testament one burial service.
+
+No man in the old testament stands by the bed and says, "I will meet
+them again"--not one word.  From the top of Sinai came no hope of
+another world.  And when we get to the new testament, what do we find
+there?  Have thy heart counted worthy to obtain that world and the
+resurrection of the dead.  As though some would be counted unworthy to
+obtain the resurrection of the dead. And, in another place:  "Seek for
+honor, glory, immortality."  If you have got it, why seek for it?  And
+in another place:  "God, who alone hath immortality;"  and yet they
+tell us that we get our ideas of immortality from the bible.  I deny it.
+If Christ was in fact God, why didn't He plainly say there was another
+life?  Why didn't He tell us something about it?  Why didn't He turn the
+tear-stained hope of immortality into the glad knowledge of another
+life?  Why did He go dumbly to his death, and leave the world in
+darkness and in doubt?  Why?  Because He was a man and didn't know.  I
+would not destroy the smallest star of human hope, but I deny that we
+got our idea of immortality from the bible.  It existed long before
+Moses existed.  We find it symbolized through all Egypt, through all
+India.  Wherever man has lived, his religion has made another world in
+which to meet the lost.  It is not born of the bible.  The idea of
+immortality, like the great sea, has ebbed and flowed in the human
+heart, beating with its countless waves against the  rocks and sands of
+fate and time.  It was not born of the bible.  It was born of the human
+heart, and it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds
+of doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death.  We do
+not know.  We do not prophesy a life of pain.  We leave the dead with
+nature, the mother of us all, under a seven-hued bow of hope.  Under the
+seven-hued arch let the dead sleep.  "Ah, but you take the consolation
+of religion."  What consolation has religion for the widow of the
+unbeliever, the widow of a good, brave, kind man who lies dead?  What
+can the orthodox ministers say to relieve the bursting heart of that
+woman?  What can the orthodox ministers say to relieve the aching hearts
+of the little orphans as they kneel by the grave of that father, if that
+father didn't happen to be an orthodox Christian? What consolation have
+they?  I find that when a Christian loses a friend the tears spring from
+his eyes as quickly as from the eyes of others.  Their tears are as
+bitter as ours.  Why?  The echo of the promises spoken eighteen hundred
+years ago is so low, and the sound of the clods upon the coffin so loud,
+the promises are so far away, and the dead are so near.  That is the
+reason.  And they find no consolation there.  I say honestly we do not
+know; we cannot say.  We cannot say whether death is a wall or a door;
+the beginning or end of a day; the spreading of pinions too soar or the
+folding forever of wings; whether it is the rising or the setting of
+sun, or an endless life that brings rapture and love to every one--we do
+not know; we can not say.
+
+There is an old fable of Orpheus and Eurydice:  Eurydice had been
+captured and taken to the infernal regions, and Orpheus went after her,
+taking with him his harp and playing as he went; and when he came to
+the infernal regions he began to play, and Sysiphus sat down upon the
+stone that he had been heaving up the side of the mountain so many
+years, and which continually rolled back upon him.  Ixion paused upon
+his wheel of fire; Tantalus ceased in his vain efforts for water; the
+daughters of the Danaidae left off trying to fill their sieves with
+water; Pluto smiled, and for the first time in the history of hell the
+cheeks of the Furies were wet with tears; monsters relented and they
+said, "Eurydice may go with you, but you must not look back."  So he
+again threaded the caverns, playing as he went, and as he again reached
+the light he failed to hear the footsteps of Eurydice, and he looked
+back and in a moment she was gone.  This old fable gives to us the idea
+of the perpetual effort to rescue truth from the churches of monsters.
+Some time Orpheus will not look back.   Some day Eurydice will reach the
+blessed light, and at some time there will fade from the memory of men
+the superstition of religion.
+
+
+
+
+
+Ingersoll's Lecture on "Blasphemy"
+
+
+
+Ladies and Gentlemen:  There is an old story of a missionary trying to
+convert an Indian.  The Indian made a little circle in the sand and
+said, "That is what the Indian knows."  Then he made another circle a
+little larger and said, "that is what missionary knows; but outside
+there the Indian knows just as much as missionary."
+
+I am going to talk mostly outside that circle tonight.
+
+First, what is the origin of the crime known as blasphemy?  It is the
+belief in a God who is cruel, revengeful, quick tempered and capricious;
+a God who punishes the innocent for the guilty; a God who listens with
+delight to the shrieks of the tortured and gazes enraptured on their
+spurting blood.   You must hold this belief before you can believe in
+the doctrine of blasphemy.  You must believe that this God loves
+ceremonies, that this God knows certain men to whom He has told all His
+will.  It then follows that, if this God loves ceremonies and has
+certain men to teach His will and perform these ceremonies, these men
+must have a place to live in.  This place was called a temple, and it
+was sacred.  And the pots and pans and kettles and all in it were sacred
+too.  No one but the priests must touch them.  Then the God wrote a book
+in which He told His covenants to men, and gave this book to priests to
+interpret.  While it was sacrilege to touch with the hands the pots and
+pans of the temple, it was blasphemy to doubt or question anything in
+the book.  And then the right to think was gone, and the right to use
+the brain that God had given was taken away, and religion was entrenched
+behind that citadel called blasphemy.
+
+God was a kind of juggler.  He did not wish man to be impudent or
+curious about how He did things.  You must sit in audience and watch the
+tricks and ask no questions.  In front of every fact He has hung the
+impenetrable curtain of blasphemy.  Now, then, all the little reason
+that poor man had is useless.  To say anything against the priest was
+blasphemy and to say anything against God was blasphemy--to ask a
+question was blasphemy.  Finally we sank to the level of fetishism.  We
+began to worship inanimate things. If you will read your bible you will
+find that the Jews had a sacred box.  In it were the rod of Aaron and a
+piece of manna and the tables of stone.  To touch this box was a crime.
+You remember that one time when a careless Jew thought the box was going
+to tip he held it.  God killed him.  What a warning to baggage smashers
+of the present day.
+
+We find also that God concocted a hair oil and threatened death to any
+one who imitated it.  And we see that He also made a certain perfume and
+it was death to make anything that smelt like it.  It seems to me this
+is carrying protection too far.  It always has been blasphemy to say  "I
+do not know whether God exists or not."  In all Catholic countries it is
+blasphemy to doubt the bible, to doubt the sacredness of the relics.  It
+always has been blasphemy to laugh at a priest, to ask questions, to
+investigate the Trinity.  In a world of superstition, reason is
+blasphemy.  In a world of ignorance, facts are blasphemy.  In a world of
+cruelty, sympathy is a crime, and in a world of lies, truth is
+blasphemy.  Who are the real blasphemers?  Webster offers the
+definition; blasphemy is an insult offered to God by attributing to Him
+a nature and qualities differing from His real nature and qualities, and
+dishonoring Him.  A very good definition, if you only know what His
+nature and qualities are. But that is not revealed; for, studying Him
+through the medium of the bible, we find Him illimitably contradictory.
+He commands us not to work on the Sabbath day, because it is holy.  Yet
+God works himself on the Sabbath day.  The sun, moon and stars swing
+round in their orbits, and all the creation attributed to this God goes
+on as on other days.  He says:  "Honor thy father and mother," and yet
+this God, in the person of Christ, offered honors, and glory, and
+happiness a hundred fold to any who would desert their father and mother
+for Him.  Thou shalt not kill, yet God killed the first-born of Egypt,
+and he commanded Joshua to kill all His enemies, not sparing old or
+young, man, woman or child, even an unborn child.  "Thou shalt not
+commit adultery," he says, and yet this God gave the wives of defeated
+enemies to His soldiers of Joshua's army.  Then again He says, "Thou
+shalt not steal."  By this command He protected the inanimate property
+and the cattle of one man against the hand of another, and yet this God
+who said "Thou shalt not steal," established human slavery.  The
+products of industry were not to be interfered with, but the producer
+might be stolen as often as possible. "Thou shalt not bear false witness
+against thy neighbor."  And yet the God who said this said also, "I have
+sent lying spirits unto Ahab."  The only commandment He really kept was,
+"Thou shalt have none other gods but Me."
+
+Is it blasphemous to describe this God as malicious?  You know that
+laughter is a good index of the character of a man.  You like and
+rejoice with the man whose laugh is free and joyous and full of good
+will.  You fear and dislike him of the sneering laugh.  How does God
+laugh?  He says, "I will laugh at their calamity and mock at their
+misfortune," speaking of some who have sinned.  Think of the malice and
+malignity of that in an infinite God when speaking of the sufferings He
+is going to impose upon His children.  You know that it is said of a
+Roman emperor that he wrote laws very finely, and posted them so high on
+the walls that no one could read them, and then he punished the people
+who disobeyed the laws.  That is the acme of tyranny:  to provide a
+punishment for breach of laws the existence of which were unknown.  Now
+we all know that there is sin against the Holy Ghost which will not be
+forgiven in this world nor in the world to come.  Hundreds of thousands
+of people have been driven to the lunatic asylum by the thought that
+they had committed this unpardonable sin.   Every educated minister
+knows that that part of the bible is an interpolation, but they all
+preach it.  What that sin against the Holy Ghost is, is not specified.
+I say, "Oh, but my good God, tell me what this sin is."  And He answers,
+"Maybe now asking is the crime.  Keep quiet."  So I keep quiet and go
+about tortured with the fear that I have committed that sin.  Is it
+blasphemy to describe God as needing assistance from the Legislature?
+Calling for the aid of a mob to enforce His will here, compare that God
+with a man, even with Henry Bergh. See what Mr. Bergh has done to awaken
+pity in our people and call sympathy to the rescue of suffering animals.
+And yet our God was a torturer of dumb brutes.
+
+It is blasphemy to say that our God sent the famine and dried the
+mother's breast from her infant's withered lips?  Is it blasphemy to say
+that He is the author of the pestilence; that He ordered some of His
+children to consume others with fire and sword?  Is it blasphemy to
+believe what we read in the 109th Psalm?  If these things are not
+blasphemy, then there is no blasphemy.  If there be a God I desire Him
+to write in the book of judgment opposite my name that I denied these
+lies for Him.
+
+Let us take another step; let us examine the Presbyterian confession of
+faith.  If it be possible to commit blasphemy, then I contend that the
+Presbyterian creed is most blasphemous, for, according to that, God is a
+cruel, unrelenting, revengeful, malignant and utterly unreasonable
+tyrant.  I propose now to pay a little attention to the creed.  First,
+it confesses that there is such a thing as a light of nature.  It is
+sufficient to make man inexcusable, but not sufficient for salvation;
+just light enough to lead man to hell.  Now imagine a man who will put a
+false light on a hilltop to lure a ship to destruction.  What would we
+say of that man?  What can we say of a God who gives this false light of
+nature which, if its lessons are followed, results in hell?  That is the
+Presbyterian God.  I don't like Him.  Now it occurred to God that the
+light of nature was somewhat weak, and He thought He'd light another
+burner. Therefore He made His book and gave it to His servants, the
+priests, that they might give it to men.  It was to be accepted, not on
+the authority of Moses, or any other writer, but because it was the word
+of God.  How do you know it's the word of God? You're not to take the
+word of Moses, or David, or Jeremiah, or Isaiah, or any other man,
+because the authenticity of their work has nothing to do with the
+matter; this creed expressly lets them out.  How are you to know that
+it is God's word?  Because it is God's word.  Why is it God's word?
+What proof have we that it is God's word?  Because it is God's word.
+
+Now, then, I find that the next thing in this wonderful confession of
+faith of the Presbyterians is the decree of predestination.  [Reads the
+decree.]  I am pleased to assure you that it is not necessary to
+understand this.  You have only to believe it.  You see that by the
+decree of God some men and angels are predestinated to heaven and others
+to eternal hell, and you observe that their number is so certain and
+definite that it can neither be changed nor altered.  You are asked to
+believe that billions of years ago this God knew the names of all the
+men and women whom He was going to save.  Had 'em in His book, that
+being the only thing except Himself that then existed.  He had chosen
+the names by the aid of the secret council.  The reason they called it
+secret was because they knew all about it.
+
+In making His choice, God was not at all bigoted.  He did not choose
+John Smith because He foresaw that Smith was to be a Presbyterian, and
+was to possess a loving nature, was to be honest and true and noble in
+all his ways, doing good himself and encouraging others in the same.
+Oh, no!  He was quite as likely to pick Brown, in spite of the fact that
+He knew long before that Brown would be a wicked wretch.  You see He was
+just as apt to send Smith to the devil and take Brown to heaven--and all
+for "His glory."  This God also blinds and hardens--ah! he's a peculiar
+God.  If sinners persevere, He will blind and harden and give them over
+at last to their own wickedness instead of trying to reclaim and save
+them.
+
+Now we come to the comforting doctrine of the total depravity of man,
+and this leads us to consider how he came that way.  Can any person read
+the first chapters of Genesis and believe them unless his logic was
+assassinated in the cradle?  We read that our first parents were placed
+in a pleasant garden; that they were given the full run of the place
+and only forbidden to meddle with the orchard; that they were tempted
+as God knew they were to be tempted; that they fell as God knew they
+would fall, and that for this fall, which He knew would happen before He
+made them, He fixed the curse of original sin upon them, to be continued
+to all their children.  Why didn't He stop right there?  Why didn't He
+kill Adam and Eve and make another pair who didn't like apples? Then
+when He brought His flood why did He rescue eight people if their
+descendants were to be so totally depraved and wicked?  Why didn't He
+have His flood first, and then drown the devil?  That would have solved
+the problem, and He could then have tried experiments unmolested.
+
+The Presbyterian confession says this corruption was in all men. It was
+born with them, it lived through their life, and after death survived in
+the children.  Well, can't man help himself? No, I'll show you, God's
+got him.  Listen to this.  [Reads extracts.]  So that a natural man is
+not only dead in sin and unable to accomplish salvation, but he is also
+incapable of preparing himself therefore.  Absolutely incapable of
+taking a trick.  He is saved, if at all, completely by the mercy of God.
+If that's the case, then why doesn't He convert us all?  Oh, He doesn't.
+He wishes to send the most of us to hell--to show His justice.  Elect
+infants dying in infancy are regenerate.  So also are all persons
+incapable of unbelief.  That includes insane persons and idiots, because
+an idiot is incapable of unbelief. Idiots are the only fellows who've
+got the dead wood on God. Then according to this, the man who has lived
+according to the light of nature, doing the best he knew how to make
+this earth happy, will be damned by God because he never heard of His
+son. Whose fault is it that an infinite God does not advertise?
+Something wrong about that.  I am inclined to think that the
+Presbyterian church is wrong.  I find here how utterly unpardonable sin
+is.  There is no sin so small but it is punished with hell, and away you
+go straight to the deepest burning pit unless your heart has been
+purified by this confession of faith--unless this snake has crawled in
+there and made itself a nest. Why should we help religion?  I would like
+people to ask themselves that question.  An infinite God, by practicing
+a reasonable economy, can get along without assistance.  Loudly this
+confession proclaims that salvation comes from Christ alone. What, then,
+becomes of the savage who, having never known the name of Christ, has
+lived according to the light of nature, kind and heroic and generous,
+and possessed of and cultivating all the natural virtues?  He goes to
+hell.  God, you see, loves us.  If He had not loved us what would He
+have done?  The light of nature then shows that God is good and
+therefore to be feared--on account of his goodness, to be served and
+honored without ceasing.  And yet this creed says that on the last day
+God will damn anyone who has walked according to this light.  It's
+blasphemy to walk by the light of nature.
+
+The next great doctrine is on the preservation of the saints. Now, there
+are peculiarities about saints.  They are saints without their own
+knowledge or free will; they may even be down on saints, but its no
+good.  God has got a rolling hitch on them, and they have to come into
+the kingdom sooner or later.  It all depends on whether they have been
+elected or not.  God could have made me a saint just as easy as not, but
+He passed me by.  Now you know the Presbyterians say I trample on holy
+things.  They believe in hell and I come and say there is no hell.  I
+hurt their hearts, they say, and they add that I am going to hell
+myself.  I thank them for that; but now let's see what these tender
+Presbyterians say of other churches.  Here it is:
+
+This confession of faith calls the pope of Rome anti-Christ and a son of
+perdition.  Now there are forty Roman Catholics to one Presbyterian on
+this earth.  Do not the Presbyterians rather trample on the things that
+are holy to the Roman Catholics, and do they respect their feelings?
+But the Presbyterians have a pope themselves, composed of the presbyters
+and preachers.  This confession attributes to them the keys of heaven
+and hell and the power to forgive sins.  [Here extracts are read.]
+Therefore these men must be infallible, for God would never be so
+foolish as to entrust fallible men with the keys of heaven and hell.  I
+care nothing for their keys, nor for any world these keys would open or
+lock; I prefer the country.
+
+We are told by this faith that at the last day all the men and women and
+children who have ever lived on the earth will appear in the self same
+bodies they have had when on earth.  Everyone who knows anything knows
+the constant exchange which is going on between the vegetable and animal
+kingdom.  The millions of atoms which compose one of our bodies have all
+come from animals and vegetables, and they in their turn drew them from
+animals and vegetables which preceded them.  The same atoms which are
+now in our bodies have previously been in the bodies of our ancestors.
+The negro from Central Africa has many times been mahogany and the
+mahogany has many times been negro.  A missionary goes to the cannibal
+islands and a cannibal eats him and dies.  The atoms which composed the
+missionary's body now compose in great part the cannibal's body.  To
+whom will these atoms belong on the morning of the resurrection?
+
+How did the devil, who had always lived in heaven among the best
+society, ever happen to become bad?  If a man surrounded by angels could
+become bad, why cannot a man surrounded by devils become good?
+
+Here is the last Presbyterian joy:  At the day of judgment the righteous
+shall be caught up to heaven and shall stand at the right hand of Christ
+and share with Him in judging the wicked. Then the Presbyterian husband
+may have the ineffable pleasure of judging his wife and condemning her
+to eternal hell, and the boy will say to his mother, echoing the command
+of God:  "Depart, thou accursed, into everlasting torment!"  Here will
+come a man who has not believed in God.  He was a soldier who took up
+arms to free the slaves and who rotted to death in Andersonville prison
+rather than accept the offer of his captors to fight against freedom.
+He loved his wife and his children and his Home and his native country
+and all mankind, and did all the good he knew.  God will say to the
+Presbyterians, "What shall We do to this man?"; and they will answer,
+"Throw him into hell."
+
+Last night there was a fire in Philadelphia, and at a window fifty feet
+above the ground Mr. King stood amid flame and smoke and pressed his
+children to his breast one after the other, kissed them, and threw them
+to the rescuers with a prayer.  That was man.  At the last day God takes
+His children with a curse and hurls them into eternal fire.  That's your
+God as the Presbyterians describe Him.  Do you believe that God--if
+there is one--will ever damn me for thinking Him better than He is? If
+this creed be true, God is the insane keeper of a mad house.
+
+We have in this city a clergyman who contends that this creed gives a
+correct picture of God, and furthermore says that God has the right to
+do with us what He pleases--because He made us.  If I could change this
+lamp into a human being, that would not give me the right to torture
+him, and if I did torture him and he cried out, "Why torturest thou me?"
+and I replied, "Because I made you," he would be right in replying, "You
+made me, therefore you are responsible for my happiness."  No God has a
+right to add to the sum of human misery.  And yet this minister believes
+an honest thought blasphemy.  No doubt he is perfectly honest. Otherwise
+he would have too much intellectual pride to take the position he does.
+He says that the bible offers the only restraint to the savage passions
+of man.  In lands where there has been no bible there have been mild and
+beneficent philosophers, like Buddha and Confucius.  Is it possible that
+the bible is the only restraint, and yet the nations among whom these
+men lived have been as moral as we?  In Brooklyn and New York you have
+the bible, yet do you find that the restraint is a great success?  Is
+there a city on the globe which lacks more in certain directions than
+some in Christendom, or even the United States?  What are the natural
+virtues of man?  Honesty, hospitality, mercy in the hour of victory,
+generosity--do we not find these virtues among some savages?  Do we find
+them among all Christians?  I am also told by these gentlemen that the
+time will come when the infidel will be silenced by society.  Why that
+time came long ago.  Society gave the hemlock to Socrates, society in
+Jerusalem cried out for Barabbas and crucified Jesus.  In every
+Christian country society has endeavored to crush the infidel.
+
+Blasphemy is a padlock which hypocrisy tries to put on the lips of all
+honest men.  At one time Christianity succeeded in silencing the
+infidel, and then came the dark ages, when all rule was ecclesiastical,
+when the air was filled with devils and spooks, when birth was a,
+misfortune, life a prolonged misery of fear and torment, and death a
+horrible nightmare.  They crushed the infidels, Galileo, Kepler,
+Copernicus, wherever a ray of light appeared in the ecclesiastical
+darkness.  But I want to tell this minister tonight, and all others like
+him, that that day is passed.  All the churches in the United States can
+not even crush me.  The day for that has gone, never to return.  If they
+think they can crush free thought in this country, let them try it.
+What must this minister think of you and the citizens of this republic
+when he says, "Take the fear of hell out of men's hearts and a majority
+of them will become ungovernably wicked." Oh, think of an angel in
+heaven having to allow that he was scared there.
+
+This minister calls for my arrest.  He thinks his God needs help, and
+would like to see the police crush the infidel.  I would advise Mr.
+Talmage (hisses) to furnish his God with a rattle, so that when he is in
+danger again he can summon the police immediately.
+
+I'll tell you what is blasphemy.  It is blasphemy to live on the fruits
+of other men's labor, to prevent the growth of the human mind, to
+persecute for opinion's sake, to abuse your wife and children, to
+increase in any manner the sum of human misery.
+
+I'll tell you what is sacred.  Our bodies are sacred, our rights are
+sacred, justice and liberty are sacred.  I'll tell you what is the true
+bible.  It is the sum of all actual knowledge of man, and every man who
+discovers a new fact adds a new verse to this bible.  It is different
+from the other bible, because that is the sum of all that its writers
+and readers do not know.
+
+
+
+
+
+Ingersoll's Lecture entitled "Some Reasons Why"
+
+
+
+Ladies and Gentlemen:  The history of the world shows that religion has
+made enemies instead of friends. That one word "religion" paints the
+horizon of the past with every form of agony and torture, and when one
+pronounces the name of "religion" we think of 1,500 years of
+persecution, of 6,000 years of hatred, slander and vituperation.
+Strange, but true, that those who have loved God most have loved men
+least; strange that in countries where there has been the most religion
+there has been the most agony; and that is one reason why I am opposed
+to what is known as religion.  By religion I mean the duties that men
+are supposed to owe to God; by religion I mean, not what man owes to
+man, but what we owe to some invisible, infinite and supreme being.  The
+question arises, Can any relation exist between finite man and infinite
+being?  An infinite being is absolutely conditional.  An infinite being
+can not walk, cannot receive, and a finite being cannot give to the
+infinite.  Can I increase his happiness or decrease his misery?  Does he
+need my strength or my life?  What can I do for him?  I say, nothing.
+
+For one, I do not believe there is any God who gives rain or sunshine
+for praying.  For one, I do not believe there is any being who helps man
+simply because he kneels.  I may be mistaken, but that is my doctrine--
+that the finite cannot by any possibility help the infinite, or the
+infinite be indebted to the finite; that the finite cannot by any
+possibility assist a being who is all in all.  What can we do?  We can
+help man; we can help clothe the naked, feed the hungry; we can help
+break the chains of the slave; we can help weave a garment of joy that
+will finally cover this world.  That is all that man can do. Wherever he
+has endeavored to do more he has simply increased the misery of his
+fellows.  I can find out nothing of these things myself by my unaided
+reasoning.  If there is an infinite God and I have not reason enough to
+comprehend His universe, whose fault is it?  I am told that we have the
+inspired will of God.  I do not know exactly what they mean by inspired.
+Not two sects agree on that word.  Some tell me that every great work is
+inspired; that Shakespeare is inspired.  I would be less apt to dispute
+that than a similar remark about any other book on this earth. If
+Jehovah had wanted to have a book written, the inspiration of which
+should not be disputed, He should have waited until Shakespeare lived.
+
+Whatever they mean by inspiration, they at least mean that it is true.
+If it is true, it does not need to be inspired.  The truth will take
+care of itself.  Nothing except a falsehood needs inspiration.  What is
+inspiration?  A man looks at the sea, and the sea says something to him.
+Another man looks at the same sea, and the sea tells another story to
+him.  The sea cannot tell the same story to any two human beings.  There
+is not a thing in nature, from a pebble to a constellation, that tells
+the same story to any two human beings.  It depends upon the man's
+experience, his intellectual development, and what chord of memory it
+touches.  One looks upon the sea and is filled with grief; another
+looks upon it and laughs.
+
+Last year, riding in the cars from Boston to Portsmouth, sat opposite me
+a lady and gentleman.  As we reached the latter place the woman, for the
+first time in her life, caught a burst of the sea, and she looked and
+said to her husband "Isn't that beautiful!"  And he looked and said:
+"I'll bet you can dig clams right there."
+
+Another illustration:  A little while ago a gentleman was walking with
+another in South Carolina, at Charleston--one who had been upon the
+other side.  Said the Northerner to the Southerner, "Did you ever see
+such a night as this; did you ever in your life see such a moon?"  "Oh,
+my God," said he, "you ought to have seen that moon before the War!"
+
+I simply say these things to convince you that everything in nature has
+a different story to tell every human being.  So the bible tells a
+different story to every man that reads it. History proves what I say.
+Why so many sects?  Why so much persecution?  Simply because two people
+couldn't understand it exactly alike.  You may reply that God intended
+it should be so understood, and that is the real revelation that God
+intended.
+
+For instance, I write a letter to Smith.  I want to convey to him
+certain thoughts.  If I am honest I will use the words which will convey
+to him my thoughts, but not being infinite, I don't know exactly how
+Smith will understand my words; but if I were infinite I would be bound
+to use the words that I know Smith would get my exact idea from.  If God
+intended to make a revelation to me He has to make it to me through my
+brain and my reasoning.  He cannot make a revelation to another man for
+me. That other man will have God's word for it but I will only have that
+man's word for it.  As that man has been dead for several thousand
+years, and as I don't know what his reputation was for truth and
+veracity in the neighborhood in which he lived, I will wait for the Lord
+to speak again.
+
+Suppose when I read it, the revelation to me, through the bible, is that
+it is not true, and God knew that I would know that when I did read it,
+and knew, if I did not say it, I would be dishonest.  Is it possible
+that He would damn me for being honest, and give me wings if I would
+play the hypocrite?
+
+The inspiration of the bible depends upon the ignorance of the gentleman
+who reads it.  Yet they tell me this book was written by the creator of
+every shining star.  Now let us see.  I want to be honest and candid.  I
+have just as much at stake in the way of soul as any doctor of divinity
+that ever lived, and more than some I have met.  According to this book,
+the first attempt at peopling this world was a failure.  God had to
+destroy all but eight.  He saved some of the same kind to start again,
+which I think was a mistake.  After that, the people still getting
+worse, he selected from the wide world a few of the tribe of Abraham. He
+had no time to waste with everybody.  He had no time to throw away on
+Egypt.  It had at that time a vast and splendid civilization, in which
+there were free schools; in which the one man married the one wife;
+where there were courts of law; where there were codes of laws.
+
+Neither could He give attention to India, that had at that time a
+literature as splendid almost as ours, a language as perfect; that had
+produced poets, philosophers, statesmen.  He had no time to waste with
+them, but took a few of the tribe of Abraham, and He did His best to
+civilize these people.  He was their governor, their executive, their
+supreme court.  He established a despotism, and from Mount Sinai He
+proclaimed His laws.  They didn't pay much attention to them.  He
+wrought thousands of miracles to convince them that He was God.
+
+Isn't it perfectly wonderful that the priest of one religion never
+believes the miracles told by the priest of another?  Is it possible
+that they know each other?  I heard a story the other day.  A gentleman
+was telling a very remarkable circumstance that happened to himself, and
+all the listeners except one said, "Is it possible; did you ever hear
+such a wonderful thing in all your life?"  They noticed that this one
+man didn't appear to take a vivid interest in the story, so one said to
+him, "You don't express much astonishment at the story?"  "No," says he,
+"I am a liar myself."
+
+I find by reading this book that a worse government was never
+established than that established by Jehovah; that the Jews were the
+most unfortunate people who lived upon the globe.  Let us compare this
+book.  In all civilized countries it is not only admitted, but
+passionately asserted, that slavery is an infamous crime; that a war of
+extermination is murder; that polygamy enslaves woman, degrades man and
+destroys home; that nothing is more infamous than the slaughter of
+decrepit men and helpless women, and of prattling babes; that the
+captured maiden should not be given to her captors; that wives should
+not be stoned to death for differing in religion from their husbands.
+We know there was a time in the history of most nations when all these
+crimes were regarded as divine institutions.  Nations entertaining these
+views today are called savage, and with the exception of the Feejee
+islanders, some tribes in Central Africa, and a few citizens of
+Delaware, no human being can be found degraded enough to agree upon
+those subjects with Jehovah.
+
+Today, the fact that a nation has abolished and abandoned those things
+is the only evidence that it can offer to show that it is not still
+barbarous; but a believer in the inspiration of the bible is compelled
+to say there was a time when slavery was right, when polygamy was the
+highest form of virtue, when wars of extermination were waged with the
+sword of mercy, and when the creator of the whole world commanded the
+soldier to sheathe the dagger of murder in the dimpled breast of
+infancy.  The believer of inspiration of the bible is compelled to say
+there was a time when it was right for a husband to murder his wife
+because they differed upon subjects of religion.  I deny that such a
+time ever was.  If I knew the real God said it, I would still deny it.
+
+Four thousand years ago, if the bible is true, God was in favor of
+slavery, polygamy, wars of extermination and religious persecution.  Now
+we are told the devil is in favor of all those things, and God is
+opposed to them; in other words, the devil stands now where God stood
+4,000 years ago; yet they tell me God is just as good now as he was
+then, and the devil just as bad now as God was then.  Other nations
+believed in slavery, polygamy, and war and persecution without ever
+having received one ray of light from heaven.  That shows that a special
+revelation is not necessary to teach a man to do wrong.  Other nations
+did no worse without the bible than the Jews did with it.
+
+Suppose the devil had inspired a book.  In what respect would he have
+differed from God on the subject of slavery, polygamy, wars of
+extermination, and religious persecution?  Suppose we knew that after
+God had finished his book the devil had gotten possession of it, and
+written a few passages to suit himself. Which passages, O Christian,
+would you pick out now as having probably been written by the devil?
+Which of these two, "Love thy neighbor as thyself," or "Kill all the
+males among the little ones, and kill every man, but all the women and
+girls keep alive for yourselves"--which of those two passages would they
+select as having been written by the devil?
+
+If God wrote the last, there is no need of a devil.  Is there a
+Christian in the wide world who does not wish that God, from the thunder
+and lightning of Sinai, had said:  "You shall not enslave your fellow-
+man!"  I am opposed to any man who is in favor of slavery.  If
+revolution is needed at all it is to prevent man enslaving his fellow-
+man.
+
+But they say God did the best He could; that the Jews were so bad that
+He had to come up kind of slow.  If He had told them suddenly they must
+not murder and steal, they would not have paid any respect to the ten
+commandments.  Suppose you go to the Cannibal Islands to prevent the
+gentlemen there from eating missionaries, and you found they ate them
+raw.  The first move is to induce them to cook them.  After you get them
+to eat cooked missionaries, you will then, without their knowing it,
+occasionally slip in a little mutton.  We will go on gradually
+decreasing missionaries and increasing mutton until finally the last
+will be so cultivated that they will prefer the sheep to the priest,
+I think the missionaries would object to that mode, of course.
+
+I know this was written by the Jews themselves.  If they were to write
+it now, it would be different.  Today they are a civilized people.  I do
+not wish it understood that a word I say tonight touches the slightest
+prejudice in any man's mind against the Jewish people.  They are as good
+a people as live today.  I will say right here, they never had any luck
+until Jehovah abandoned them.
+
+Now we come to the new testament.  They tell me that is better than the
+old,   I say it is worse.  The great objection to the old testament is
+that it is cruel; but in the old testament the revenge of God stopped
+with the portals of the tomb.  He never threatened punishment after
+death.  He never threatened one thing beyond the grave.  It was reserved
+for the new testament to make known the doctrine of eternal punishment.
+
+Is the new testament inspired?  I have not time to give many reasons,
+but I will give some.  In the first place, they tell me the very fact
+that the witnesses disagree in minor matters shows that they have not
+conspired to tell the same story.  Good.  And I say in every lawsuit
+where four or five witnesses testify, or endeavor to testify, to the
+same transaction, it is natural that they should differ on minor points.
+Why?  Because no two occupy exactly the same position; no two see
+exactly alike; no two remember precisely the same, and their
+disagreement is due to and accounted for by the imperfection of human
+nature, and the fact that they did not all have an equal opportunity to
+know.  But if you admit or say that the four witnesses were inspired by
+an infinite being who did see it all, then they should remember all the
+same, because inspiration does not depend on memory.
+
+That brings me to another point.  Why were there four gospels? What is
+the use of more than one correct account of anything?  If you want to
+spread it, send copies.  No human being has got the ingenuity to tell me
+why there were four gospels, when one correct gospel would have been
+enough.  Why should there have been four original multiplication tables?
+One is enough, and if anybody has got any use for it he can copy that
+one.  The very fact that we have got four gospels shows that it is not
+an inspired book.
+
+The next point is that, according to the new testament, the salvation of
+the world depended upon the atonement.  Only one of the books in the new
+testament says anything about that, and that is John.  The church
+followed John, and they ought to follow John, because the church wrote
+that book called John.  According to that, the whole world was to be
+damned on account of the sins of one man; and that absurdity was the
+father and mother of another absurdity--that the whole world could be
+saved on account of the virtue of another man.  I deny both
+propositions. No man can sin for me; no man can be virtuous for me; I
+must reap what I sow.  But they say the law must be satisfied.  What
+kind of a law is it that would demand punishment of the innocent? Just
+think of it.  Here is a man about to be hanged, and another comes up and
+says:  "That man has got a family, and I have not; that man is in good
+health and I am not well, and I will be hung in his place."  And the
+governor says:  "All right; a murder has been committed, and we have
+got to have a hanging--we don't care who."  Under the Mosaic
+dispensation there was no remission of sins without the shedding of
+blood.  If a man committed a murder he brought a pair of doves or a
+sheep to the priest, and the priest laid his hands on the animal, and
+the sins of the man were transferred to the animal.  You see how that
+could be done easy enough.  Then they killed the animal, and sprinkled
+its blood on the altar.  That let the man off.  And why did God demand
+the sacrifice of a sheep?  I will tell you; because priests love
+mutton.
+
+To make the innocent suffer is the greatest crime.  I don't wish to go
+to heaven on the virtues of somebody else.  If I can't settle by the
+books and go, I don't wish to go.  I don't want to feel as if I was
+there on sufferance--that I was in the poorhouse of the universe,
+supported by the town.
+
+They tell us Judas betrayed Christ.  Well, if Christ had not been
+betrayed, no atonement would have been made, and then every human soul
+would have been damned, and heaven would have been for rent.
+
+Supposing that Judas knew the Christian system, then perhaps he thought
+that by betraying Christ he could get forgiven, not only for the sins
+that he had already committed but for the sin of betrayal, and if, on
+the way to Calvary, and later, some brave, heroic soul had rescued
+Christ from the mob, he would have made his own damnation sure.  It
+won't do.  There is no logic in that.
+
+They say God tried to civilize the Jews.  If He had succeeded, according
+to the Christian system, we all would have been damned, because if the
+Jews had been civilized they would not have crucified Christ.  They
+would have believed in the freedom of speech, and as a result the world
+would have been lost for two thousand years.  The Christian world has
+been trying to explain the atonement, and they have always ended by
+failing to explain it.
+
+Now I come to the second objection, which is that certain belief is
+necessary to salvation.  I will believe according to the evidence.  In
+my mind are certain scales, which weigh everything, and my integrity
+stands there and knows which side goes up and which side goes down.  If
+I am an honest man I will report the weights like an honest man.  They
+say I must believe a certain thing or I will be eternally damned.  They
+tell me that to believe is the safer way.  I deny it.  The safest thing
+you can do is to be honest.  No man, when the shadows of the last hours
+were gathering around him, ever wished that he had lived the life of a
+hypocrite.  If I find at the Day of Judgment that I have been mistaken,
+I will say so, like a man.  If God tells me then that he is the author
+of the old testament I will admit that he is worse than I thought He
+was, and when He comes to pronounce sentence upon me, I will   say to
+Him:  "Do unto others as You would that others should do unto You."  I
+have a right to think; I cannot control my belief; my brain is my
+castle, and if I don't defend it, my soul becomes a slave and a serf.
+
+If you throw away your reason, your soul is not worth saving. Salvation
+depends, not upon belief but upon deed--upon kindness, upon justice,
+upon mercy.  Your own deeds are your savior, and you can be saved in no
+other way.  I am told in this testament to love my enemies.  I cannot;
+I will not.  I don't hate enemies; I don't wish to injure enemies, but I
+don't care about seeing them.  I don't like them.  I love my friends,
+and the man who loves enemies and friends loves me.  The doctrine of
+non-resistance is born of weakness.  The man that first said it, said it
+because it was the best he could do under the circumstances. While the
+church said, "love your enemies," in her sacred vestments gleamed the
+daggers of assassination.  With her cunning hand, she wore the purple
+for hypocrisy, and placed the crown upon the brow of crime.
+
+For more than one thousand years larceny held the scales of justice, and
+hypocrisy wore the mitre, and the tiara of Christ was in fact God.  He
+knew of the future.  He knew what crimes and horrors would be committed
+in His name.  He knew the fires of persecution would climb around the
+limbs of countless martyrs; that brave men and women would languish in
+dungeons and darkness; that the church would use instruments of torture;
+that in His name His followers would trade in human flesh; that cradles
+would be robbed and women's breasts unbabed for gold, and yet He died
+with voiceless lips.  If Christ was God, why did He not tell His
+disciples, and through them, the world, "Man shall not persecute his
+fellow-man?"  Why didn't He say, "I am God?" Why didn't He explain the
+doctrine of the Trinity?  Why didn't He tell what manner of baptism was
+pleasing to Him?  Why didn't He say the old testament is true?  Why
+didn't He write His testament himself?  Why did He leave His words to
+accident, to ignorance, to malice, and to chance?  Why didn't He say
+something positive, definite, satisfactory, about another world?  Why
+did He not turn the tear-stained hope of immortality to the glad
+knowledge of another life?  Why did he go dumbly to His death, leaving
+the world to misery and to doubt?  Because He was a man.
+
+[Colonel Ingersoll read several extracts from the bible, which he said
+originated with Zoroaster, Buddha, Cicero, Epictetus, Pythagoras and
+other ancient writers, and he read extracts from various pagan writers,
+which he claimed compared favorably with the best things in the bible.
+He continued:]
+
+No God has a right to create a man who is to be eternally damned.
+Infinite wisdom has no right to make a failure, and a man who is to be
+eternally damned is not a conspicuous success.  Infinite Wisdom has no
+right to make an instrument that will not finally pay a dividend.  No
+God has a right to add to the agony of this universe, and yet around the
+angels of immortality Christianity has coiled this serpent of eternal
+pain.  Upon love's breast the church has placed that asp, and yet people
+talk to me about the consolations of religion.
+
+A few days ago the bark Tiger was found upon the wide sea 126 days from
+Liverpool.  For nine days not a mouthful of food or a drop of water was
+to be had.  There was on board the captain, mate, and eleven men.  When
+they had been out 117 days they killed the captain's dog.  Nine days
+more--no food, no water, and Captain Kruger stood upon the deck in the
+presence of his starving crew.  With a revolver in his hand, put it upon
+his temple, and said, "Boys, this can't last much longer; I am willing
+to die to save the rest of you."  The mate grasped the revolver from his
+hand, and said, "Wait;"  and the next day upon the horizon of despair
+was the smoke of the ship which rescued them.  Do you tell me tonight if
+Captain Kruger was not a Christian and he had sent that ball crashing
+through his generous brain that there was an Almighty waiting to clutch
+his naked soul that He might damn him forever?  It won't do.
+
+Ah, but they tell me "You have no right to pick the bad things out of
+the bible."  I say, an infinite God has no right to put bad things into
+His bible.  Does anybody believe if God was going to write a book now He
+would uphold slavery; that He would favor polygamy; that He would say
+kill the heathen, stab the women, dash out the brains of the children?
+We have civilized him.  We make our own God, and we make Him better day
+by day.
+
+Some honest people really believe that in some wonderful way we are
+indebted to Moses for geology, to Joshua for astronomy and military
+tactics, to Samson for weapons of war, to Daniel for holy curses, to
+Solomon for the art of cross-examination, to Jonah for the science of
+navigation, to Saint Paul for steamships and locomotives, to the four
+Gospels for telegraphs and sewing-machines, to the Apocalypse; for
+looms, saw-mills, and telephones; and that to the sermon on the mount
+we are indebted for mortars and Krupp guns.  We are told that no nation
+has ever been civilized without a bible.  The Jews had one, and yet they
+crucified a perfectly innocent man.  They couldn't have done much worse
+without a bible.
+
+God must have known 6,000 years ago that it was impossible to civilize
+people without a bible just as well as they know it now. Why did He ever
+allow a nation to be Without a bible?  Why didn't He give a few leaves
+to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden?  Take from the bible the
+miracles, and I admit that the good passages are true.  If they are true
+they don't need to be inspired. Miracles are the children of mendacity.
+Nothing can be more wonderful than the majestic, sublime, and eternal
+march of cause and effect.  Reason must be the final arbiter.  An
+inspired book cannot stand against a demonstrated fact.  Is a man to be
+rewarded eternally for believing without evidence or against evidence?
+Do you tell me that the less brain a man has the better chance he has
+for heaven?  Think of a heaven filled with men who never thought.
+Better that all that is should cease to be; better that God had never
+been; better that all the springs and seeds of things should fall and
+wither in great nature's realm; better that causes and effects should
+lose relation; better that every life should change to breathless death
+and voiceless blank, and every star to blind oblivion and moveless
+naught, than that this religion should be true.
+
+The religion of the future is humanity.  The religion of the future will
+say to every man, "You have the right to think and investigate for
+yourself."  Liberty is my religion--everything that is true, every good
+thought, every beautiful thing, every self-denying action--all these
+make my bible.  Every bubble, every star, are passages in my bible.  A
+constellation is a chapter.  Every shining world is a part of it.  You
+cannot interpolate it; you cannot change it.  It is the same forever.
+My bible is all that speaks to man.  Every violet, every blade of grass,
+every tree, every mountain crowned with snow, every star that shines,
+every throb of love, every honest act, all that is good and true
+combined, make my bible; and upon that book I stand.
+
+
+
+
+
+Ingersoll's Lecture on Intellectual Development
+
+
+
+Ladies and Gentlemen:  In the first place I want to admit that there are
+a great many good people, quite pious people, who don't agree with me
+and all that proves in the world is, that I don't agree with them.  I am
+not endeavoring to force my ideas or notions upon other people, but I am
+saying what little I can to induce everybody in the world to grant to
+every other person every right he claims for himself.  I claim, standing
+under the flag of nature, under the blue and the stars, that I am the
+peer of any other man, and have the right to think and express my
+thoughts.  I claim that in the presence of the unknown, and upon a
+subject that nobody knows anything about, and never did, I have as good
+a right to guess as anybody else.  The gentlemen who hold views against
+mine, if they had any evidence, would have no fears--not the slightest.
+
+If a man has a diamond that has been examined by the lapidaries of the
+world, and some ignorant stonecutter tells him that it is nothing but an
+ordinary rock, he laughs at him; but if it has not been examined by
+lapidaries, and he is a little suspicious himself that it is not
+genuine, it makes him mad.  Any doctrine that will not bear
+investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man.  Any
+man who is afraid to have his doctrine investigated is not only a coward
+but a hypocrite.  Now, all I ask is simply an opportunity to say my say.
+I will give that right to everybody else in the world.  I understand
+that owing to my success in the lecture field several clergymen have
+taken it into their heads to lecture--some of them, I believe, this
+evening.  I say all that I claim is the right I give to others, and any
+man who will not give that right is a dishonest man, no matter what
+church he may belong to or not belong to--if he does not freely accord
+to all others the right to think, he is not an honest man.  I said some
+time ago that if there was any being who would eternally damn one of his
+children for the expression of an honest opinion that he was not a God,
+but that he was a demon; and from that they have said first, that I did
+not believe in any God, and, secondly, that I called Him a demon.  If I
+did not believe in Him how could I call Him anything?  These things
+hardly hang together.  But that makes no difference; I expect to be
+maligned; I expect to be slandered; I expect to have my reputation
+blackened by gentlemen who are not fit to blacken my shoes.
+
+But letting that pass--I simply believe in liberty; that is my
+religion; that is the altar where I worship; that is my shrine--that
+every human being shall have every right that I have--that is my
+religion.  I am going to live up to it and going to say what little I
+can to make the American people brave enough and generous enough and
+kind enough to give everybody else the rights they have themselves.  Can
+there ever be any progress in this world to amount to anything until we
+have liberty?  The thoughts of a man who is not free are not worth much.
+A man who thinks with the club of a creed above his head--a man who
+thinks casting his eye askance at the flames of hell, is not apt to have
+very good thoughts.  And for my part, I would not care to have any
+status or social position even in heaven if I had to admit that I never
+would have been there only I got scared.  When we are frightened we do
+not think very well.  If you want to get at the honest thoughts of a man
+he must be free.  If he is not free you will not get his honest thought.
+You won't trade with a merchant, if he is free; you won't employ him if
+he is a lawyer, if he is free; you won't call him if he is a doctor, if
+he is free; and what are you going to get out of him but hypocrisy.
+Force will not make thinkers, but hypocrites.  A minister told me awhile
+ago, "Ingersoll," he says, "if you do not believe the bible you ought
+not to say so."  Says I, "Do you believe the bible?"  He says, "I do."
+I says, "I don't know whether you do or not; maybe you are following
+the advice you gave me; how shall I know whether you believe it or
+not?"  Now, I shall die without knowing whether that man believed the
+bible or not. There is no way that I can possibly find out, because he
+said that even if he did not believe it he would not say so.  Now, I
+read, for instance, a book.  Now, let us be honest.  Suppose that a
+clergyman and I were on an island--nobody but us two--and I were to read
+a book, and I honestly believed it untrue, and he asked me about it--
+what ought I to say?  Ought I to say I believed it, and be lying, or
+ought I to say I did not?--that is the question; and the church can
+take its choice between honest men, who differ, and hypocrites, who
+differ, but say they do not--you can have your choice, all of you.*
+
+[* "These black-coats are the only persons of my acquaintance who
+resemble the chameleon, in being able to keep one eye directed upwards
+to heaven, and the other downwards to the good things of this world."--
+Alex. von Humboldt]
+
+If you give to us liberty, you will have in this country a splendid
+diversity of individuality; but if on the contrary you say men shall
+think so and so, you will have the sameness of stupid nonsense.  In my
+judgment, it is the duty of every man to think and express his thoughts;
+but at the same time do not make martyrs of yourselves.
+
+Those people that are not willing you should be honest, are not worth
+dying for; they are not worth being a martyr for; and if you are
+afraid you cannot support your wife and children in this town and
+express your honest thought, why keep it to yourself, but if there is
+such a man here he is a living certificate of the meanness of the
+community in which he lives.  Go right along, if you are afraid it will
+take food from the mouths of your dear babes--if you are afraid you
+cannot clothe your wife and children, go along with them to church, say
+amen in as near the right place as you can, if you happen to be awake,
+and I will do your talking for you.
+
+I will say my say, and the time will come when every man in the country
+will be astonished that there ever was a time that everybody had not the
+right to speak his honest thoughts.  If there is a man here or in this
+town, preacher or otherwise, who is not willing that I should think and
+speak, he is just so much nearer a barbarian than I am.  Civilization is
+liberty, slavery is barbarism; civilization is intelligence, slavery is
+ignorance; and if we are any nearer free than were our fathers, it is
+because we have got better heads and more brains in them--that is the
+reason.  Every man who has invented anything for the use and convenience
+of man has helped raise his fellow-man, and all we have found out of the
+laws and forces of nature so that we are finally enabled to bring these
+forces of nature into subjection, to give us better houses, better food,
+better clothes--these are the real civilizers of our race; and the men
+who stand up as prophets and predict hell to their fellow-man, they are
+not the civilizers of our race; the men who cut each other's throats
+because they fell out about baptism--they are not the civilizers of my
+race; the men who built the inquisitions and put into dungeons all the
+grand and honest men they could find--they are not the civilizers of my
+race.
+
+The men who have corrupted the imaginations and hearts of men by their
+infamous dogma of hell--they are not the civilizers of my race.  The men
+who have been predicting good for mankind, the men who have found some
+way to get us better homes and better houses and better education, the
+men who have allowed us to make slaves of the blind forces of nature--
+they have made this world fit to live in.
+
+I want to prove to you if I can that this is all a question of
+intellectual development, a question of sense, and the more a man knows
+the more liberal he is; the less a man knows the more bigoted he is.
+The less a man knows the more certain he is that he knows it, and the
+more a man knows the better satisfied he is that he is entirely
+ignorant.  Great knowledge is philosophic, and little, narrow,
+contemptible knowledge is bigoted and hateful.  I want to prove it to
+you.  I saw a little while ago models of nearly everything man has made
+for his use--nearly everything.  I saw models of all the watercraft;
+from the rude dug-out, in which paddled the naked savage, with his
+forehead about half as high as his teeth were long--all the water craft
+from that dug-out up to a man of war that carries a hundred guns and
+miles of canvas; from that rude dug-out to a steamship that turns its
+brave prow from the port of New York, with three thousand miles of
+foaming billows before it, not missing a throb or beat of its mighty
+iron heart from one shore to the other.  I saw their ideas of weapons,
+from the rude club, such as was seized by that same barbarian as he
+emerged from his den in the morning, hunting a snake for his dinner;
+from that club to the boomerang, to the dagger, to the sword, to the
+blunderbuss, to the old flintlock, to the cap-lock, to the needle-gun,
+to the cannon invented by Krupp, capable of hurling a ball weighing two
+thousand pounds through eighteen inches of solid steel.
+
+I saw their ideas of defensive armor, from the turtle shell which one of
+these gentlemen lashed upon his breast preparatory to going to war, or
+the skin of a porcupine, dried with the quills on, that he pulled on his
+orthodox head before he sallied forth. By "orthodox" I mean man who has
+quit growing; not simply in religion, but it everything; whenever a
+man is done, he is orthodox whenever he thinks he has found out all, he
+is orthodox whenever he becomes a drag on the swift car of progress, he
+is orthodox.  I saw their defensive armor, from the turtle-shell and the
+porcupine skin to the shirts of mail of the middle ages, that defied the
+edge of the sword and the point of the spear.  I saw their ideas of
+agricultural implements, from the crooked stick that was attached to the
+horn of an ox by some twisted straw, to the agricultural implements of
+today, that make it possible for a man to cultivate the soil without
+being an ignoramus.  When they had none of these agricultural
+implements--when they depended upon one crop--they were superstitious,
+for if the frosts struck one crop they thought the gods were angry with
+them.
+
+Now, with the implements, machinery and knowledge of mechanics of today,
+people have found out that no man can be good enough nor bad enough to
+cause a frost.  After having found out these things are contrary to the
+laws of nature, they began to raise more than one kind of crop.  If the
+frost strikes one they have the other; if it happens to strike all in
+that locality there is a surplus somewhere else, and that surplus is
+distributed by railways and steamers and by the thousand ways that we
+have to distribute these things; and as a consequence the agriculturist
+begins to think and reason, and now for the first time in the history of
+the world the agriculturist begins to stand upon a level with the
+mechanic and with the man who has confidence in the laws and facts of
+nature.
+
+I saw there their musical instruments, from the tomtom (that is a hoop
+with two strings of rawhide drawn across it) to the instruments we have
+that make the common air blossom with melody. I saw their ideas on
+ornaments, from a string of the claws of a wild beast that once
+ornamented the dusky bosom of some savage belle, to the rubies and
+sapphires and diamonds with which civilization today is familiar.  I saw
+the books, written upon the shoulder-blades of sheep, upon the bark of
+trees, down to the illustrated volumes that are now in the libraries of
+the world. I saw their ideas of paintings, from the rude daubs of yellow
+mud, to the grand pictures we see in the art galleries of today. I saw
+their ideas of sculpture, from a monster god with several legs, a good
+many noses, a great many eyes, and one little, contemptible, brainless
+head, to the sculpture that we have, where the marble is clothed with
+such personality that it seems almost impudence to touch it without an
+introduction.  I saw all these things, and how men had gradually
+improved through the generations that are dead.  And I saw at the same
+time a row of men's skulls--skulls from the Bushmen of Australia, skulls
+from the center of Africa, skulls from the farthest islands of the
+Pacific, skulls from this country--from the aborigines of America,
+skulls of the Aztecs, up to the best skulls, or many of the best of the
+last generation; and I noticed there was the same difference between
+the skulls as between the products of the skulls, the same between that
+skull and that, as between the dugout and the man-of-war, as between the
+dugout and the steamship, as between the tomtom and an opera of Verdi,
+as between those ancient agricultural implements and ours, as between
+that yellow daub and that landscape, as between that stone god and a
+statue of today; and I said to myself, "This is a question of
+intellectual development; this is a question of brain."  The man has
+advanced just in proportion as he has mingled his thoughts with his
+labor, and just in proportion that his brain has gotten into partnership
+with his hand.  Man has advanced just as he has developed
+intellectually, and no other way.  That skull was a low den in which
+crawled and groped the meaner and baser instincts of mankind, and this
+was a temple in which dwelt love, liberty and joy.
+
+Why is it that we have advanced in the arts?  It is because every
+incentive has been held out to the world; because we want better clubs
+or better cannons with which to kill our fellow Christians; we want
+better music, we want better houses, and any man who will invent them,
+and any man who will give them to us we will clothe him in gold and
+glory; we will crown him with honor.  That gentleman in his dugout not
+only had his ideas of mechanics, but he was a politician.  His idea of
+politics was, "Might makes right;" and it will take thousands of years
+before the world will be willing to say that, "Right makes might."
+That was his idea of politics, and he had another idea--that all power
+came from the clouds, and that every armed thief that lived upon the
+honest labor of mankind had had poured out upon his head the divine oil
+of authority.  He didn't believe the power to govern came from the
+people; he did not believe that the great mass of people had any right
+whatever, or that the great mass of people could be allowed the liberty
+of thought--and we have thousands of such today.
+
+They say thought is dangerous--don't investigate;*  don't inquire; just
+believe; shut your eyes, and then you are safe. You trust not hear this
+man or that man or some other man, or our dear doctrines will be
+overturned, and we have nobody on our side except a large majority; we
+have nobody on our side except the wealth and respectability of the
+world; we have nobody on our side except the infinite God, and we are
+afraid that one man, in one or two hours, will beat the whole party.
+
+[* There is no method of reasoning more common, or more blamable, than
+in philosophical disputes, to endeavor the refutation of any hypothesis,
+by a pretense of its dangerous consequences to religion and morality."
+--David Hume]
+
+This man in the dugout also had his ideas of religion--that fellow was
+orthodox, and any man who differed with him he called an infidel, an
+atheist, an outcast, and warned everybody against him.  He had his
+religion--he believed in hell; he was glad of it; he enjoyed it; it
+was a great source of comfort to him to think when he didn't like people
+that he would have the pleasure of looking over and seeing them squirm
+upon the gridiron.  When any man said he didn't believe there was a hell
+this gentleman got up in his pulpit and called him a hyena.  That fellow
+believed in a devil too; that lowest skull was a devil factory--he
+believed in him.  He believed he had a long tail adorned with a fiery
+dart; he believed he had wings like a bat, and had a pleasant habit of
+breathing sulphur; and he believed he had a cloven foot--such as most
+of your clergymen think I am blessed with myself.  They are shepherds of
+the sheep.  The people are the sheep--that is all they are, they have to
+be watched and guarded by these shepherds and protected from the wolf
+who wants to reason with them.  That is the doctrine.  Now, all I claim
+is the same right to improve on that gentleman's politics, as on the
+dug-out, and the same right to improve upon his religion as upon his
+plough, or the musical instrument known as the tomtom--that is all.
+
+Now, suppose the king and priest, if there was one, and there probably
+was one, as the farther you go back the more ignorant you find mankind
+and the thicker you find these gentlemen--suppose the king and priest
+had said:  "That boat is the best boat that ever can be built; we got
+the model of that from Neptune, the god of the seas, and I guess the god
+of the water knows how to build a boat, and any man that says he can
+improve it by putting a stick in the middle with a rag on the end of it,
+and has any talk about the wind blowing this way, and that, he is a
+heretic--he is a blasphemer."  Honor bright, what, in your judgment,
+would have been the effect upon the circumnavigation of the globe?  I
+think we would have been on the other side yet. Suppose the king and
+priests had said:  "That plow is the best that ever can be invented;
+the model of that was given to a pious farmer in a holy dream, and that
+twisted straw is the ne plus ultra of all twisted things, and any man
+who says he can out-twist it, we will twist him."  Suppose the king and
+priests had said:  "That tomtom is the finest instrument of music in the
+world--that is the kind of music found in heaven.  An angel sat upon the
+edge of a glorified cloud playing upon that tomtom and became so
+entranced with the music that in a kind of ecstasy she dropped it and
+that is how we got it, and any man who talks about putting any
+improvement on that, he is not fit to live."  Let me ask you--do you
+believe if that had been done that the human ears ever would have been
+enriched with the divine symphonies of Beethoven?
+
+All I claim is the same right to improve upon this barbarian's ideas of
+politics and religion as upon everything else, and whether it is an
+improvement or not, I have a right to suggest it--that is my doctrine.
+They say to me, "God will punish you forever, if you do these things."
+Very well.  I will settle with Him.  I had rather settle with Him than
+any one of His agents.  I do not like them very well.  In theology I am
+a granger--I do not believe in middle-men, what little business I have
+with heaven I will attend to thyself.  Our fathers thought, just as many
+now think, that you could force men to think your way and if they failed
+to do it by reason, they tried it another way.  I used to read about it
+when I was a boy--it did not seem to me that these things were true; it
+did not seem to me that there ever was such heartless bigotry in the
+heart of man,  but there was and is tonight.  I used to read about it--
+I did not appreciate it.  I never appreciated it until I saw the
+arguments of those gentlemen.  They used to use just such arguments as
+that man in the dug-out would have used to the next man ahead of him.
+This low, miserable skull--this next man was a little higher, and this
+fellow behind called him a heretic, and the next was still a little
+higher, and he was called an infidel.  And, so it went on through the
+whole row--always calling the man who was ahead an infidel and a
+heretic.  No man was ever called so who was behind the army of progress.
+It has always been the man ahead that has been called the heretic.
+Heresy is the last and best thought always.  Heresy extends the
+hospitality of the brain to a new idea; that is what the rotting says
+to the growing; that is what the dweller in the swamp says to the man on
+the sun-lit hill; that is what the man in the darkness cries out to the
+grand man upon whose forehead is shining the dawn of a grander day;
+that is what the coffin says to the cradle.  Orthodoxy is a kind of
+shroud, and heresy is a banner--orthodoxy is a frog and heresy a star
+shining forever above the cradle of truth.  I do not mean simply in
+religion, I mean in everything, and the idea I wish to impress upon you
+is that you should keep your minds open to all the influences of nature;
+you should keep your minds open to reason.  Hear what a man has to say,
+and do not let the turtle-shell of bigotry grow above your brain.  Give
+everybody a chance and an opportunity; that is all.
+
+I saw the arguments that those gentlemen have used on each other through
+all the ages.  I saw a little bit of thumbscrew not more than so long
+(illustrating), and attached to each end was a screw, and the inner
+surface vas trimmed with little protuberances to prevent their slipping;
+and when some man doubted--when a man had an idea--then those that did
+not have an idea put the thumbscrew upon him who did.  He had doubted
+something.  For instance, they told him, "Christ says you must love your
+enemies;" he says, "I do not know about that;" then they said, "We will
+show you!"  "Do unto others as you would be done by," they said is the
+doctrine.  He doubted.  "We will show you that it is!"  So they put this
+screw on; and in the name of universal love and universal forgiveness--
+"pray for those who despitefully use you"--they began screwing these
+pieces of iron into him--always done in the name of religion--always.
+It never was done in the name of reason, never was done in the name of
+science--never.  No man was ever persecuted in defense of a truth--
+never.  No man was ever persecuted except in defense of a lie--never.
+
+This man had fallen out with them about something; he did not
+understand it as they did.  For instance he said, "I do not believe
+there ever was a man whose strength was in his hair." They said:  "You
+don't?  We'll show you!"  "I do not believe," he says, "that a fish ever
+swallowed a man to save his life."  "You don't?  Well, we'll show you!"
+And so they put this on, and generally the man would recant and say,
+"Well, I'll take it back."  Well I think I should.  Such men are not
+worth dying for. The idea of dying for a man that would tear the flesh
+of another on account of an honest difference of opinion--such a man is
+not worth dying for; he is not worth living for, and if I was in a
+position that I could not send a bullet through his brain, I would
+recant.  I would say:  "You write it down and I will sign it--I will
+admit that there is one God, or a million--suit yourself; one hell or a
+billion; you just write it--only stop this screw.  You are not worth
+suffering for, you are not worth dying for and I am never going to take
+the part of any Lord that won't take my part--you just write it down and
+I'll sign it."
+
+But there was now and then a man who would not do that.  He said, "No, I
+believe I am right, and I will die for it," and I suppose we owe what
+little progress we have made to a few men in all ages of the world who
+really stood by their convictions.  The men who stood by the truth and
+the men who stood by a fact, they are the men that have helped raise
+this world, and in every age there has been some sublime and tender soul
+who was true to his convictions, and who really lived to make men
+better.  In every age some men carried the torch of progress and handed
+it to some other, and it has been carried through all the dark ages of
+barbarism, and had it not been for such men we would have been naked and
+uncivilized tonight, with pictures of wild beasts tattooed on our skins,
+dancing around some dried snake fetish.
+
+When a man would not recant, these men, in the name of the love of the
+Lord, screwed them down to the last thread of agony and threw them into
+some dungeon, where, in the throbbing silence of darkness, they suffered
+the pangs of the fabled damned; and this was done in the name of
+civilization, love and order, and in the name of the most merciful
+Christ.  There are no thumbscrews now; they are rusting away; but every
+man in this town who is not willing that another shall do his own
+thinking and will try to prevent it, has in him the same hellish spirit
+that made and used that very instrument of torture, and the only reason
+he does not use it today is because he cannot.  The reason that I speak
+here tonight is because they cannot help it.
+
+I saw at the same time a beautiful little instrument for the propagation
+of kindness, called "The Scavenger's Daughter."  (The lecturer here
+described and illustrated construction of the instrument.)  The victim
+would be thrown upon that instrument and the strain upon the muscles was
+such that insanity would sometimes come to his relief.  See what we owe
+to the civilizing influence of the gentlemen who have made a certain
+idea in metaphysics necessary to salvation--see what we owe to them.
+
+I saw a collar of torture which they put about the neck of their victim,
+and inside of that there were a hundred points; so that the victim
+could not stir without the skin being punctured with these points, and
+after a little while the throat would swell and suffocation would end
+the agony, and they would have that done in the presence of his wife and
+weeping children.  That was all done so that finally everybody would
+love everybody else as his brother.  I saw a rack.  Imagine a wagon with
+a windlass on each end, and each windlass armed with leather bands, and
+a ratchet that prevented slipping.  The victim was placed upon this.
+
+Maybe he had denied something that some idiot said was true; may be he
+had a discussion--a division of opinion with a man, like John Calvin.
+John Calvin said Christ was the Eternal Son of God and Michael Servetus
+said that Christ was the son of the Eternal God.  That was the only
+difference of opinion.  Think of it! What an important thing it was!
+How it would have affected the price of food!  "Christ is the Eternal
+Son of God," said one; "No," said the other, "Christ is the Son of
+Eternal God"--that was all, and for that difference of opinion Michael
+Servetus was burned at a slow fire of green wood, and the wind happening
+to blow the flames from him instead of towards him; he was in the most
+terrible agony, writhing for minutes and minutes, and hours and hours,
+and finally he begged and implored those wretches to move him so that
+the wind would blow the flames against him and destroy him without such
+hellish agony, but they were so filled with the doctrine of "love your
+enemies" that they would not do it.  I never will, for my part, depend
+upon any religion that has ever shed a drop of human blood.*
+
+[* Speaking of the Inquisition, Prof. Draper says:  "With such savage
+alacrity did it carry out its object of protecting the interests of
+religion, that between 1480 and 1808 it had punished 340,000 persons,
+and of these nearly 32,000 had been burnt!"--Conflict between Religion
+and Science]
+
+Upon this rack I have described, this victim was placed, and those
+chains were attached to his ankles and then to his waist, and clergymen
+--good men! pious men! men that were shocked at the immorality of their
+day!  They talked about playing cards and the horrible crime of dancing!
+Oh, how such things shocked them; men going to theaters and seeing a
+play written by the grandest genius the world ever has produced.  How it
+shocked their sublime and tender souls!  But then commenced turning this
+machine, and they kept on turning until the ankles, knees, hips, elbows,
+shoulders and wrists were all dislocated and the victim was red with the
+sweat of agony, and they had standing by a physician to feel the pulse,
+so that the last faint flutter of life would not leave his veins.  Did
+they wish to save his life?  Yes.  In mercy?  No!  Simply that they
+might have the pleasure of racking him once again.  That is the spirit,
+and it is a spirit born of the doctrine that there is upon the throne of
+the universe a being who will eternally damn his children, and they
+said:  "If God is going to have the supreme happiness of burning them
+forever, certainly he ought not to begrudge to us the joy of burning
+them for an hour or two."  That was their doctrine, and when I read
+these things it seems to me that I have suffered them myself.  When I
+look upon those instruments I look upon them as though I had suffered
+all these tortures myself.  It seems to me as though I had stood upon
+the shore an exile and looking with tear-filled eyes toward home and
+native land.  It seems as though my nails had been plucked out and into
+bleeding flesh needles had been thrust; as though my eyelids had been
+torn away and I had been set out in the ardent rays of the sun; as
+though I had been set out upon the sands of the sea and drowned by the
+inexorable tide; as though I had been in the dungeon waiting for the
+coming footsteps of relief; as though I had been upon the scaffold arid
+seen the glittering axe falling upon me; and seen bending above me the
+white faces of hypocrite priests; as though I had been taken from my
+wife and children to the public square, where faggots had been piled
+around me and the flames had climbed around my limbs and scorched my
+eyes to blindness; as though my ashes had been scattered by all the
+hands of hatred; and I feel like saying, that while I live I will do
+what little I can to preserve and augment the rights of men, women arid
+children; while I live I will do a little something so that they who
+come after me shall have the right to think and express that thought.
+The trouble is those who oppose us pretend they are better than we are.
+They are more mortal, they are kinder, they are more generous.  I deny
+it.  They are not.  And if they are the ones that are to be saved in
+another world, and if those who simply think they are honest, and
+express that honest thought, are to be damned, there will be but little
+originality, to say the least of it, in heaven.  They say they are
+better than we are--and to show you how much better they are I have got
+at home copies of some letters that passed between gentlemen high in the
+church several hundred years ago, and the question was this:  "Ought
+we to cut out the tongues of blasphemers before we burn them?" And they
+finally decided that they ought to do so, and I will tell you the reason
+they gave:  They said if they were not cut out that while they were
+being burned, they might, by their heresies, scandalize the gentleman
+who would bring the wood; they were too good to hear these things and
+they might be injured; and the same idea appears to prevail in this
+world now that they are too good and they must not be shocked.
+
+They say to us:  "You must not shock us, and when you say there is no
+hell we are shocked.  You must not say that."  When I go to church and
+they tell me there is a hell I must not get shocked; and if they tell me
+that there is not only a hell, but that I am going to it, I must not be
+shocked.  Even if they take the next step and act as though they would
+be glad to see me there, still I must not be shocked.  I will agree to
+keep from being shocked as long as anybody in the world--they can say
+what they please; I will not get shocked, but let me say it.  You send
+missionaries to Turkey and tell them that the Koran is a lie.  You shock
+them. You tell them that Mahomet was not a prophet.  You shock them. It
+is too bad to shock them.  You go to India and you tell them that Vishnu
+was nothing, Puranas was nothing, that Buddha was nobody, and your
+Brahma, he is nothing.  Why do you shock these people?  You should not
+do that; you ought not to hurt their feelings.  I tell you no man on
+earth has a right to be shocked at the expression of an honest opinion
+when it is kindly done, and I don't believe there is any God in the
+universe who has put a curtain over the fact and made it a crime for the
+honest hand of investigation to endeavor to draw that curtain.
+
+This world has not been fit to live in fifty years.  There is no liberty
+in it--very little.  Why, it is only a few years ago that all the
+Christian nations were engaged in the slave trade. It was not until
+1808, that England abolished the slave trade, and up to that time her
+priests in her churches, and her judges on her benches, owned stock in
+slave ships, and luxuriated on the profits of piracy and murder; and
+when a man stood up and denounced it, they mobbed him as though he had
+been a common burglar or a horse thief.  Think of it!  It was not until
+the 28th day of August, 1833, that England abolished slavery in her
+colonies; and it was not until the first day of January, 1863, that
+Abraham Lincoln, by direction of the entire North, wiped that infamy out
+of this country; and I never speak of Abraham Lincoln but I want to say
+that he was, in my judgment, in many respects the grandest man ever
+president of the United States.  I say that upon his tomb there ought to
+be this line--and I know of no other man deserving it so well as he:
+"Here lies one who, having been clothed with almost absolute power,
+never abused it except on the side of mercy."
+
+Just think of it!  Our churches and best people, as they call
+themselves, defending the institution of slavery.  When I was a little
+boy I used to see steamers go down the Mississippi river with hundreds
+of men and women chained hand to hand, and even children, and men
+standing about them with whips in their hands and pistols in their
+pockets in the name of liberty, in the name of civilization and in the
+name of religion!  I used to hear them preach to these slaves in the
+South and the only text they ever took was  "Servants, be obedient unto
+your masters."  That was the salutation of the most merciful God to a
+man whose back was bleeding, that was the salutation of the most
+merciful God to the slave mother bending over an empty cradle, to the
+woman from whose breast a child had been stolen--"Servants, be
+obedient unto you masters."  That was what they said to a man running
+for his life and for his liberty through tangled swamps and listening to
+the baying of bloodhounds, and when he listened for them the voice came
+from heaven:  "Servants, be obedient unto your masters."
+
+That is civilization.  Think what slaves we have been!  Think how we
+have crouched and cringed before wealth even!  How they used to cringe
+in old times before a man who was rich--there are so many of them gone
+into bankruptcy lately that we are losing a little of our fear.
+
+We used to worship the golden calf, and the worst you can say of us now,
+is, we worship the gold of the calf, and even the calves are beginning
+to see this distinction.  We used to go down on our knees to every man
+that held office; now he must fill it if he wishes any respect.  We
+care nothing for the rich, except what will they do with their money?
+Do they benefit mankind?  That is the question.  You say this man holds
+an office.  How does he fill it?--that is the question.  And there is
+rapidly growing up in the world an aristocracy of heart and brain--the
+only aristocracy that has a right to exist.  We are getting free.  We
+are thinking in every direction.  We are investigating with the
+microscope and the telescope.  We are digging into the earth and finding
+souvenirs of all the ages.  We are finding out something about the laws
+of health and disease.  We are adding years to the span of human life
+and we are making the world fit to live in. That is what we are doing,
+and every man that has an honest thought and expresses it, helps, and
+every man that tries to keep honest thought from being expressed is an
+obstruction and a hindrance.
+
+Now if men have been slaves what shall we say of women?  They have been
+the slaves of slaves.  The meaner a man is, the better he thinks he is
+than a woman.  As a rule, you take an ignorant, brutal man--don't talk
+to him about a woman governing him, he don't believe it--not he; and
+nearly every religion of this world has been gallant enough to account
+for all the trouble and misfortune we have had by the crime of woman.
+
+Even if it is true, I do not care; I had rather live in a world full of
+trouble with the woman I love than in heaven with nobody but men.
+Nearly every religion accounts for all the trouble we have ever had by
+the crime of woman.  I recollect one book where I read an account of
+what is called the creation--I am not giving the exact words, I will
+give the substance of it.  The supreme being thought best to make a
+world and one man--never thought about making a woman at that time;
+making a woman was a second thought, and I am free to admit that second
+thoughts as a rule are best.  He made this world and one man, and put
+this man in a park, or garden, or public square, or whatever you might
+call it, to dress and keep it.  The man had nothing to do.  He moped
+around there as though he was waiting for a train.  And the supreme
+being noticed that he got lonesome--I am glad He did! It occurred to Him
+that he would make a companion, and having made the world and one man
+out of nothing, and having used up all the nothing, He had to take a
+part of the man to start the woman with--I am not giving the exact
+language, neither do I say this story is true.  I do not know.  I would
+not want to deceive anybody.
+
+So sleep fell upon this man, and they took from his side a rib--the
+French would call it a cutlet.  And out of that they made a woman, and
+taking into consideration the amount and quality of the raw material
+used, I look upon it as the most successful job ever accomplished in
+this world.  I am giving just a rough outline of this story.  After He
+got the woman done she was brought to the man--not to see how she liked
+him, but to see how he liked her.  He liked her and they went to keeping
+house. Before she was made there was really nothing to do; there was no
+news, no politics, no religion, not even civil service reform. And as
+the devil had not yet put in an appearance, there was no chance to
+conciliate him.  They started in the housekeeping business, and they
+were told they could do anything they liked except eat an apple.  Of
+course they ate it.  I would have done it myself I know.  I am satisfied
+I would have had an apple off that tree, if I had been there, in fifteen
+minutes.  They were caught at it, and they were turned out, and there
+was an extra police force put on to keep them from coming in again.  And
+then measles, and whooping-cough, mumps, etc., started in the race of
+man, roses began to have thorns and snakes began to have teeth, and
+people began to fight about religion and politics, and they have been
+fighting and scratching each other's eyes out from that day to this.
+
+I read in another book an account of the same transaction.  They tell us
+the Supreme Brahma made up his mind to make a man, a woman, and a world;
+and that he put this man and woman in the island of Ceylon.  According
+to the description, it was the most beautiful isle that ever existed;
+it beggared the description of a Chicago land agent completely.  It was
+delightful; the branches of the trees were so arranged that when the
+wind swept through them they seemed like a thousand aeolian harps, and
+the man was named Adami, and the Woman's name was Heva.  This book was
+written about three or four thousand years before the other one, and all
+the commentators in this country agree that the story that was written
+first was copied from the one that was written last.  I hope you will
+not let a matter of three or four thousand years interfere with your
+ideas on the subject.  The Supreme Brahma said:  "Let them have a period
+of courtship, because it is my desire that true love always should
+precede marriage"--and that was so much better than lugging her up to
+him and saying, "Do you like her?" that upon my word I said when I read
+it, "If either one of these stories turn out to be true, I hope it will
+be this one."
+
+They had a courtship in the starlight and moonlight, and perfume-laden
+air, with the nightingale singing his song of joy, and they got in love.
+There was nobody to bother them, no prospective fathers or mothers-in-
+law, no gossiping neighbors, nobody to say "Young man, how do you
+propose to support her"--they got in love and they were married, and
+they started keeping house, and the Supreme Brahma said to them:  "You
+must not leave this island." After awhile the man got uneasy--wanted to
+go west.  He went to the western extremity of the island, and there the
+devil got up, and when he looked over on the mainland he saw such hills
+and valleys and torrents, and such mountains crowned with snow; such
+cataracts, robed in glory, that he went right back to Heva.  Says he:
+"Come over here; it is a thousand times better;"  says he: "let us
+emigrate."  She said, like another woman:  "No, let well enough alone;
+we have no rent to pay, and no taxes; we are doing very well now, let
+us stay where we are."  But he insisted, and so she went with him, and
+when he got to this western extremity, where there was a little neck of
+land leading to this better land, he took her on his back and walked
+over, and the moment he got over he heard a crash, and he looked back
+and this narrow neck of land had sunk into the sea, leaving here and
+there a rock (and those rocks are called even unto this day the
+footsteps of Adami), and when he looked back this beautiful mirage had
+disappeared.
+
+Instead of verdure and flowers there was naught but rocks and sand, and
+then he heard the voice of the Supreme Brahma crying out cursing them
+both to the lowest hell, and then it was that Adami said:  "Curse me, if
+you choose, but not her; it was not her fault, it was mine; curse me."
+That is the kind of a man to start a world with.  And the Supreme Brahma
+said "I will spare her, but I will not spare you."  Then she spoke, out
+of a breast so full of affection that she has left a legacy of love to
+all her daughters:  "If thou wilt not spare him, spare neither me,
+because I love him."  Then the Supreme Brahma said--and I have liked him
+ever since--"I will spare both, and watch over you and your children
+forever."  Now, really this story appears to me better than the other
+one.  It is loftier; there is more in it than I can admire.  In order
+to show you that humanity does not belong to any particular nation, and
+that there are great and tender souls everywhere, let me tell you a
+little more that is in this book.  "Blessed is that man, and beloved of
+all the gods who is afraid of no man, and of whom no man is afraid."
+Think of that kind of character!  Another:  "Man is strength, woman is
+beauty; man is courage, woman is love; and where the one man loves the
+one woman the very angels leave heaven and come and sit in that house
+and sing for joy."  I think that is nearly equal to this:  "If you do
+not want your wife, give her a writing of divorcement," and make the
+mother of your children a houseless wanderer and a vagrant--nearly as
+good as that.
+
+I believe that marriage should be a perfect partnership; that woman
+should have all the rights that man has, and one more--the right to be
+protected.  I believe in marriage.  It took hundreds and thousands of
+years for woman to get from a state of abject slavery up to the height
+even of marriage.  I have not the slightest respect for the ideas of
+those short-haired women and long-haired men who denounce the
+institution of the family, who denounce the institution of marriage;
+but I hold in greater contempt the husband who would enslave his wife.
+I hold in greater contempt the man who is anything in his family except 
+love and tenderness, and kindness.  I say it took hundreds of years
+for woman to come from a state of slavery to marriage; and ladies, the
+chains that are upon your necks and the bracelets that are put upon your
+arms were iron, and they have been changed by the touch of the wand of
+civilization to shining, glittering gold.  Woman came from a condition
+of abject slavery and thousands and thousands of them are in that
+condition now.  I believe marriage should be a perfect and equal
+partnership.  I do not like a man who thinks he is boss.  That fellow in
+the dug-out was always talking about being boss.  I do not like a man
+who thinks he is the head of the family.  I do not like a man who thinks
+he has got authority and that the woman belongs to him--that wants for
+his wife a slave.  I would not have a slave for my wife.  I would not
+want the love of a woman that is not great enough, grand enough, and
+splendid enough to be free.  I will never give to any woman my heart
+upon whom I afterwards would put chains.
+
+Do you know sometimes I think generosity is about the only virtue there
+is.  How I do hate a man that has to be begged and importuned every
+minute for a few cents by his wife.  "Give me a dollar?"  "What did you
+do with that fifty cents I gave you last Christmas?"  If you make your
+wife a perpetual beggar, what kind of children do you expect to raise
+with a beggar for their mother?  If you want great children, if you want
+to people this world with great and grand men and women they must be
+born of love and liberty.  I have known men that would trust a woman
+with their heart--if you call that thing which pushes their blood around
+a heart; and with their honor--if you call that fear, of getting into
+the penitentiary, honor; I have known men that would trust that heart
+and that honor with a woman, but not their pocket-book--not a dollar
+bill.  When I see a man of that kind, I think they know better than I do
+which of these three articles is the most valuable.  I believe if you
+have got a dollar in the world and you have got to spend it, spend it
+like a man; spend it like a king, like a prince.  If you have to spend
+it, spend it as though it was a dried leaf, and you were the owner of
+unbounded forests.  I had rather be a beggar and spend my last dollar
+like a king than be a king and spend my money like a beggar.  What is it
+worth compared with the love of a splendid woman?
+
+People tell me that is very good doctrine for rich folks, but it won't
+do for poor folks.  I tell you that there is more love in the huts and
+homes of the poor, than in the mansions of the rich, and the meanest but
+with love in it is a palace fit for the gods, and a palace without that,
+is a den only fit for wild beasts. The man who has the love of one
+splendid woman is a rich man. Joy is wealth, and love is the legal
+tender of the soul!  Love is the only thing that will pay ten percent to
+borrower and lender both; and if some men were as ashamed of appearing
+cross in public as they are of appearing tender at home, this world
+would be infinitely better.  I think you can make your home a heaven if
+you want to--you can make up your minds to that.  When a man comes home
+let him come home like a ray of light in the night bursting through the
+doors and illuminating the darkness.  What right has a man to
+assassinate joy, and murder happiness in the sanctuary of love--to be a
+cross man, a peevish man--is that the way he courted?  Was there always
+something ailing him?  Was he too nervous to hear her speak?  When I see
+a man of that kind I am always sorry that doctors know so much about
+preserving life as they do.
+
+It is not necessary to be rich, nor powerful, nor great to be a success;
+and neither is it necessary to have your name between the putrid lips of
+rumor to be great.  We have had a false standard of success.  In the
+years when I was a little boy we read in our books that no fellow was a
+success that did not make a fortune or get a big office, and he
+generally was a man that slept about three hours a night.  They never
+put down in the books the names of those gentlemen that succeeded in
+life that slept all they wanted to; and we all thought that we could
+not sleep to exceed three or four hours if we ever expected to be
+anything in this world.  We have had a wrong standard.  The happy man is
+the successful man; and the man who makes somebody else happy, is a
+happy man.  The man that has gained the love of one good, splendid, pure
+woman, his life has been a success, no matter if he dies in the ditch;
+and if he gets to be a crowned monarch of the world, and never had the
+love of one splendid heart, his life has been an ashen vapor.
+
+A little while ago I stood by the tomb of the first Napoleon, a
+magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a dead deity, and here
+was a great circle, and in the bottom there, in a sarcophagus, rested at
+last the ashes of that restless man.  I looked at that tomb, and I
+thought about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world.
+As I looked, in imagination I could see him walking up and down the
+banks of the Seine contemplating suicide.  I could see him at Toulon; I
+could see him at Paris, putting down the mob; I could see him at the
+head of the army of Italy; I could see him crossing the bridge of Lodi,
+with the tri-color in his hand; I saw him in Egypt, fighting battles
+under the shadow of the Pyramids; I saw him returning; I saw him
+conquer the Alps, and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of
+Italy; I saw him at Marengo, I saw him at Austerlitz; I saw him in
+Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the blast smote his legions,
+when death rode the icy winds of winter.  I saw him at Leipsic; hurled
+back upon Paris, banished; and I saw him escape from Elba and retake an
+empire by the force of his genius.  I saw him at the field of Waterloo,
+where fate and chance combined to wreck the fortune of their former
+king.  I saw him at St. Helena, with his hands behind his back, gazing
+out upon the sad and solemn sea, and I thought of all the widows he had
+made, of all the orphans, of all the tears that had been shed for his
+glory; and I thought of the woman, the only woman who ever loved him,
+pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition and I said to myself,
+as I gazed, "I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden
+shoes, and lived in a little hut but with a vine running over the door
+and the purple grapes growing red in the amorous kisses of the autumn
+sun--I would rather have been that poor French peasant, to sit in my
+door, with my wife knitting by my side and my children upon my knees
+with their arms around my neck--I would rather have lived and died
+unnoticed and unknown except by those who loved me, and gone down to the
+voiceless silence of the dreamless dust--I would rather have been that
+French peasant than to have been that imperial impersonation of force
+and murder who covered Europe with blood and tears."
+
+I tell you I had rather make somebody happy, I would rather have the
+love of somebody; I would rather go to the forest, far away, and build
+me a little cabin--build it myself and daub it with mud, and live there
+with my wife and children; I had rather go there and live by myself--
+our little family--and have a little path that led down to the spring,
+where the water bubbled out day and night like a little poem from the
+heart of the earth; a little hut with some hollyhocks at the corner,
+with their bannered bosoms open to the sun, and with the thrush in the
+air, like a song of joy in the morning; I would rather live there and
+have some lattice work across the window, so that the sunlight would
+fall checkered on the baby in the cradle; I would rather live there and
+have my soul erect and free, than to live in a palace of gold and wear
+the crown of imperial power and know that my soul was slimy with
+hypocrisy.  It is not necessary to be rich and great and powerful in
+order to be happy.  If you will treat your wife like a splendid flower,
+she will fill your life with a perfume and with joy.
+
+I believe in the democracy of the fireside, I believe in the republicism
+of home, in the equality of man and woman, in the equality of husband
+and wife, and for this I am denounced by the sentinels upon the walls of
+Zion.
+
+They say there must be a head to the family.  I say no--equal rights for
+man and wife, and where there is really love there is liberty, and where
+the idea of authority comes in you will find that love has spread its
+pinions and flown forever.  It is a splendid thing for me to think that
+when a woman really loves a man he never grows old in her eyes; she
+always sees the gallant gentleman that won her hand and heart; and when
+a man really and truly loves a woman she does not grow old to him;
+through the wrinkles of years he sees the face he loved and won.  That
+is all there is in this world--all the rest amounts to nothing--it is a
+tale told by an idiot signifying nothing.  You take from the family
+love, and nothing is left.  There must be equality; there must be no
+master; there must be no servant.  There must be equality and kindness.
+The man should be infinitely tender towards the woman--and why?--because
+she cannot go at hard work, she cannot make her own living.  She has
+squandered her wealth of beauty and youth upon him.
+
+Now, if women have been slaves, what do you say about children? Children
+have been the slaves of the slaves.  I know children that turn pale with
+fright when they hear their mother's voice; children of property;
+children of crime, children of sub-cellars; children of the narrow
+streets, the flotsam and jetsam upon the wild, rude sea of life--my
+heart goes out to them one and all; I say they have all the rights we
+have and one more--the right to be protected.  I believe in governing
+children by kindness, by love, by tenderness.  If a child commits a
+fault take it in your arms, let your heart beat against its heart; don't
+go and talk to it about hell and the bankruptcy of the universe.  If
+your child tells a lie--what of it?  Be honest with the child, tell him
+you have told hundreds of them yourself. Then your child will not be
+afraid to tell you when it commits a fault; it will not regard you as
+old perfection, until it gets a few years older, and finds you are an
+old hypocrite--and you cannot put a thick enough veil upon you but what
+the eyes of childhood will peep through it; they will see; they will
+find out; and when your child tells a lie, examine yourself, and in all
+probability you will find you have been a tyrant.  A tyrant father will
+have liars for his children.  A liar is born of tyranny on the one hand
+and fear on the other.  Truth comes from the lips of courage.  It is
+born in confidence and honor.  If you want a child to tell you the truth
+you want to be a faithful man yourself.  You go at your little child,
+five or six years old, with a stick in your hand--what is he to do?
+Tell the truth? Then he will get whipped.  What is he to do?  I thank
+Mother Nature for putting ingenuity in the mind of a little child so
+that when it is attacked by a brutal parent it throws up a little
+breastwork in the shape of a lie.  That being done by nations it is
+called strategy, and many a general wears his honors for having
+practiced it; and will you deny it to little children to protect
+themselves from brutal parents.  Supposing a man as much larger than we
+are, larger than child would come at us with a liberty-pole in his hand
+and would shout in tones of thunder, "Who broke that plate?"  Every one
+of us--including myself--would just stand right up and swear either that
+we never saw that plate, or that it was cracked when we got it.  Give a
+child a chance; there is no other way to have children tell the truth--
+tell the truth to them--keep your contracts with your children the same
+as you would to your banker.
+
+I was up at Grand Rapids, Michigan, the other day.  There was a
+gentleman there, and his wife, who had promised to take their little boy
+for a ride every night for ten days, or every day for ten days, but they
+did not do it.  They slipped out to the barn and they went without him.
+The day before I was there they played the same game on him again.  He
+is a nice little boy, an American boy, a boy with brains, one of those
+boys that don't take the hatchet-story as a fact; he had his own ideas.
+They fooled him again, and they came around the corner as big as life,
+man and wife.  The little fellow was standing on the door step with his
+nurse, and he looked at them, and he made this remark: "There go the two
+damndest liars in Grand Rapids."  I merely tell you this story to show
+you that children have level heads; they understand this business.
+
+Teach your children to tell you the truth--tell them the truth. If there
+is one here that ever intends to whip his child I have a favor to ask.
+Have your photograph taken when you are in the act, with your red and
+vulgar face, your brow corrugated, pretending you would rather be
+whipped yourself.  Have the child's photograph taken too, with his eyes
+streaming with tears, and his chin dimpled with fear, as a little sheet
+of water struck by a sudden cold wind; and if your child should die I
+cannot think of a sweeter way to spend an afternoon than to go to the
+graveyard in the autumn, when the maples are clad in pink and gold, when
+the little scarlet runners come like poems out of the breast of the
+earth--go there and sit down and look at that photograph and think of
+the flesh, now dust, and how you caned it to writhe in pain and agony.
+
+I will tell you what I am doing; I am doing what little I can to save
+the flesh of children.  You have no right to whip them.  It is not the
+way; and yet some Christians drive their children from their doors if
+they do wrong, especially if it is a sweet, tender girl--I believe there
+is no instance on record of any veal being given for the return of a
+girl--some Christians drive them from their doors and then go down upon
+their knees and ask God to take care of their children!  I will never
+ask God to take care of my children unless I am doing my level best in
+that same direction.  Some Christians act as though they thought when
+the Lord said, "Suffer little children to come unto me" that he had a
+raw-hide under His mantle--they act as if they thought so.  That is all
+wrong.  I tell yon my children this:  Go where you may, commit what
+crime you may, fall to what depths of degradation you may, I can never
+shut my arms, my heart or my door to you.  As long as I live you shall
+have one sincere friend; do not be afraid to tell anything wrong you
+have done; ten to one if I have not done the same thing.  I am not
+perfection, and if it is necessary to sin in order to have sympathy, I
+am glad I have committed sin enough to have sympathy.  The sternness of
+perfection I do not want.  I am going to live so that my children can
+come to my grave and truthfully say, "He who sleeps here never gave us
+one moment of pain."  Whether you call that religion or infidelity, suit
+yourselves; that is the way I intend to do it.
+
+When I was a little fellow most everybody thought that some days were
+too sacred for the young ones to enjoy themselves in.  That was the
+general idea.  Sunday used to commence Saturday night at sundown, under
+the old text, "The evening and the morning were the first day."  They
+commenced then, I think, to get a good ready.  When the sun went down
+Saturday night, darkness ten thousand times deeper than ordinary night
+fell upon the house. The boy that looked the sickest was regarded as the
+most pious. You could not crack hickory nuts that night, and if you were
+caught chewing gum it was another evidence of the total depravity of the
+human heart.  It was a very solemn evening.  We would sometimes sing
+"Another Day has Passed."  Everybody looked as though they had the
+dyspepsia--you know lots of people think they are pious, just because
+they are bilious, as Mr. Hood says. It was a solemn night, and the next
+morning the solemnity had increased.  Then we went to church, and the
+minister was in a pulpit about twenty feet high.  If it was in the
+winter there was no fire; it was not thought proper to be comfortable
+while you were thanking the Lord.  The minister commenced at firstly and
+ran up to about twenty-fourthly, and then he divided it up again; and
+then he made some concluding remarks, and then he said lastly, and when
+he said lastly he was about half through.  Then we had what we called
+the catechism--the chief end of man.  I think that has a tendency to
+make a boy kind of bubble up cheerfully.
+
+We sat along on a bench with our feet about eight inches from the floor.
+The minister said, "Boys, do you know what becomes of the wicked?"  We
+all answered as cheerfully as grasshoppers sing in Minnesota, "Yes,
+sir."  "Do you know, boys, that you all ought to go to hell?"  "Yes,
+sir."  As a final test:  "Boys, would you be willing to go to hell if it
+was God's will?"  And every little liar said, "Yes, sir."  The dear old
+minister used to try to impress upon our minds about how long we would
+stay there after we got there, and he used to say in an awful tone of
+voice--do you know I think that is what gives them the bronchitis--that
+tone--you never heard of an auctioneer having it--"Suppose that once in
+a billion of years a bird were to come from some far, distant clime and
+carry off in its bill a grain of sand, when the time came when the last
+animal matter of which this mundane sphere is composed would be carried
+away," said he, "boys, by that time in hell it would not be sun up."  We
+had this sermon in the morning and the same one in the afternoon, only
+he commenced at the other end.  Then we started home full of doctrine--
+we went sadly and sole  solemnly back.  If it was in the summer and the
+weather was good and we had been good boys, they used to take us down to
+the graveyard, and to cheer us up we had a little conversation about
+coffins, and shrouds, and worms, and bones, and dust, and I must admit
+that it did cheer me up when I looked at those sunken graves those
+stones, those names half effaced with the decay of years.  I felt
+cheered, for I said, "This thing can't last always."  Then we had to
+read a good deal.  We were not allowed to read joke books or anything of
+that kind.  We read Baxter's "Call to the Unconverted;"  Fox's "Book of
+Martyrs;" Milton's "History of the Waldenses," and "Jenkins on the
+Atonement."  I generally read Jenkins; and I have often thought that
+the atonement ought to be pretty broad in its provisions to cover the
+case of a man that would write a book like that for a boy.
+
+Then we used to go and see how the sun was getting on--when the sun was
+down the thing was over.  I would sit three or four hours reading
+Jenkins, and then go out and the sun would not have gone down
+perceptibly.  I used to think it stuck there out of simple, pure
+cussedness.  But it went down at last, it had to; that was a part of
+the plan, and as the last rim of light would sink below the horizon, off
+would go our hats and we would give three cheers for liberty once again.
+I do not believe in making Sunday hateful for children.  I believe in
+allowing them to be happy, and no day can be so sacred but that the
+laugh of a child will make it holier still.  There is no God in the
+heavens that is pleased at the sadness of childhood.  You cannot make me
+believe that.  You fill their poor, little, sweet hearts with the
+fearful doctrine of hell.  A little child goes out into the garden;
+there is a tree covered with a glory of blossoms and the child leans
+against it, and there is a little bird on the bough singing and
+swinging, and the waves of melody run out of its tiny throat, thinking
+about four little speckled eggs in the nest, warmed by the breast of its
+mate, and the air is filled with perfume, and that little child leans
+against that tree and thinks about hell and the worm that never dies;
+think of filling the mind of a child with that infamous dogma!
+
+Where was that doctrine of hell born?  Where did it come from? It came
+from that gentleman in the dug-out;  it was a souvenir from the lower
+animal.  I honestly believe that the doctrine of hell was born in the
+glittering eyes of snakes that run in frightful coils watching for their
+prey.  I believe it was born in the yelping and howling and growling and
+snarling of wild beasts, I believe it was born in the grin of hyenas and
+in the malicious chatter of depraved apes, I despise it, I defy it and
+hate it; and when the great ship freighted with the world goes down in
+the night of death, chaos and disaster, I will not be guilty of the
+ineffable meanness of pushing from my breast my wife and children and
+padding off in some orthodox canoe.  I will go down with those I love
+and with those who love me.  I will go down with the ship and with my
+race.  I will go where there is sympathy.  I will go with those I love.
+Nothing can make me believe that there is any being that is going to
+burn and torment and damn his children forever.  No, sir!  You will
+never make me believe you can divide the world up into saints and
+sinners, and that the saints are all going to heaven and the others to
+hell. I don't believe that you can draw the line.
+
+You are sometimes in the presence of a great disaster; there is a fire;
+at the fourth story window you see the white face of a woman with a
+child in her arms, and humanity calls out for somebody to go to the
+rescue through that smoke and flame, maybe death.  They don't call for a
+Baptist, nor a Presbyterian, nor a Methodist, but humanity calls for a
+man.  And all at once, out steps somebody that nobody ever did think was
+much, not a very good man, and yet he springs up the ladder and is lost
+in the smoke, and a moment afterward he emerges, and the cruel serpents
+of fire climb and hiss around his brave form, but he goes on and you see
+that woman and child in his arms, and you see them come down and they
+are handed to the bystanders, and he has fainted, maybe, and the crowd
+stand hushed, as they always do, in the presence of a grand action, and
+a moment after the air is rent with a cheer.  Tell me that that man is
+going to hell, who is willing to lose his life merely to keep a woman
+and child from the torment of a moment's flame--tell me that he is going
+to hell; I tell you that it is a falsehood, and if anybody says so he
+is mistaken.
+
+I have seen upon the battlefield a boy sixteen years of age struck by
+the fragment of a shell and life oozing slowly from the ragged lips of
+his death-wound, and I have heard him and seen him die with a curse upon
+his lips, and he had the face of his mother in his heart.  Do you tell
+me that that boy left that field where he died that the flag of his
+country might wave forever in the air--do you tell me that he went from
+that field, where he lost his life in defense of the liberties of men,
+to an eternal hell? I tell you it is infamous!--and such a doctrine as
+that would tarnish the reputation of a hyena and smirch the fair fame of
+an anaconda.
+
+Let us see whether we are to believe it or not.  We had a war a little
+while ago and there was a draft made, and there was many a good
+Christian hired another fellow to take his place, hired one that was
+wicked, hired a sinner to go to hell in his place for five hundred
+dollars!  While if he was killed he would go to heaven.  Think of that.
+Think of a man willing to do that for five hundred dollars!  I tell you
+when you come right down to it they have got too much heart to believe
+it; they say they do, but they do not appreciate it.  They do not
+believe it.  They would go crazy if they did.  They would go insane.  If
+a woman believed it, looking upon her little dimpled darling in the
+cradle, and said, "Nineteen chances in twenty I am raising fuel for
+hell," she would go crazy.  They don't believe it, and can't believe it.
+The old doctrine was that the angels in heaven would become happier as
+they looked upon those in hell.  That is not the doctrine now; we have
+civilized it.  That is not the doctrine.  What is the doctrine now?  The
+doctrine is that those in heaven can look upon the agonies of those in
+hell, whether it is a fire or whatever it is, without having the
+happiness of those in heaven decreased--that is the doctrine.
+
+That is preached today in every orthodox pulpit in Harrisburg. Let me
+put one case and I will be through with this branch of the subject.  A
+husband and wife love each other.  The husband is a good fellow and the
+wife a splendid woman.  They live and love each other and all at once he
+is taken sick, and they watch day after day and night after night around
+his bedside until their property is wasted and finally she has to go to
+work, and she works through eyes blinded with tears, and the sentinel of
+love watches at the bedside of her prince, and at the least breath or
+the least motion she is awake; and she attends him night after night
+and day after day for years, and finally he dies, and she has him in her
+arms and covers his wasted face with the tears of agony and love.  He is
+a believer and she is not.  He dies, and she buries him and puts flowers
+above his grave, and she goes there in the twilight of evening and she
+takes her children, and tells her little boys and girls through her
+tears how brave and how true and how tender their father was, and
+finally she dies and she goes to hell, because she was not a believer;
+and he goes to the battlements of heaven and looks over and sees the
+woman who loved him with all the wealth of her love, and whose tears
+made his dead face holy and sacred, and he looks upon her in the agonies
+of hell without having his happiness diminished in the least.
+
+With all due respect to everybody, I say, damn any such doctrine as
+that.  It is infamous!  It never ought to be preached; it never ought
+to be believed.  We ought to be true to our hearts, and the best
+revelation of the infinite is the human heart.
+
+Now, I come back to where I started from.  They used to think that a
+certain day was too good for a child to be happy in, so they filled the
+imagination of this child with these horrors of hell.  I said, and I say
+again, no day can be so sacred but that the laugh of a child will make
+the holiest day more sacred still. Strike with hand of fire, oh, weird
+musician, thy harp, strung with Apollo's golden hair; fill the vast
+cathedral aisles with symphonies sweet and dim, deft toucher of the
+organ keys; blow bugler, blow, until thy silver notes do touch the
+skies, with moonlit waves, and charm the lovers wandering on the vine-
+clad hills; but know, your sweetest strains are discords all, compared
+with childhood's happy laugh, the laugh that fills the eyes with light
+and every heart with joy; oh, rippling river of life, thou art the
+blessed boundary-line between the beasts and man, and every wayward wave
+of thine doth drown some fiend of care; oh, laughter, divine daughter
+of joy, make dimples enough in the cheeks of the world to catch and hold
+and glorify all the tears of grief.
+
+I am opposed to any religion that makes them melancholy, that makes
+children sad, and that fills the human heart with shadow.
+
+Give a child a chance.  When I was a boy we always went to bed when we
+were not sleepy, and we always got up when we were sleepy.  Let a child
+commence at which end of the day they please, that is their business;
+they know more about it than all the doctors in the world.  The voice of
+nature when a man is free, is the voice of right, but when his passions
+have been damned up by custom, the moment that is withdrawn, he rushes
+to some excess.  Let him be free from the first.  Let your children grow
+in the free air and they will fill your house with perfume. Do not
+create a child to be a post set in an orthodox row; raise investigators
+and thinkers, not disciples and followers; cultivate reason, not faith;
+cultivate investigation, not superstition; and if you have any doubt
+yourself about a thing being so, tell them about it; don't tell them
+the world was made in six days--if you think six days means six good
+whiles, tell them six good whiles.  If you have any doubts about anybody
+being in a furnace and not being burnt, or even getting uncomfortably
+warm, tell them so--be honest about it.  If you look upon the jaw-bone
+of a donkey as not a good weapon, say so.  Give a child a chance.  If
+you think a man never went to sea in a fish, tell them so, it won't make
+them any worse.  Be honest--that is all; don't cram their heads with
+things that will take them years and years to unlearn; tell them facts
+--it is just as easy.  It is as easy to find out botany, and astronomy,
+and geology, and history--it is as easy to find out all these things as
+to cram their minds with things you know nothing about,* and where a
+child knows what the name of a flower is when it sees it, the name of a
+bird and all those things, the world becomes interesting everywhere, and
+they do not pass by the flowers--they are not deaf to all the songs of
+birds, simply because they are walking along thinking about hell.
+
+[* "We know of no difference between matter and spirit, because we know
+nothing with certainty about either.  Why trouble ourselves about
+matters of which, however important they may be we do know nothing and
+can know nothing?"--Huxley]
+
+I tell you, this is a pretty good world if we only love somebody in it,
+if we only make somebody happy, if we are only honor-bright in it, if we
+have no fear.  That is my doctrine.  I like to hear children at the
+table telling what big things they have seen during the day; I like to
+hear their merry voices mingling with the clatter of knives and forks.
+I had rather hear that than any opera that was ever put on the stage.  I
+hate this idea of authority.  I hate dignity.  I never saw a dignified
+man that was not after all an old idiot.  Dignity is a mask; a
+dignified man is afraid that you will know he does not know everything.
+A man of sense and argument is always willing to admit what he don't
+know--why?--because there is so much that he does know; and that is the
+first step towards learning anything--willingness to admit what you
+don't know and when you don't understand a thing, ask--no matter how
+small and silly it may look to other people--ask, and after that you
+know.  A man never is in a state of mind that he can learn until he gets
+that dignified nonsense out of him, and so, I say let us treat our
+children with perfect kindness and tenderness.
+
+Now, then, I believe in absolute intellectual liberty; that a man has a
+right to think, and think wrong, provided he does the best he can to
+think right--that is all.  I have no right to say that Mr. Smith shall
+not think; Mr. Smith has no right to say I shall not think; I have no
+right to go and pull a clergyman out of his pulpit and say:  "You shall
+not preach that doctrine," but I have just as much right as he has to
+say my say.  I have no right to lie about a clergyman, and with great
+modesty I claim--and with some timidity--that he has no right to slander
+me--that is all.
+
+I claim that every man and wife are equal, except that she has a right
+to be protected; that there is nothing like the democracy of the home
+and the republicism of the fire-side, and that a man should study to
+make his wife's life one perpetual poem of joy; that there should be
+nothing but kindness and goodness; and then I say that children should
+be governed by love, by kindness, by tenderness, and by the sympathy of
+love, kindness and tenderness. That is the religion I have got, and it
+is good enough for me whether it suits anybody else in the world or not.
+I think it is altogether more important to believe in my wife than it is
+to believe in the master; I think it is altogether more important to
+love my children than the twelve apostles--that is my doctrine.  I may
+be wrong, but that is it.  I think more of the living than I do of the
+dead.  This world is for the living.  The grave is not a throne, and a
+corpse is not a king.  The living have a right to control this world.  I
+think a good deal more of today than I do of yesterday, and I think more
+of tomorrow than I do of this day; because it is nearly gone--that is
+the way I feel, and this my creed.  The time to be happy is now; the
+way to be happy is to make somebody else happy; and the place to be
+happy is here.  I never will consent to drink skim milk here with the
+promise of cream somewhere else.
+
+Now, my friends, I have some excuses to offer for the race to which I
+belong.  In the first place, this world is not very well adapted to
+raising good people; there is but one-quarter of it land to start with;
+it is three times as well adapted to fish-culture as it is to man, and
+of that one-quarter there is but a small belt where they raise men of
+genius.  There is one strip from which all the men and women of genius
+come.  When you go too far north yon find no brain; when you go too far
+south you find no genius, and there never has been a high degree of
+civilization except where there is winter.  I say that winter is the
+father and mother of the fireside, the family of nations; and around
+that fireside blossom the fruits of our race.  In a country where they
+don't need any bed-clothes except the clouds, revolution is the normal
+condition not much civilization there.  When in the winter I go by a
+house where the curtain is a little bit drawn, and I look in there and
+see children poking the fire and wishing they had as many dollars or
+knives or something else as there are sparks; when I see the old man
+smoking and the smoke curling above his head like incense from the altar
+of domestic peace, the other children reading or doing something, and
+the old lady with her needle and shears--I never pass such a scene that
+I do not feel a little ache of joy in my heart.
+
+Awhile ago they were talking about annexing San Domingo.  They said it
+was the finest soil in the world, and so on.  Says I, "It don't raise
+the right kind of folks; you take five thousand of the best people in
+the world and let them settle there and you will see the second
+generation barefooted, with the hair sticking out of the top of their
+sombreros; you will see them riding barebacked, with a rooster under
+each arm, going to a cockfight on Sunday."  That is one excuse I have.
+
+Another is, I think we came from the lower animals, I am not dead sure
+of it.  On that question I stand about eight to seven.  If there is
+nothing of the snake, or hyena, or jackal in man, why would he cut his
+brother's throat for a difference of belief? Why would he build dungeons
+and burn the flesh of his brother man with red hot irons?  I think we
+came from the lower animals. When I first heard that doctrine I did not
+like it.  I felt sorry for our English friends, who would have to trace
+their pedigree back to the Duke of Orangutan, or the Earl of Chimpanzee.
+But I have read so much about rudimentary bones and rudimentary muscles
+that I began to doubt about it.  Says I:  "What do you mean by
+rudimentary muscles?"  They say:  "A muscle that has gone into
+bankruptcy--"  "Was it a large muscle?"  "Yes."  "What did our
+forefathers use it for?"  They say:  "To flap their ears with." After I
+found that out I was astonished to find that they had become
+rudimentary; I know so many people for whom it would be handy today, so
+many people where that would have been on an exact level with their
+intellectual development.  So after while I began to like it, and says I
+to myself:  "You have got to come to it."  I thought after all I had
+rather belong to a race of people that came from skull-less vertebrae in
+the dim Laurentian period, that wiggled without knowing they were
+wiggling, that began to develop and came up by a gradual development
+until they struck this gentleman in the dug-out; coming up slowly--up-
+up-up--until, for instance, they produced such a man as Shakespeare--he
+who harvested all the fields of dramatic thought, and after whom all
+others have been only gleaners of straw, he who found the human
+intellect dwelling in a hut, touched it with the wand of his genius and
+it became a palace--producing him and hundreds of others I might
+mention--with the angels of progress leaning over the far horizon
+beckoning this race of work and thought--I had rather belong to a race
+commencing at the skull-less vertebrae producing the gentleman in the
+dug-out and so on up, than to have descended from a perfect pair upon
+which the Lord has lost money from that day to this.  I had rather
+belong to a race that is going up than to one that is going down.  I
+would rather belong to one that commenced at the skull-less vertebrae
+and started for perfection, than to belong to one, that started from
+perfection and started for the skull-less vertebrae.
+
+These are the excuses I have for my race, and taking everything into
+consideration, I think we have done extremely well.
+
+Let us have more liberty and free thought.  Free thought will give us
+truth.  It is too early in the history of the world to write a creed.
+Our fathers were intellectual slaves; our fathers were intellectual
+serfs.  There never has been a free generation on the globe.  Every
+creed you have got bears the mark of whip, and chain, and fagot.  There
+has been no creed written by a free brain.  Wait until we have had two
+or three generations of liberty and it will then be time enough to seize
+the swift horse of progress by the bridle and say--thus far and no
+farther; and in the meantime let us be kind to each other;  let us be
+decent towards each other.  We are all travelers on the great plain we
+call life and there is nobody quite sure, what road to take--not just
+dead sure, you known.  There are lots of guide-boards on the plain and
+you find thousands of people swearing today that their guide-board is
+the only board that shows the right direction.  I go and talk to them
+and they say: "You go that way, or you will be damned."  I go to another
+and they say:  "You go this way, or you will be damned."  I find them
+all fighting and quarreling and beating each other, and then I say:
+"Let us cut down all these guide-boards."  "What," they say, "leave us
+without any guide-boards?"  I say:  "Yes.  Let every man take the road
+he thinks is right; and let everybody else wish him a happy journey;
+let us part friends."
+
+I say to you tonight, my friends, that I have no malice upon this
+subject--not a particle; I simply wish to express my thoughts. The
+world has grown better just in proportion as it is happier; the world
+has grown better just in proportion as it has lost superstition; the
+world has grown better just in the proportion that the sacerdotal class
+has lost influence--just exactly; the world has grown better just in
+proportion that secular ideas have taken possession of the world.  The
+world has grown better just in proportion that it has ceased talking
+about the visions of the clouds, and talked about the realities of the
+earth.  The world has grown better just in the proportion that it has
+grown free, and I want to do what little I can in my feeble way to add
+another flame to the torch of progress.  I do not know, of course, what
+will come, but if I have said anything tonight that will make a husband
+love his wife better, I am satisfied; if I have said anything, that
+will make a wife love her husband better, I am satisfied; if I have
+said anything that will add one more ray of joy to life, I am satisfied;
+if I have said anything that will save the tender flesh of a child from
+a blow, I am satisfied; if I have said anything that will make us more
+willing to extend to others the right we claim for ourselves, I am
+satisfied.
+
+I do not know what inventions are in the brain of the future; I do not
+know what garments of glory may be woven for the world in the loom of
+the years to be; we are just on the edge of the great ocean of
+discovery.  I do not know what is to be discovered; I do not know what
+science will do for us.  I do know that science did just take a handful
+of sand and make the telescope, and with it read all the starry leaves
+of heaven; I know that science took the thunderbolts from the hands of
+Jupiter, and now the electric spark, freighted with thought and love,
+flashes under waves of the sea.  I know that science stole a tear from
+the cheek of unpaid labor, converted it into steam, and created a giant
+that turns with tireless arms the countless wheels of toil; I know that
+science broke the chains from human limbs and gave us instead the forces
+of nature for our slaves; I know that we have made the attraction of
+gravitation work for us; we have made the lightnings our messengers; we
+have taken advantage of fire and flames and wind and sea; these slaves
+have no backs to be whipped; they have no hearts to be lacerated; they
+have no children to be stolen, no cradles to be violated.  I know that
+science has given us better houses; I know it has given us better
+pictures and better books; I know it has given us better wives and
+better husbands, and more beautiful children. I know it has enriched a
+thousand-fold our lives; and for that reason I am in favor of
+intellectual liberty.
+
+I know not, I say, what discoveries may lead the world to glory; but I
+do know that from the infinite sea of the future never a greater or
+grander blessing will strike this bank and shoal of time than liberty
+for man, woman and child.
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, I have delivered this lecture a great many times;
+clergymen have attended, and editors of religious newspapers, and they
+have gone away and written in their papers and declared in their pulpits
+that in this lecture I advocated universal adultery; they have gone
+away and said it was obscene and disgusting.  Between me and my clerical
+maligners, between me and my religious slanderers, I leave you, ladies
+and gentlemen, to judge.
+
+
+
+
+[[File 2--Lectures of Col. R.G. Ingersoll--Latest:]]
+
+
+
+
+Ingersoll's Lecture on Human Rights
+
+
+
+Ladies and Gentlemen:  I suppose that man, from the most grotesque
+savage up to Heckle, has had a philosophy by which he endeavored to
+account for all the phenomena of nature he may have observed.  From that
+mankind may have got their ideas of right and wrong.  Now, where there
+are no rights there can be no duties.  Let us always remember that only
+as a man becomes free can he by any possibility become good or great.
+As I said, every savage has had his philosophy, and by it accounted for
+everything he observed.  He had an idea of rain and rainbow, and he had
+an idea of a controlling power.  One said there is a being who presides
+over our world, and who will destroy us unless we do right.  Others had
+many of these beings, but they were invariably like themselves.  The
+most fruitful imagination cannot make more than a man, though it may
+make infinite powers and attributes out of the powers and attributes of
+man.  You can't build a God unless you start with a human being.  The
+savage said, when there was a storm, "Somebody is angry."  When
+lightning leaped from the lurid cloud, he thought, "What have I been
+doing?" and when he couldn't think of any wrong he had been doing, he
+tried to think of some wrong his neighbor had been doing.
+
+I may as well state here that I believe man has come up from the lowest
+orders of creation, and may have not come up very far; still, I believe
+we are doing very well, considering.
+
+But, speaking of man's early philosophy, his morality was founded first
+on self-defense.  When gathered together in tribes, he held that this
+infinite being would hold the tribe responsible for the actions of any
+individual who had angered him.  They imagined this being got angry.
+Just imagine the serenity of an infinite being being disturbed, and a
+God breaking into a passion because some poor wretch had neglected to
+bring two turtle doves to a priest!
+
+Then they sought out this poor offending individual, to punish him and
+appease the wroth of this being.  And here commenced religious
+persecution.
+
+Now, I do not say there is no God, but what I do say is that I do not
+know.  The only difference between me and the theologian is that I am
+honest.  There may or there may not be an infinite being, but I do not
+know it, and until I do I cannot conceive of any obedience I owe to any
+unknown being.
+
+As soon as men began to imagine they would be held responsible for the
+act of any other person, came the necessity for some one to teach them
+how to keep from offending the being.  Some called him medicine man,
+some called him priest; now, we call him theologian.  These men set out
+to teach men how to keep from offending this being, and they laid down
+certain laws to regulate the conduct of men.  First of all it was
+necessary to believe in this power.  To disbelieve in him was the worst
+offense of all. To have some human being, dressed in the skin of a wild
+beast, deny the existence of this infinite being, was more than the
+infinite being could stand.  The first thing, therefore, was to believe
+in this power, the next to support this gentleman standing between you
+and the supreme wrath.  These gentlemen were the lobbyists with the
+power, and sometimes succeeded in getting the veto used in favor of
+their clients.
+
+For ages, as mankind slowly came through the savage state, the world was
+filled with infinite fear.  They accounted for everything bad that
+happened as the wrath of this supreme being. But they went from savagery
+to barbarism--a step in improvement--and then began to build temples to,
+and make images of, this being.  Then man began to believe he could
+influence this being by prayer, by getting on his knees to the image he
+had made.
+
+Nothing, I suppose astonishes a missionary more than to see a savage in
+Central Africa on his knees before a stone praying for luck in hunting
+or in fighting.  And yet it strikes me--we have our army chaplains
+before a battle praying for the success of our side.  They don't pray
+for assistance if our cause is just, but they pray, "Lord help us!"  I
+can't see the difference between the two.
+
+But there is this said in favor of prayer that, whether successful or
+not, it is a sort of intellectual exercise.  Like a man trying to lift
+himself, he may not succeed, but he gets a good deal of exercise.
+
+But as man proceeds, he begins to help himself and to take advantage of
+mechanical powers to assist him, and he begins to see he can help
+himself a little, and exactly in the proportion he helps himself he
+comes to rely less on the power of priest or prayer to help him.  Just
+to the extent we are helpless, to that extent do we rely upon the
+unknown.
+
+As religion developed itself, keeping pace with the belief in theology,
+came the belief in demonology.  They gave one being all the credit of
+doing all the good things, and must give some one credit for the bad
+things, and so they created a devil.  At one time it was as disreputable
+to deny the existence of a devil as to deny the existence of a God; to
+deny the existence of a hell, with its fire and brimstone, as to deny
+the existence of a heaven with its harp and love.
+
+With the development of religion came the idea that no man should be
+allowed to bring the wrath of God on a nation by his transgressions, and
+this idea permeates the Christian world today.  Now what does this
+prove?  Simply that our religion is founded on fear, and when you are
+afraid you cannot think.  Fear drops on its knees and believes.  It is
+only courage that can think.  It was the idea that man's actions could
+do something, outside of any effect his mechanical works might have, to
+change the order of nature; that he might commit some offense to bring
+on an earthquake, but he can't do it.  You can't be bad enough to cause
+an earthquake; neither can you be good enough to stop one. Out of that
+wretched doctrine and infamous mistake that man's belief could have any
+effect upon nature grew all these inquisitions, racks and collars of
+torture, and all the blood that was ever shed by religious persecution.
+
+In Europe the country was divided between kings and priests.  The king
+held that he got the power from the unknown; so did the priests.  They
+could not say that they got it from the people; the people would deny
+it; the unknown could not deny it.  And thus the altar and throne stand
+side by side. And republicanism was a thing unknown.
+
+It has been said that the pilgrim fathers came to this country to
+establish religious liberty.  They did no such thing.  They were not in
+favor of it.  They came with the Testament in their hands, and with it
+they could have no idea of religious liberty.  When they had established
+thirteen colonies here, and had struggled for and obtained their
+independence, they established federal government, but did they seek
+after religious liberty?  No!  When they formed a federal government
+each church and each colony was jealous of the other.  They said to the
+general government, "You can't have any religion in the constitution,"
+but each state could make its own religion, and they made them.
+
+Here the speaker read copious extracts from the statutes of the
+different states in reference to the qualifications for the exercise of
+citizenship--the religious belief necessary; and, on concluding, asked,
+"Had they (the members who drew up these state constitutions) any idea
+of religious liberty."
+
+Continuing, he said:  "Now, my friends, there's a party started in this
+country with the object of giving every man, woman and child the rights
+they are entitled to.  Now every one of us has the same rights.  I have
+the right to labor and to have the products of my labor.  I have the
+right to think, and furthermore, to express my thoughts, because
+expression is the reward of my intellectual labor.  And yet in the
+United States there are states where men of my ideas would not be
+allowed to testify in a court of justice.  Is that right?  There are
+states in this country where, if the law had been enforced, I would have
+been sent to the penitentiary for lecturing.  All such laws are enacted
+by barbarians, and our country will not be free until they are wiped
+from the statute books of every state.
+
+Does an infinite being need to be protected by a State Legislature?  If
+the bible is inspired, does the author of it need the support of the law
+to command respect?  We don't need any law to make mankind respect
+Shakespeare.  We come to the altar of that great man and cover it with
+our gratitude without a statute.  Think of a law to govern tastes!
+Think of a law to govern mind, or any question whatever!  Think of the
+way in which they have supported the bible!  They've terrorized the old
+with laws, and captured the dear, little innocent children and poisoned
+their minds with their false stories until, when they have reached the
+age of manhood, they have been afraid to think for themselves.  Let us
+see what the laws are now, by which they guard their bible and their
+God.
+
+[Here the speaker read extracts from the statutes of several states in
+reference to blasphemy and profanation of the Sabbath, commenting on
+each as he ran them through:]  Pursuing the thread of his discourse, he
+said:  Every American should see to it that all these laws are done away
+with once and forever.
+
+There has been a reaction of late years.  This country has begun to be
+prosperous.  We don't think much of religion; 'tis only when hard times
+come we turn our attention toward it.  There are people in this country
+who say we are getting too irreligious, too scientific.  Now, is it not
+a fact that we are happier today than at any period in our history?  You
+live in a great country, though perhaps you do not know it.  But live in
+any other country for a while, and you'll find it out.  See, then, what
+we've got by looking a little to the affairs of the world!  The bible
+can't stand today without the support of the civil power.  No religion
+ever flourished except by the support of the sword, and no religion like
+this could have been established except by brute force.
+
+At one time we thought a great deal of clergymen, but now we have got to
+thinking they ain't of as much importance as a man that has invented
+something.  The church seeing this has made up its mind that it is
+necessary to do something, and so got up a plan to be acknowledged by
+law.  Here's what they wish to do:  [Here the speaker read some extracts
+from the constitution of the National Reform Association.]  Continuing
+he said:  Our fathers, in 1776, building better than they knew, retired
+the gods from politics.  I do not believe Jesus Christ is the ruler of
+nations. If he is the ruler of one he is the ruler of all.  Why does he
+not then rule one as well as another?  If you give him credit for the
+good things of one you must denounce him for the tyranny and despotism
+of others.  The revealed word of God is not the standing of civil
+justice in this country!  The bible is not the standard of right and
+wrong or of decency in this country.
+
+You can't put God in the constitution, because if you do there would be
+no room for the folks.  Whatever you put in the constitution you must
+enforce by the sword, and you can't go to war with any man for not
+believing in your God.  God has no business there, and any man that is
+in favor of putting him there is an enemy to the interests of American
+institutions.
+
+Now for the purpose of preventing the name of God being put in the
+constitution, there's another little party has been started and these
+are its doctrines:  We want an absolute divorce between church and
+state.  We demand that church property should not be exempt from
+taxation.  If you are going to exempt anything, exempt the homesteads of
+the poor.  Don't exempt a rich corporation, and make men pay taxes to
+support a religion in which they do not believe.  But they say churches
+do good.  I don't know whether they do or not.  Do you see such a
+wonderful difference between a member of a church and the man who does
+not believe in it?  Do church members pay their debts any better than
+any others?  Do they treat their families any better?  Did you ever hear
+of any man coming into a town broke and inquire where the deacon of a
+Presbyterian church lived?  Has not the church opposed every science
+from the first ray of light until now?  Didn't they damn into eternal
+flames the man who discovered the world was round? Didn't they damn into
+eternal flames the man who discovered the movement of the earth in its
+orbit?  Didn't they persecute the astronomers?  Didn't they even try to
+put down life insurance by saying it was sinful to bet on the time God
+has given you to live?  Science built the Academy, superstition the
+Inquisition. Science constructed the telescope, religion the rack;
+science made us happy here, and says if there's another life we'll all
+stand an equal chance there; religion made us miserable here, and says
+a large majority will be eternally miserable there. Should we,
+therefore, exempt it from taxation for any good it has done?
+
+The next thing we ask is a perfect divorce between church and school.
+We say that every school should be secular, because its just to
+everybody.  If I was an Israelite I wouldn't want to be taxed to have my
+children taught that his ancestors had murdered a supreme being.  Let us
+teach, not the doctrines of the past, but the discoveries of the
+present; not the five points of Calvinism, but geology and geography.
+Education is the lever to raise mankind, and superstition is the enemy
+of intelligence.
+
+We demand, next, that woman shall be put upon an equality with man.  Why
+not?  Why shouldn't men be decent enough in the management of the
+politics of the country for women to mingle with them?  It is an outrage
+that anyone should live in this country for sixty or seventy years and
+be forced to obey the laws without having any voice in making them.  Let
+us give woman the opportunity to care for herself, since men are not
+decent enough to seek to care for her.  The time will come when we'll
+treat a woman that works and takes care of two or three children as well
+as a woman dressed in diamonds who does nothing.  The time will come
+when we'll not tell our domestic we expect to meet her in heaven, and
+yet not be willing to have her speak to us in the drawing room.
+
+Ignorance is a poor pedestal to set virtue upon and mock-modesty should
+not have the right to prevent people from knowing themselves.  Every
+child has a right to be well-born, and ignorance has no right to people
+the world with scrofula and consumption.  When we come to the conclusion
+that God is not taking care of us and that we have to take care of
+ourselves, then we'll begin to have something in the world worth living
+for.
+
+I would wish there was seated upon the throne of the universe one who
+would see to it that justice did always prevail.  I do not propose to
+give up the little world I live in for the unknown.
+
+I would wish that the friends who bid us "good night" in this world
+might meet us with "good morning" there.  Just as long as we love one
+another we'll hope for another world; just as long as love kisses the
+lips of death will we believe and hope for a future reunion.  I would
+not take one hope away from the human heart or one joy from the human
+soul, but I hold in contempt the gentlemen who keep heaven on sale; I
+look with contempt on him who keeps it on draught; I look with pitying
+contempt on him who endeavors to prohibit honest thought by promising a
+reward in another world.  If there is another world we'll find when we
+come there that no one has done enough good to be eternally rewarded, no
+one has done enough harm to meet with an unending, eternal pain and
+agony.  We'll find that there is no being that ever hindered a man from
+exercising his reason.  Now, while we are here, no matter what happens
+to us hereafter, let us cultivate strength of heart and brain to stand
+the inevitable.  No creed can help you there. When the heart is touched
+with agony nothing but time can heal it.
+
+I want, if I can, to do a little to increase the rights of men, to put
+every human being on an equality, to sweep away the clouds of
+superstition, to make people think more of what happens today than what
+somebody said happened 3,000 years ago.  This is all I want:  To do what
+little I can to clutch one-seventh of our time from superstition, to
+give our Sundays to rest and recreation.  I want a day of enjoyment, a
+day to read old books, to meet old friends, and get acquainted with
+one's wife and children.  I want a day to gather strength to meet the
+toils of the next.  I want to get that day away from the church, away
+from superstition and the contemplation of hell, to be the best and
+sweetest and brightest of all the days in the week.  The best way to
+make a day sacred is to fill it up with useful labor.  That day is best
+on which most good is done for the human race.  I hope to see the time
+when we'll have a day for the opera, the play--good plays--for they do
+good.  You never saw the villain foiled in a play where the audience did
+not applaud.  You never saw them applaud when the rascal was successful
+in his villainy.  If you could go to a theater and see put upon the
+stage the scenes of the old testament, with its butcheries and rapes and
+deeds of violence, you would detest it all the days of your life.  I'd
+like to have every horror of the old testament set on this stage, to
+have somebody represent the being as he is represented there, giving his
+brutal orders, and let the orthodox see their God as he really is.
+
+I want to have us all do what little we can to secularize this
+government--take it from the control of savagery and give it to science,
+take it from the government of the past and give it to the enlightened
+present, and in this government let us uphold every man and woman in
+their rights, that everyone, after he or she comes to the age of
+discretion, may have a choice in the affairs of the nation.
+
+Do this, and we'll grow in grandeur and splendor every day, and the time
+will come when every man and every woman shall have the same rights as
+every other man and every other woman has.  I believe, we are growing
+better.  I don't believe the wail of want shall be heard forever; that
+the prison and gallows will always curse the ground.  The time will come
+when liberty and law and love, like the rings of Saturn, will surround
+the world; when the world will cease making these mistakes; when every
+man will be judged according to his worth and intelligence.  I want to
+do all I can to hasten that day.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Ingersoll's Lecture on Talmagian Theology (Second Lecture)
+
+
+
+Col. Ingersoll began, "Only a few years ago the pulpit was almost
+supreme.  The palace was almost in the shadow of the cathedral, and the
+power behind every throne was a priest.  Man was held in physical
+slavery by kings, and in a mental prison by the church. He was allowed
+to hold no opinions as to where he came from, nor as to where he was
+going.  It was sufficient for him to do the labor and believe the kings
+would do the governing and the priests the thinking--and, my God, what
+thinking!  If the world had obeyed the priests we would all be idiots
+tonight.  The eagle of intellect would have given way to the blind bat
+of faith. They were the rack, the faggot, the thumbscrew in this world,
+and hell in the next.  Only a few years ago no man could express an
+honest thought unless he agreed with the church.  The church has been a
+perpetual beggar.  It has never plowed, it never sowed, it never spun,
+yet Solomon in all his glory was not so arrayed. Thanks to modern
+thought, the brain of the nineteenth century, to Voltaire, Paine, Hume,
+to all the free men, that beggar--the church--is no longer upon
+horseback; and it fills me with joy to state that even its walking is
+not now good.  Only a little while ago a priest was thought more than
+human.  Nobody dared contradict the minister.  Now there are other
+learned professions.  There are doctors, lawyers, writers, books,
+newspapers, and the priest has hundreds of rivals.
+
+The priest grew jealous, hateful; he was always thankful for an
+epidemic or pestilence, so that people would turn to him in despair.  In
+our country all the men of intellect were in the pulpit once.  Now there
+are so many avenues to distinction the men of brain, heart and red blood
+have left the pulpit and gone to useful things.  I do not say all.
+There are still some men of mind in the pulpit, but they are nearer
+infidels than any others. Where do we get our ministers?  A young man,
+without constitution enough to be wicked, without health enough to enjoy
+the things of this world, naturally, fixes his gaze on high.  He is
+educated, sent to a university where he is taught that it is criminal to
+think.  Stuffed with a creed, he comes out a shepherd.  Most of them are
+intellectual shreds and patches, mental ravelings, selvage.  Every
+pulpit is a pillory in which stands a convict; every member of the
+church stands over him with a club, called a creed.  He is an
+intellectual slave, and dare not preach his honest thought.  There are
+thousands of good men in the pulpit, honest men.  I am simply describing
+the average shepherd; they tell me "they've been called," that Almighty
+God selected them. He looked all over the world and said:  "Now, there's
+a man I want!"  And what selections!  Shakespeare was not called.  Yet
+he has done more for this world than all the ministers who have ever
+lived in it.  Beethoven!  He was not called.  Raphael was not called.
+He was all an accident.  All the inventors, discoverers, poets--God
+never called one of them; he turned his attention to popes, cardinals,
+priests, exhorters; and what selections he has made!  It's astonishing.
+
+In the United States a great many ministers have been good enough to
+take me for a text.  Among others the Rev. Mr. Talmage, of Brooklyn.  I
+have nothing to say about his reputation.  It has nothing to do with the
+question.  Some ministers think he has more gesticulation than grace.
+Some call him a pious pantaloon, a Christian clown; but such remarks, I
+think, are born of envy. He is the only Presbyterian minister in the
+United States who can draw an audience.  He stands at the head of the
+denomination, and I answer him.  He's a strange man.  I believe he's
+orthodox, or intellectual pride would prevent his saying these things.
+He believes in a literal resurrection of the dead; that we shall see
+countless bones flying through the air.  He has some charges against me,
+and he has denied some of my statements.  He has produced what he calls
+arguments, and I am going to answer some of the charges.  Next Sunday
+afternoon, at 2 o'clock; in this place, I shall have a matinee, and
+answer his arguments.  He says I am the champion blasphemer.  What is
+blasphemy?  To contradict a priest?  to have a mind of your own?
+Whoever takes a step in advance is a blasphemer.  Blasphemy is what a
+last year's leaf says to a this year's bud.  To deny that Mohammed is
+the prophet of God is not blasphemy in New York.  It is in
+Constantinople. It is a question, then, largely of Geography.  It
+depends on where you are.  The missionary who laughs at a modern God is
+a blasphemer.  In a Catholic country whoever says Mary is not the mother
+of God is a blasphemer.  In a Protestant country to say she is the
+mother of God is blasphemy.  Everything has been blasphemy.  My doctrine
+is this:  He is a blasphemer who refuses to tell his honest thought;
+who is not true to himself; who enslaves his fellow man; who charges
+that God was once in favor of slavery.  If there is any God, that man is
+a blasphemer. They're afraid we'll injure God.  How?  Is infinite
+goodness and mercy to become livid with wrath because a finite being
+expresses an opinion?  I cannot help the infinite.  That man only is the
+good man who helps his fellow man.  I know then who would do anything
+for God, who doesn't need it, but nothing for men, who do need it.  Why
+should God be so particular about my believing his book?  It's no more
+his work than the stars of gravitation. Yet I may declare that the earth
+is flat, and he'll not damn me for that.  But if I make a mistake about
+that book I'm gone.  I can blaspheme the multiplication table and deify
+the power of the wedge--in fact, the less I know the better my chance
+will be.  I say that book is not inspired, and there is no infinitely
+good God who will damn one human soul.  At the judgment, if I am
+mistaken I own up--I am here, I do not know where I came from, nor where
+I am going--I'll be honest about it.  I am on a ship and not on speaking
+terms with the captain, but I propose to have a happy voyage, and the
+best way is to do what you can to make your fellow passengers happy.  If
+we run into a good port, I'll be as happy an angel as you'll meet that
+day.  Blasphemy is the cry of a defeated priest--the black flag of
+theology--it shows where argument stops and slander and persecution
+begin.  I am told by Mr. Talmage that whoever contradicts this word is a
+fool, a howling wolf, one of the assassins of God.  I presume the
+gentleman is honest.  Take Mr. Talmage, now, he is a good man. Mr.
+Humboldt, he was another good man.  What Humboldt knew and what Talmage
+didn't know would make a library.
+
+The next charge is that I have said the universe was made of nothing,
+according to the bible.  False in one thing, false in all, he says.
+Think of that rule.  Let us apply that to man.  If the world was
+created, what was it make of?  and who made that? If the Lord created
+it, what did He make it of?  Nothing.  That's all He had.  No sides, no
+top, nothing.  Yet God had lived there forever.  What did He think
+about?  What did He do?  Nothing. Nothing had ever happened.  All at
+once He made something.  What did He make it of?  Mr. Talmage explains.
+
+He says if I knew anything I would know that God made this world out of
+His omnipotence.  He might just as well made it out of His memory.  What
+is omnipotence?  Is it a raw material?  The weakest man in the world can
+lift as much nothing as God.  Yet He made this world out of His
+omnipotence.  It is so stated by a doctor of divinity, and I should
+think such divinity would need a doctor!  I don't believe this.  I
+believe this universe has existed throughout all eternity--everything.
+All that is, is God.  I do not give to that universe a personality that
+wants man to get his knees into dust and his fingers in holy water;
+that wants some body to ring a bell or eat a wafer.  I am a part of this
+universe, and I believe all there is, is all the God there is.  I may be
+mistaken; I don't know.  I just give my best opinion.  If there's any
+heaven, I'll give it there.  But there'll be no discussion in heaven.
+Hell is the only place where mental improvement will be possible.
+
+I have said, it is charged, that the bible says the world was made in
+six days.  He says I don't understand Hebrew.  The bible says the world
+was made in six days.  God didn't work nights--evening and morning were
+the first day.  God rested on the seventh day, and sanctified it.  That,
+they say, didn't mean days; it meant good whiles.  He made the world in
+six good whiles.  Adam was made, I think along about Saturday.  If the
+account is correct, it's only 6,000 years since man made his appearance.
+We know that to be false.  A few years ago a gentleman who was going to
+California in the cars met a minister. They came to the place called the
+Sink of the Humboldt, the most desolate place in the world.  Just
+imagine perdition with the fire out.  The traveler asked the minister
+whether God made the earth in six days, and the minister said he did.
+Then don't you think, said he, He could have put in another day's work
+to great advantage right here?  I am charged, too, with saying that the
+sun was not made till the fourth day, whereas, according to the bible,
+vegetation began on the third day, before there was any light.  But Mr.
+Talmage says there was light without the sun.  They got light, he says,
+from the crystallization of rocks.  A nice thing to raise a crop of corn
+by.  There may have been volcanoes, he says.  How'd you like to farm it,
+and depend on volcanic glare to raise a crop?  That's what they call
+religious science.  God won't damn a man for things like that.  What
+else? The aurora borealis!  A great cucumber country!  It's strange He
+never thought of glow worms!  Imagine it!  a Presbyterian divine gravely
+saying vegetation could grow by the light of the crystallization of
+rocks--by the light of volcanoes in other worlds, probably now extinct.
+
+He says of me, too in his pulpit, that I was in favor of the circulation
+of immoral literature.  Let me tell you the truth. Several gentlemen,
+so-called, were trying to exclude from the mails, books called infidel.
+I said the law should be modified. It is impossible for anybody to reach
+the depth of one who will print or circulate obscene books.  One of my
+objections to the bible is that it contains obscene stories.  Any book,
+couched in decent language, should have the liberty of the United States
+mails.  Where books are immoral and obscene, I say, burn them, and have
+always said it.  Mr. Talmage said what he knew to be untrue.  He said it
+out of hatred, and because he cannot answer the arguments I have urged.
+I believe in pure books and pure literature.  But when a God writes
+there is no excuse for Him. In Shakespeare we say obscene things are
+impure--we do not say they are inspired.  That I have falsified the
+records of the bible showing the period of Jewish slavery, is another of
+the charges against me.  That slavery extended over a period of 215
+years; and he proceeded to substantiate this statement by being through
+a long and somewhat complicated genealogical table.  If I made any
+misstatement I was misled by the new testament.  Mr. Talmage may settle
+with St. Paul.  If you can depend on what my friend Paul says, the Jews,
+in 215 years, increased from seventy persons till they had 600,000 men
+of war.  I know it isn't so, and so does any man who knows anything.
+For such an increase as this each woman must have borne somewhat over
+fifty-seven children, and every child lived.
+
+The next charge is that I have laughed at holy things.  Holy things!
+The priest always says:  "Now don't laugh; look solemn; this is no
+laughing matter." There's nothing a priest hates like mirthfulness.  He
+despises a smile.  I read in the bible that God gave a recipe to Aaron
+for making hair-oil and said if anybody made any like it, kill him.
+Well, I don't believe it.  The penalty for infringing on that patent was
+death.  Do you believe an infinite God gave a recipe for hair-oil?  Is
+it possible for absurdity to go beyond that?  That's what they call a
+holy thing. And water for baptism!  Do you believe God will look for
+this water-mark on the soul?
+
+The next charge is that I misquote the scriptures.  That's because I
+don't know Hebrew.  Why didn't He write to me in English?  If He wishes
+to hold a gentleman responsible, why doesn't He address him in his
+native tongue?  Why write His word in such a way that hundreds of
+thousands make their living explaining it?  If I'd only understood
+Hebrew I would have known God didn't make Eve out of a rib.  He made her
+out of Adam's side.  How did He get it out?  Well, I suppose He cut it
+out with a kind of a splinter of His omnipotence!  Then our mother was
+made from a rib.  When you consider the material used it was the most
+successful job ever done.  There's even a serpent in the bible that
+knows a language.  It won't do.  Sin, how did it come into the world?
+Where did the serpent come from?  He was wicked. Adam's sin did not make
+him bad.  Then there was sin in the world before Adam.  There's no sense
+in it--not a particle.  Then Talmage touches me upon the flood.  His
+flood didn't come to America, because America was not discovered then.
+He says it was a partial flood.  Then why did they have to take any
+birds in the ark?  How did Noah get the animals in the ark?  Talmage
+says it was through the instinct to get out of the rain.  According to
+the bible they went in before the rain began.  Dr. Scott says the angels
+helped carry them in.  Imagine an angel with an animal under each wing.
+It must have rained 800 feet a day for forty days.  Why does Talmage try
+to explain a miracle?  The beauty of a miracle is it cannot be
+explained.  The moment the church begins to explain the church is gone.
+All it's got to do is swear it is so.  The ark landed on Ararat, which
+is 17,000 feet high.  There was only one window, twenty-two inches
+square. Talmage says the window ran clear around the ark.  The bible
+doesn't say so.  That's Brooklyn; that's no bible.
+
+If the bible account is true the ark must have struck bottom on the top
+of a mountain.  Would any but a God of mercy and kindness people a
+world, and then drown them all?  A God cruel enough to drown His own
+children ought not to have the impudence to tell me how to bring up
+mine.  Why did He save eight of the same kind of people to take a fresh
+start?  Why didn't He make a fresh lot, kill His snake, and give His
+children a fair show?  It won't do.
+
+Talmage says the bible does not favor polygamy and slavery. There was
+room enough on the table of stone for saying man should only have one
+wife and no slaves.  If not, God might have written it on the other
+side.  David and Solomon were pursued of God, but they had a pretty good
+time of it.  Most anybody would be willing to be pursued that way.
+There is not a word in the old testament against slavery or polygamy.
+Frederick Douglas, a slave in Maryland, is the greatest man that state
+ever produced.  He was enslaved by Christians.  Why did God pay so much
+attention to blasphemers, and so little to slaveholders and robbers?  I
+am opposed to any God that was ever in favor of slavery.  The bible
+upholds polygamy, and that's the reason I don't uphold the bible. The
+most glorious temple ever erected is the home--that's my church.  I've
+misquoted the story of Jonah, Talmage says.  When somebody had been
+guilty of blasphemy the winds rose; they tried to get Jonah ashore, but
+couldn't do it.  The sea waxed.  He was swallowed by a whale.  The
+people of Minerva wrapped all their cattle up in sack-cloth, and if
+anything would have pleased God I should think that would.  Jonah sat
+under a gourd, and God made a worm out of some omnipotence he had left
+over, and set it work on the ground.  Talmage doesn't think Jonah was in
+the whale's belly--he said in his mouth.  Well, judging from the
+doctor's photograph, that explanation would be quite natural to him.  He
+says he might have been in the whale's stomach, and avoided the action
+of the gastric juice by walking up and down.  Imagine Jonah, sitting on
+a back tooth, leaning against the upper jaw, longingly looking through
+the open mouth for signs of land!  But that's scripture and you've got
+to believe it or be damned.  Let me say his brother preachers will not
+thank Talmage for his explanations.  I don't believe it, and if I am to
+be damned for it, I'll accept it cheerfully.
+
+They say I was defeated for Governor of Illinois because I was an
+infidel, and that I am an infidel because I was defeated.  That's logic.
+Now I'll tell you.  They asked me whether I was an infidel, and I said I
+was!  I was defeated.  I preserved my manhood and lost an office.  If
+everybody were as frank as I was, some men now in office would be
+private citizens.  I would rather be what I am than hold any office in
+the world and be a slimy hypocrite.
+
+Next they say I slandered my parents because I do not believe what they
+believed.  My father at one time believed the bible to be the inspired
+word of God.  He was an honorable man, and told me to read the bible for
+myself and be honest.  He lived long enough to believe that the old
+testament was not the word of God. He had not in his life as much
+happiness as I have in one year. I hope my children will dishonor me by
+being nearer right than I am.  If I have made a mistake, I want my
+children to correct it. My mother died when I was 2 years old.  Were she
+living tonight, or if she does live, she would say, be absolutely true
+to yourself and preserve your manhood.  If Talmage had been born in
+Constantinople he would have been a dervish.  He is what he is because
+he can't help it.  His head is just that shape.  I am taking away the
+hope and consolation of the world, he says.  His consolation is that
+ninety-nine out of every hundred are going to hell.  His church was
+founded by John Calvin, a murderer. Better have no heaven than a hell.
+I would rather God would commit suicide this minute than that a single
+soul should go to hell.  I want no Presbyterian consolation, I want no
+fore-ordination, no consolation, no damnation.
+
+[Col. Ingersoll concluded with a few remarks about the bible women,
+saying that women today are as true to the gallows as Mary Magdalene was
+to the cross.]
+
+Wherever there are women there are heroines.  Shakespeare's women are
+vastly superior to the bible women.  I am accused of putting out the
+light-houses on the shores of the other world.  The Christians are
+trimming invisible wicks and pouring in allegorical oil.  The Christian
+is willing wife, children and parents shall burn if only he can sing and
+have a harp.  Mr. Talmage can see countless millions burn in hell
+without decreasing the length of his orthodox smile.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Ingersoll's Lecture on Talmagian Theology (Third lecture)
+
+
+
+We must judge people somewhat by their creeds.  Mr. Talmage is a
+Calvinist, and he therefore regards every human being who has been born
+only once as totally depraved.  He thinks that God never made a single
+creature that didn't deserve to be damned the minute He finished him.
+So every one who opposes Mr. Talmage is infamous.  The generosity of an
+agnostic is meanness, his honesty is larceny and his love is hate.
+Talmage is a consistent follower of Calvin and Knox, and a consistent
+worshiper of the Jehovah of the ancient Jews.  I oppose not him, but his
+creed, because it tends to crush out the natural tendencies in men to
+joyousness and goodness.  There is something good in every human being,
+and there is something bad.  There are no perfect saints and no totally
+bad persons.  There is the seed of goodness in every human heart and the
+capacity for improvement in every human soul.  Isn't it possible for a
+man who acts like Christ to be saved, whatever be his belief?  Cannot a
+soul be infinitely generous?  And can any God damn such a soul?  If Mr.
+Talmage's creed be true, nearly all the great and glorious men of the
+past are burning today.  If it be true, the greatest man England has
+produced in 100 years is in hell.  The world is poorer since I spoke
+here last, for Darwin has passed away.  He was a true child of nature--
+one who knew more about his mother than any other child she had.  Yet he
+was not a Calvinist.  He did not get his inspiration from any book, but
+from every star in the heavens, from the insect in the sunbeam, from the
+flowers in the meadows, and from the everlasting rocks.
+
+If the doctrine of the Calvinists is true, what right had any one to ask
+an unbeliever to fight for his country in the civil war? What right has
+a believer to buy an unbelieving substitute, when some day he will look
+over the edge of heaven, and pointing downward, would say to a friend,
+"that is my substitute blistering there"?
+
+Mr. Talmage says that my mind is poisoned, and that the reason why all
+infidels' minds are poisoned is that they don't believe the Jew bible.
+Let us see whether it is worth believing.  I deny that an infinitely
+merciful God would protect slavery or would uphold polygamy, which
+pollutes the sweetest words in language. I will not believe that God
+told men to exterminate their fellow-men, to plunge the sword into
+women's breasts and into the hearts of tender babes.  I am opposed to
+the Jew bible because it is bad.  I don't deny that there are many good
+passages in it, nor that among all the thorns there are some roses.  I
+admit that many Christians are doing all they can to idealize the
+frightful things in the old testament.  It is the protest of human
+nature. Now, they tell me that this book is inspired.  Let us see what
+inspired means.  If it means anything, it is that the thoughts of God,
+through the instrumentality of men, constitute this Jew bible, and that
+these thoughts were written.  Now just suppose that some voice whispered
+in your ear, how would you know it was God's?  How did these gentlemen
+of old know it was God who was talking to them?  If anyone now told you
+that God whispered in his ear, you wouldn't believe him.  Why?  Because
+you know him.  Why are we asked to believe those ancient gentlemen?
+Because we don't know them.  Another reason, according to Mr. Talmage,
+why the Jew bible is inspired, is that prophecies in it have been
+fulfilled.  How do we know that the prophecies were not fulfilled before
+they were written?  They are so vague that you can't tell what was
+prophesied.  If you will read the Jew bible carefully, you will see that
+there was not a line, not a word, prophesying the coming of Christ.
+Catholics were right in saying that if the Jew bible was to be kept in
+awe it must be kept from the people.  Protestants are wrong in letting
+the people read it.
+
+Another argument of Mr. Talmage for the inspiration of the bible is that
+the Jews have been kept as a wandering, persecuted race to fulfill the
+prophecies of the old testament.  I don't believe an infinitely merciful
+God would persecute a race for thousands of years to use them as
+witnesses.  Christian hate has not allowed the Jews to earn a [living?]
+or at least to practice a profession, and now, by a kind of poetic
+justice, the Jews control the money of the world.  Emperors go to their
+bankers with hats in hand and beg them to discount their notes.  This is
+because God has cursed the Jews.  Only a little while ago Christians
+have robbed Hebrews, stripped them naked, turned them into the streets,
+and pointed to them as a fulfillment of divine prophecy.  If you want to
+know the difference between some Jews and some Christians compare the
+address of Felix Adler with the sermon of the Rev. Dr. Talmage.  Mr.
+Talmage thinks that the light of every burning Jewish home in Russia
+throws light upon the gospel.  Every wound in a Jewish breast is to him
+a mouth to proclaim the divine inspiration of the bible.  Every Jewish
+maiden violated is another fulfillment of God's holy word.  What do
+these horrid persecutions prove, except the barbarity of Christians?
+Next it is said that martyrs prove the truth of the bible.  Mr. Talmage
+affirms that no man ever died cheerfully for a lie.  Why, men have gone
+cheerfully to their death for believing that a wafer was God's flesh.
+Thousands have died for their belief in Mohammed.  Men have died because
+they believed in immersion.  Either Mr. Talmage is a Catholic, a
+Mohammedan, a Baptist, or else he believes that these thousands died for
+lies. Every religion has had its martyrs, and every religion cannot be
+true.  Then it is said that miracles prove the inspiration of the bible.
+But it is impossible by the human senses to establish a violation of
+nature's laws.  When the Hebrews threw down sticks before Pharaoh, and
+they became snakes, did he believe?  No; because he was there.  After
+the Jews had been lead through the desert and had been fed with bread
+rained from heaven, had been clothed in indestructible pantaloons, and
+had quenched their thirst with water that followed them over mountains
+and through sands; when they saw Jehovah wrapped in the smoke of Sinai
+they still had more faith in a calf that they could make than anything
+Jehovah could give them.  It was so with the miracles of Christ. Not
+twenty people were converted by one of them.  In fact, human testimony
+cannot substantiate a miracle.  Take the miracle about the bears which
+ate the children who laughed at the bald-headed old prophet.  What do
+you suppose Mr. Talmage would say that meant?  Why, first, that children
+ought to respect preachers, and second, that God is kind to animals.
+Nearly every miracle in the old testament is wrought in the interest of
+slavery, polygamy, creed or lust.  I wish by denying them to rescue the
+reputation of Jehovah from the assaults of the bible.
+
+Who are the witnesses to the truth of the narratives of the Jews' bible?
+Eusebius was one.  He lived in the reign of Constantine, and said that
+the tracks of Pharaoh's chariots could be seen--perfectly preserved in
+the sands of the Red sea.  He was the man who forged the passage in
+Josephus which speaks about the coming of Christ.  Good witness, isn't
+he.  Another one was Polycarp. We don't know much about him.  He
+suffered martyrdom in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, and when the fire
+wouldn't burn and he looked like gold through it, a heathen was so mad
+about it that he ran his sword through Polycarp.  The blood gushed out
+and quenched the fire, while the martyr's soul flew up to heaven in the
+form of a dove.  And that's all we know about Polycarp.  To know how
+much reliance should be placed upon the judgment of such trustworthy
+witnesses, we should look at what some of their beliefs were.  They
+thought that the world was flat; that the phoenix story was true; that
+the stars had souls and sinned; and one said there were four gospels
+because there were four winds and four corners of the earth.  He might
+have added that it was also because a donkey has four legs.
+
+So far as the argument drawn from the sufferings of the martyrs is
+concerned, the speaker said that thousands upon thousands of men had
+died as cheerfully in defense of the koran as Christians had died in
+defense of the bible.  Their heroic suffering simply proved that they
+were sinners in their beliefs, not that those beliefs were true.  This
+argument, as advanced by Mr. Talmage, proves too much.  Every religion
+on the face of the globe has had its martyrs, but all religions cannot
+be true.  Men do die cheerfully for falsehoods when they believe them to
+be true.
+
+[The question of miracles was discussed at some length, and Col.
+Ingersoll declared it was impossible to establish by any human evidence
+that a miracle had ever been performed.]
+
+Pharaoh was not convinced by the alleged miracle performed by Aaron, of
+turning a stick into a serpent.  Why?  Because he was there, and no such
+miracle was ever done.  No twenty people were convinced by the reported
+miracles of Christ, and yet people of the nineteenth century were coolly
+asked to be convinced on hearsay by miracles which those who are
+supposed to have seen them refuse to credit.  It won't do.  The laws of
+nature never have been interrupted, and they never will be.  All the
+books in the universe will never convince a thinking man that miracles
+have been performed.
+
+[The lecture was sprinkled throughout with the satirical wit for which
+Col. Ingersoll is famous, and concluded by the enumeration of a long
+list of "unscientific" facts and events recorded in the bible.]
+
+
+
+
+
+Ingersoll's Lecture on Religious Intolerance
+
+
+
+"How anybody ever came to the conclusion that there was any God who
+demanded that you should feel sorrowful and miserable and bleak one-
+seventh of the time is beyond my comprehension. Neither can I conceive
+how they can say that one-seventh of time is holy.  That day is the most
+sacred day on which the most good has been done for mankind.  Now, there
+was a time among the Jews, when, if a man violated the Sabbath, they
+would kill him.  They said God told them to do it.  I think they were
+mistaken.  If not, if any God did tell them to kill him, then I think he
+was mistaken.  I hope the time will come when every man can spend the
+Sabbath just as he pleases, provided he does not interfere with the
+happiness of others.  I would fight just as earnestly that the Christian
+may go to church as that the infidel may have the right to spend the
+Sabbath as he wishes.  Are the people who go to church the only good
+people?  Are there not a great many bad people who go to church?  Not a
+bank in Pittsburgh will lend a dollar to the man who belongs to the
+church, without security, quicker than to the man who don't go to
+church.  Now, I believe that all laws upon the statute-book should be
+enforced.  I do not blame anybody in this town.  I am perfectly willing
+that every preacher in this town should preach.  They are employed to
+preach, and to preach a certain doctrine, and if they don't preach that
+doctrine they will be turned out.  I have no objection to that.  But I
+want the same privilege to express my views, and what is the difference
+whether the man pays the day he goes in, or pays for it the week before
+by subscription.
+
+What would the church people think if the theatrical people should
+attempt to suppress the churches?  What harm would it do to have an
+opera here tonight?  It would elevate us more than to hear ten thousand
+sermons on the world that never dies.  There is more practical wisdom in
+one of the plays of Shakespeare than in all the sacred books ever
+written.  What wrong would there be to see one of those grand plays on
+Sunday?  There was a time when the church would not allow you to cook on
+Sunday.  You had to eat your victuals cold.  There was a time they
+thought the more miserable you feel the better God feels.  There are
+sixty odd thousand preachers in the United States.  Some people regard
+them as a necessary evil; some as an unnecessary evil.  There are sixty
+odd thousand churches in the United States; and it does seem to me that
+with all the wealth on their side; with all the good people on their
+side; with Providence on their side; with all these advantages they
+ought to let us at least have the right to speak our thoughts.
+
+The history of the world shows me that the right has not always
+prevailed.  When you see innocent men chained to the stake and the
+flames licking their flesh, it is natural to ask, why does God permit
+this?  If you see a man in prison with the chains eating into his flesh
+simply for loving God, you've got to ask why does not a just God
+interfere?  You've got to meet this; it won't do to say that it will
+all come out for the best.  That may do very well for God, but it's
+awful hard on the man.  Where was the God that permitted slavery for two
+hundred years in these United States?  The history of the world shows
+that when a mean thing was done, man did it; when a good thing was
+done, man did it.
+
+But there was a time when there was a drought, and this tribe of savages
+with their false notions of religion says somebody has been wicked.
+Somebody has been lecturing on Sunday.  Then the tribe hunted out the
+wicked man.  They said you've got to stop. We cannot allow you to
+continue your wickedness, which brings punishment upon the whole of us.
+What is the reason they allow me to speak tonight.  Because the
+Christians are not as firm in their belief now as they were a thousand
+years ago.  The luke warmness and hypocrisy of Christians now permit me
+to speak tonight.  If they felt as they did a thousand years ago they
+would kill me.  So religious persecution was born of the instinct of
+self-defense.  Is there any duty we owe to God?  Can we help him, can we
+add to his glory or happiness?  They tell me this God is infinitely
+wise, I cannot add to his wisdom; infinitely happy--I cannot add to his
+happiness.  What can I do?  Maybe he wants me to make prayers that won't
+be answered.  I cannot see any relation that can exist between the
+finite and the infinite. I acknowledge that I am under obligations to my
+fellow man.  We owe duties to our fellow man.  And what?  Simply to make
+them happy.
+
+The only good, is happiness; and the only evil, is misery, or
+unhappiness.  Only those things are right that tend to increase the
+happiness of man; only those things are wrong which tend to increase
+the misery of man.  That is the basis of right and wrong.  There never
+would have been the idea of wrong except that man can inflict sufferings
+upon others.  Utility, then, is the basis of the idea of right and
+wrong.
+
+The church tells us that this world is a school to prepare us for
+another, that it is a place to build up character.  Well, if that is the
+only way character can be developed it is bad for children who die
+before they get any character.  What would you think of a school-master
+who would kill half his pupils the first day?
+
+Now, I read the bible, and I find that God so loved this world that He
+made up His mind to damn the most of us.  I have read this book, and
+what shall I say of it?  I believe it is generally better to be honest.
+Now, I don't believe the bible.  Had I not better say so?  They say that
+if you do you will regret it when you come to die.  If that be true, I
+know a great many religious people who will have no cause to regret it--
+they don't tell their honest convictions about the bible.  There are two
+great arguments of the church--the great man argument and the death-bed.
+They say the religion of your fathers is good enough.  Why should your
+father object to your inventing a better plow than he had.  They say to
+one, do you know more than all the theologians dead?  Being a perfectly
+modest man I say I think I do.  Now we have come to the conclusion that
+every man has a right to think. Would God give a bird wings and make it
+a crime to fly?  Would he give me brains and make it a crime to think?
+Any God that would damn one of his children for the expression of his
+honest thought wouldn't make a decent thief.  When I read a book and
+don't believe it, I ought to say so.  I will do so and take the
+consequence like a man.  And so I object to paying for the support of
+another man's belief.  I am in favor of the taxation of all church
+property.  If that property belongs to God, He is able to pay the tax.
+If we exempt anything, let us exempt the home of the widow and orphan.
+
+[A voice here interrupted the speaker.
+
+Col. Ingersoll--What did the gentleman say?  A voice--O, he's drunk.
+
+Col. Ingersoll--I didn't think any Christian ought to get drunk and come
+here to disturb us.
+
+The speaker resumed:]
+
+The church has today $600,000,000 or $700,000,000 of property in this
+country.  It must cost $2,000,000 a week, that is to say $500 a minute,
+to run these churches.  You give me this money and if I don't do more
+good with it than four times as many churches I'll resign.  Let them
+make the churches attractive and they'll get more hearers.  They will
+have less empty pews if they have less empty heads in the pulpit.  The
+time will come when the preacher will become a teacher.
+
+Admitting that the bible is the book of God, is that His only good job?
+Will not a man be damned as quick for denying the equator as denying the
+bible?  Will he not be damned as quick for denying geology as for
+denying the scheme of salvation?  When the bible was first written it
+was not believed.  Had they known as much about science as we know now
+that bible would not have been written.
+
+
+Col. Ingersoll next gave his views of the Puritans, declared they left
+Holland to escape persecution and came came here to persecute others.
+He referred to the persecutions heaped upon those of other religious
+belief by the Puritans, paid the Catholics the compliment to say that
+Maryland, which they ruled, was the first colony to enact a law
+tolerating religious views not held by themselves, and went on to
+explain that God was never mentioned in the constitution of the United
+States because each colony had a different religious belief, and each
+sect preferred to have God not mentioned at all than to having another
+religious belief than their own recognized.
+
+"In 1876," said the speaker, "our forefathers retired God from politics.
+They said all power comes from the people.  They kept God out of the
+constitution and allowed each state to settle the question for itself."
+
+The present laws of different states were neatly reviewed, so far as they
+relate to the prevention of infidels giving testimony and to religious
+intolerance in any way, and these features were all branded and
+discussed as a gigantic evil.
+
+The lecture was attentively listened to by the immense audience from
+beginning to the end, and the speaker's most blasphemous fights were the
+most loudly applauded.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Ingersoll's Lecture on Hereafter
+
+
+
+My Friends:   I tell you tonight, as I have probably told many of you
+dozens of times, that the orthodox doctrine of eternal punishment in the
+hereafter is an infamous one!  I have no respect for the man who preaches
+it, or pretends to you he believes it.  Neither have I any respect for
+the man who will pollute the imagination of innocent childhood with that
+infamous lie!  And I have no respect for the man who will deliberately
+add to the sorrows of this world with this terrible dogma; no respect
+for the man who endeavors to put that infinite cloud and shadow over the
+heart of humanity.  I will be frank with you and say, I hate the
+doctrine; I despise it, I defy it; I loathe it--and what man of sense
+does not.  The idea of a hell was born of revenge and brutality on the
+one side, and arrant cowardice on the other.  In my judgment the
+American people are too brave, too generous, too magnanimous, too humane
+to believe in that outrageous doctrine of eternal damnation.
+
+For a great many years the learned intellects of Christendom have been
+examining into the religions of other countries and other ages, in the
+world--the religions of the myriads who have passed away.  They examined
+into the religions of Egypt, the religion of Greece, that of Rome and
+the Scandinavian countries.  In the presence of the ruins of those
+religions, the learned men of Christendom insisted that those religions
+were baseless, false and fraudulent.  But they have all passed away.
+
+Now, while this examination was being made, the Christianity of our day
+applauded, and when the learned men got through with the religion of
+other countries, they turned their attention to our religion, and by the
+same methods, by the same mode of reasoning and the same arrangements
+that they used with the old religions they were overturning the religion
+of our day.  How is that? Because every religion in this world is the
+work of man.  Every book that was ever written was written by man.  Man
+existed before books.  If otherwise, we might reasonably admit that
+there was such a thing as a sacred bible.
+
+I wish to call your attention to another thing.  Man never had an
+original idea, and he never will have one, except it be supplied to him
+by his surroundings.  Nature gave man every idea that he ever had in the
+world; and nature will continue to give man his ideas so long as he
+exists.  No man can conceive of anything, the hint of which he has not
+received from the surroundings.  And there is nothing on this earth,
+coming from any other sphere whatever.
+
+As I have before said, man has produced every religion in the world.
+Why is this?  Because each generation sends forth the knowledge and
+belief of the people at the time it was made, and in no book is there
+any knowledge formed, except just at the time it was written.
+Barbarians have produced barbarian religions, and always will produce
+them.  They have produced, and always will produce, ideas and belief in
+harmony with their surroundings, and all the religions of the past were
+produced by barbarians.  We are making religions every day; that is to
+say, we are constantly changing them, adapting them to our purposes, and
+the religion of today is not the religion of a few months or a year ago.
+Well, what changes these religions?  Science does it, education does it;
+the growing heart of man does it.  Some men have nothing else to do but
+produce religions; science is constantly changing them.  If we are
+cursed with such barbarian religions today--for our religions are really
+barbarous--what will they be an hundred or a thousand years hence?
+
+But, friends, we are making inroads upon orthodoxy that orthodox
+Christians are painfully aware of, and what think you will be left of
+their fearful doctrines fifty or a hundred years from tonight?  What
+will become of their endless hell--their doctrine of the future anguish
+of the soul; their doctrine of the eternal burning and never-ending
+gnashing of teeth.  Man will discard the idea of such a future--because
+there is now a growing belief in the justice of a Supreme Being.
+
+Do you not know that every religion in the world has declared every
+other religion a fraud?  Yes, we all know it.  That is the time all
+religions tell the truth--each of the other.
+
+Now, do you want to know why this is:  Suppose Mr. Johnson should tell
+Mr. Jones that he saw a corpse rise from the grave, and that when he
+first saw it, it was covered with loathsome worms, and that while he was
+looking at it, it suddenly was re-clothed in healthy, beautiful flesh.
+And then, suppose Jones should say to Johnson, "Well, now, I saw that
+same thing myself.  I was in a graveyard once, and I saw a dead man rise
+and walk away as if nothing had ever happened to him!"  Johnson opens
+wide his eyes and says to Jones, "Jones, you are a confounded liar!"
+And Jones says to Johnson, "You are an unmitigated liar!"  "No, I'm
+not; you lie yourself."  "No!  I say you lie!"  Each knew the other
+lied, because each man knew he lied himself.  Thus when a man says:  "I
+was upon Mount Sinai for the benefit of my health, and there I met God,
+who said to me, "Stand aside, you, and let me drown these people;" and
+the other man says to him, "I was upon a mountain, and there I met the
+Supreme Brahma."  And Moses steps in and says, "That is not true!" and
+contends that the other man never did see Brahma, and the other man
+swears that Moses never saw God; and each man utters a deliberate
+falsehood, and immediately after speaks truth.
+
+Therefore, each religion has charged every other religion with having
+been an unmitigated fraud.  Still, if any man had ever seen a miracle
+himself, he would be prepared to believe that another man had seen the
+same or a similar thing.  Whenever a man claims to have been cognizant
+of, or to have seen a miracle, he either utters a falsehood, or he is an
+idiot.  Truth relies upon the unerring course of the laws of nature, and
+upon reason. Observe, we have a religion--that is, many people have.  I
+make no pretensions to having a religion myself--possibly you do not. I
+believe in living for this beautiful world--in living for the present,
+today; living for this very hour, and while I do live to make everybody
+happy that I can.  I cannot afford to squander my short life--and what
+little talent I am blessed with in studying up and projecting schemes to
+avoid that seething lake of fire and brimstone.  Let the future take
+care of itself, and when I am required to pass over "on the other side,"
+I am ready and willing to stand my chances with you howling Christians.
+
+We have in this country a religion which men have preached for about
+eighteen hundred years, and men have grown wicked just in proportion as
+their belief in that religion has grown strong; and just in proportion
+as they have ceased to believe in it, men have become just, humane and
+charitable.  And if they believed in it tonight as they believed, for
+instance, at the time of the immaculate Puritan fathers, I would not be
+permitted to talk here in the city of New York.  It is from the coldness
+and infidelity of the churches that I get my right to preach; and I
+thank them for it, and I say it to their credit.
+
+As I have said, we have a religion.  What is it?  In the first place,
+they say this vast universe was created by a God.  I don't know, and you
+don't know, whether it was or not.  Also, if it had not been for the
+first sin of Adam, they say there would never have been any Devil, in
+this world, and if there had been no Devil, there would have been no
+sin, and if no sin, no death.  As for myself I am glad there is death in
+the world, for that gives me a chance.  Somebody has to die to give me
+room, and when my turn comes I am willing to let some one else take my
+place.  But if there is a Being who gave me this life, I thank Him from
+the bottom of my heart--because this life has been a joy and a pleasure
+to me.  Further, because of this first sin of Adam, they say, all men
+are consigned to eternal perdition!  But, in order to save man from that
+frightful hell of the hereafter, Christ came to this world and took upon
+himself flesh, and in order that we might know the road to eternal
+salvation.  He gave us a book called the bible, and wherever that bible
+has been read men have immediately commenced throttling each other; and
+wherever that bible has been circulated they have invented inquisitions
+and instruments of torture, and commenced hating each other with all
+their hearts.  Then we are told that this bible is the foundation of
+civilization, but I say it is the foundation of hell and damnation!, and
+we never shall get rid of that dogma until we get rid of the idea that
+the book is inspired.  Now, what does the bible teach?  I am not going
+to ask this preacher or that preacher what the bible teaches; but the
+question is, "Ought a man be sent to an eternal hell for not believing
+this bible to be the work of a merciful God?"  A very few people read it
+now; perhaps they should read it, and perhaps not; if I wanted to
+believe it, I should never read a word of it--never look upon its pages,
+I would let it lie on its shelf, until it rotted!  Still, perhaps, we
+ought to read it in order to see what is read in schools that our
+children might become charitable and good; to be read to our children
+that they may get ideas of mercy, charity humanity and justice!  Oh,
+yes!  Now read:
+
+"I will make mine arrows drunk with blood and my sword shall devour
+flesh."--Deut. xxxii, 42.
+
+Very good for a merciful God!
+
+"That thy foot may be dipped in the blood of thine enemies, and the
+tongue of the dogs in the same."--Psalms lxviii, 24.
+
+Merciful Being!  I will quote several more choice bits from this
+inspired book, although I have several times made use of them.
+
+"But the Lord thy God shall deliver them unto thee, and shall destroy
+them with a mighty destruction, until they be destroyed.
+
+"And he shall deliver their kings into thine hand, and thou shalt
+destroy their name from under heaven; there shall no man be able to
+stand before thee, until thou have destroyed them."--Deut. vii, 23, 24.
+
+"And Joshua did unto them as the Lord bade him; he houghed their
+horses, and burnt their chariots with fire.  And Joshua at that time
+turned back, and took Hazor, and smote the king thereof with the sword;
+for Hazor beforetime was the head of all those kingdoms.
+
+"And all the cities of those kings, and all the kings of them, did
+Joshua take, and smote them with the edge of the sword, and he utterly
+destroyed them, as Moses, the servant of the Lord, commanded.
+
+"And they smote all the souls that were therein with the edge of the
+sword, utterly destroying them; there was not any left to breathe; and
+he burnt Hazor with fire."
+
+(Do not forget that these things were done by the command of God!)
+
+"But as for the cities that stood still in their strength, Israel burnt
+none of them, save Hazor only, that did Joshua burn.
+
+"And all the spoil of those cities and the cattle, the children of
+Israel took for a prey unto themselves; but every man they smote with
+the edge of the sword, until they had destroyed them, neither left they
+any to breathe."  (As the moral and just God had commanded them.)
+
+"As the Lord commanded Moses His servant, so did Moses command Joshua,
+and so did Joshua; he left nothing undone of all that the Lord had
+commanded Joshua.
+
+"So Joshua took all that land, the hills, and all the south country, and
+all the land of Goshen, and the valley, and the plain and mountain of
+Israel, and the valley of the same;
+
+"Even from the Mount Halak, that goeth up to Seir, even unto Baalgad in
+the valley of Lebanon under Mount Hermon; and all their kings he took,
+and smote theme and slew them.
+
+"Joshua made war a long time on all those kings.  There was not a city
+that made peace with the children of Israel, save the Hivites, the
+inhabitants of Gibeon; all the others they took in battle.
+
+"So Joshua took the whole land, according to all that the Lord said unto
+Moses; and Joshua gave it for an inheritance unto Israel, according to
+their divisions by their tribes.  And the land rested from war."--Josh.
+xi, 7-23.
+
+"When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim
+peace unto it.
+
+"And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, 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 thou shalt besiege it.
+
+"And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou
+shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword.
+
+"But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in
+the city, even all the spoil thereof, shaft thou take unto thyself; and
+thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the Lord thy God hath
+given thee.
+
+"Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from
+thee, which are not of the cities of those nations.
+
+"But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give
+thee for an inheritance, thou shaft save alive nothing that breatheth.
+
+"But thou shalt utterly destroy them."
+
+(Neither the old man nor the woman, nor the beautiful maiden, nor the
+sweet dimpled babe, smiling upon the lap of its mother.)
+
+"And He said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel (a merciful
+God, indeed), put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out
+from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother,
+and every man his neighbor."--Es. xxxii, 29.
+
+(Now recollect, these instructions were given to an army of invasion,
+and the people who were slayed were guilty of the crime of fighting for
+their homes and their firesides.  Oh, most merciful God!  The old
+testament is full of curses, vengeance, jealousy and hatred, and of
+barbarity and brutality.  Now, do you for one moment believe that these
+words were written by the most merciful God?  Don't pluck from the heart
+the sweet flower of piety and crush it by superstition.  Do not believe
+that God ever ordered the murder of innocent women and helpless babes.
+Do not let this superstition turn our heart into stone.  When anything
+is said to have been written by the most merciful God, and the thing is
+not merciful, that I deny it, and say He never wrote it. I will live by
+the standard of reason, and if thinking in accordance with reason takes
+me to perdition, then I will go to hell with my reason, rather than to
+heaven without it.)
+
+Now, does this bible teach political freedom; or does it teach
+political tyranny?  Does it teach a man to resist oppression? Does it
+teach a man to tear from the throne of tyranny the crowned thing and
+robber called king.  Let us see.
+
+"Let every soul be subject to the higher powers; For there is no power
+but God:  the powers that be are ordained of God."--Rom. xiii, I.
+
+"Therefore to must needs be subject not only for wrath, but also for
+conscience sake."--Rom. viii, 4, 4.
+
+(I deny this wretched doctrine.  Wherever the sword of rebellion is
+drawn to protect the rights of man, I am a rebel.  Wherever the sword of
+rebellion is drawn to give men liberty, to clothe him in all his just
+rights, I am on the side of that rebellion.)
+
+Does the bible give woman her rights?  Does it treat woman as she ought
+to be treated, or is it barbarian?  We will see:
+
+"Let woman learn in silence with all subjection."--I Tim. ii, 11
+
+(If a woman should know anything let her ask her husband. Imagine the
+ignorance of a lady who had only that source of information.)
+
+"But suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man,
+but to be in silence.  For Adam was first formed, then Eve. (Indeed!)
+
+"And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, was in the
+transgression."  (Poor woman!)
+
+Here is something from the old testament:
+
+"When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the Lord thy
+God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them
+captives;
+
+"And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto
+her, that thou wouldst have her to be thy wife;
+
+"Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house; and she shall shave her
+head, and pare her nails."--Deut. xxi, 10, 11, 12.
+
+(That is self-defense, I suppose!)
+
+I need not go further in bible quotations to show that woman, throughout
+the old testament, is a degraded being, having no rights which her
+husband, father, brother, or uncle is bound to respect.  Still, that is
+bible doctrine, and that bible is the word of a just and omniscient God!
+
+Does the bible teach the existence of devils?  Of course it does. Yes,
+it teaches not only the existence of a good being, but a bad being.
+This good being has to have a home; that home was heaven.  This bad
+being had to have a home; and that home was hell.  This hell is
+supposed to be nearer to earth than I would care to have it, and to be
+peopled with spirits, spooks, hobgoblins, and all the fiery shapes with
+which the imagination of ignorance and fear could people that horrible
+place; and the bible teaches the existence of hell and this big devil
+and all these little devils.  The bible teaches the doctrine of
+witchcraft and makes us believe that there are sorcerers and witches,
+and that the dead could be raised by the power of sorcery.  Does anybody
+believe it now?
+
+"Then said Saul unto his servants, seek me a woman that hath a familiar
+spirit, that I may go to her and inquire of her.  And his servants said
+to him, Behold, there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at Endor."
+
+In another place he declares that witchcraft is an abomination unto the
+Lord.  He wants no rivals in this business.  Now what does the new
+testament teach:
+
+"Then was Jesus lead up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted
+of the devil.
+
+"And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward
+a-hungered.
+
+"And when the tempter came to him, he said if thou be the Son of God,
+command these stones to be made bread.
+
+"But He answered and said it is written, man shall not live by bread
+alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
+
+"Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city and setteth him on a
+pinnacle of the temple;
+
+"And saith unto him.  If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down, for
+it is written, He shall give His angels charge concerning thee; and in
+their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot
+against a stone.
+
+"Jesus said unto him, it is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the
+Lord, thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve."--Matt. iv, 1-7.
+
+(Is it possible that anyone can believe that the devil absolutely took
+God Almighty, and put him upon the pinnacle of the temple, and
+endeavored to persuade him to jump down?  Is it possible?)
+
+"Again, the devil taketh him into an exceedingly high mountain, and
+showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;
+
+"And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt
+fall down and worship me.
+
+"Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan, for it is written,
+Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve."--
+Matthew iv, 8-11.
+
+(Now only the devil must have known at that time that He was God, and
+God at that time must have known that the other was the devil, who had
+the impudence to promise God a world in which he did not have a tax-
+title to an inch of land.)
+
+Now, what of the Sabbath--the Lord's day?  Why is Sunday the Lord's day?
+If Sunday alone is the Lord's day, whose day is Monday, Tuesday, Friday,
+etc.?  No matter!  The idea, that God hates to hear your children laugh
+on Sunday!  On Sunday let your children play games.  I see a poor man
+who hasn't money enough to go to a big church, and he has too much
+independence to go to the little church which the big church built for
+charity.  If he enters the portals of the big church with poor clothes
+on, the usher approaches him with a severe face, and "Brother, I'm
+sorry, but only high-toned servants of the living God congregate in this
+church for worship, and with that seedy suit on they cannot admit you.
+All the seats in this magnificent edifice are owned and represented by
+'solid' men, by men of capital.  We pay our pastor $5,000 a year--the
+annual eight weeks vacation thrown in--and it would not be profitable
+for us to seriously encourage the attendance of so insignificant a
+person as yourself.  Just around the corner there is a little cheap
+church with a little cheap pastor, where they can dish up hell to you in
+an approved style--in a style more suitable to your needs and condition;
+and the dish will not be as expensive to you, either!"
+
+If I had chanced to be that poor man in the seedy garments, and had been
+endeavoring to serve my Maker for even half a century, I would have felt
+like muttering audibly, "You go to hell!"  (I am not much given to
+profanity, but when I am sorely aggravated and vexed in spirit, I
+declare to you that it is such a relief to me, such a solace to my
+troubled soul, and gives me such heavenly peace, to now and then allow a
+word or phrase to escape my lips which can serve the no other earthly
+purpose, seemingly, than to render emphatic my otherwise mildly
+expressed ideas.  I make this confession parenthetically, and in a
+whisper, my friends, trusting you will not allow it to go further.)
+
+Now, I tell you, if you don't want to go to church, go to the woods and
+take your wife and children and a lunch with you, and sit down upon the
+old log and let the children gather flowers, and hear the leaves
+whispering poems like memories of long ago! and when the sun is about
+going down, kissing the summits of the distant hills, go home with your
+hearts filled with throbs of joy and gladness, and the cheeks of your
+little ones covered with the rose-blushes of health!  There is more
+recreation and solid enjoyment in that than putting on your Sunday
+clothes and going to a canal-boat with a steeple on top of it and
+listening to a man tell you that your chances are about ninety-nine
+thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine to one for being eternally damned!
+
+Oh, strike with a hand of fire, weird musician, thy harp, strung with
+Apollo's golden hair!  Fill the vast cathedral aisles with symphonies
+sweet and dim, deft toucher of the organ's keys! Blow, bugler, blow,
+until thy silver notes do touch and kiss the moonlit waves, and charm
+the lovers wandering mid the vine-clad hills!--but know your sweetest
+strains are but discord compared with childhood's happy laugh--the laugh
+that fills the eyes with light and every heart with joy!  O, rippling
+river of laughter; thou art the blessed boundary line between beasts and
+men, and every wayward wave of thine doth drown some fretful fiend of
+care.  O, Laughter, rose-lipped daughter of joy, there are dimples
+enough in thy cheek to catch and hold and glorify all the tears of
+grief!
+
+Do not make slaves of your children on Sunday.  Don't place them in
+long, straight rows, like fence-posts, and "Sh! children, it's Sunday!"
+when by chance you hear a sound or rustle.  Let winsome Johnny have
+light and air, and let him grow beautiful; let him laugh until his
+little sides ache, if he feels like it; let him pinch the cat's tail
+until the house is in an uproar with his yells--let him do anything that
+will make him happy.  When I was a little boy, children went to bed when
+they were not sleepy, and always got up when they were?  I would like to
+see that changed--we may see it some day.  It is really easier to wake a
+child with a kiss than a blow; with kind words than with harshness and
+a curse.  Another thing:  let the children eat what they want to. Let
+them commence at whichever end of the dinner they please. They know what
+they want much better than you do.  Nature knows perfectly well what she
+is about, and if you go a-fooling with her you may get into trouble.
+The crime charged to me is this: I insist that the bible is not the word
+of God; that we should not whip our children; that we should treat our
+wives as loving equals; that God never upheld polygamy and slavery;
+deny that God ever commanded his generals to slaughter innocent babes
+and tear and rip open women with the sword of war; that God ever turned
+Lot's wife into a pillar of salt (although she might have deserved that
+fate); that God ever made a woman out of a man's, or any other animal's
+rib!  And I emphatically deny that God ever signed or sealed a
+commission appointing his satanic majesty governor-general over an
+extensive territory popularly styled hell, with absolute power to
+torture, burn, maim, boil, or roast at his pleasure the victims of his
+master's displeasure!  I deny these things, and for that I am assailed
+by the clergy throughout the United States.  Now, you have read the
+bible romance of the fall of Adam?  Yes, well, you know that nearly or
+quite all the religions of this world account for the existence of evil
+by such a story as that!  Adam, the miserable coward, informed God that
+his wife was at the bottom of the whole business!  "She did tempt me and
+I did eat!"  And then commenced a row, and we have been engaged in it
+ever since!  You know what happened to Adam and his wife for her
+transgressions?
+
+In another account of what is said to have been the same transaction--
+which is the most sensible account of the two--the Supreme Brahma
+concluded, as he had a little leisure, that he would make a world, and a
+man and woman.  He made the world, the man, and then the woman, and then
+placed the pair on the Island of Ceylon.  (Bear in mind, there were no
+ribs used in this affair.)  This island is said to be the most beautiful
+that the mind of man can conceive of.  Such birds you never saw, such
+songs you never heard! and then such flowers, such verdure!  The
+branches of the trees were so arranged that when the winds swept
+through, there floated out from every tree melodious strains of music
+from a thousand!  Aeolian harps!  After Brahma put them there, he said:
+"Let them have a period of courtship, for it is my desire and will that
+true love should forever precede marriage."  And with the nightingale
+singing, and the stars twinkling, and the little brooklets murmuring,
+and the flowers blooming, and the gentle breezes fanning their brows,
+they courted, and loved!  What a sweet courtship.  Then Brahma married
+the happy pair, and remarked:  "Remain here; you can be happy on this
+island, and it is my will that you never leave it."  Well, after a
+little while the man became uneasy, and said to the wife of his youth, "I
+believe I'll look about a little."  He determined to seek greener
+pastures.  He proceeded to the western extremity of the island, and
+discovered a little narrow neck of land connecting the island with the
+mainland, and the devil--they had a genuine devil in those days, too, it
+seems, who is always "playing the devil" with us--produced a mirage, and
+over on the mainland were such hills and vales, such dells and dales,
+such lofty mountains crowned with perpetual snow, such cataracts clad in
+bows of glory, that he rushed breathlessly back to his wife,
+exclaiming:--"O, Heva! the country over there is a thousand times better
+and lovelier than this; let us migrate."  She, woman-like, said
+"Adami, we must let well enough alone; we have all we want; let us
+stay here."  But he said:  "No, we will go." She followed him, and when
+they came to this narrow neck of land, he took her upon his back and
+carried her across.  But at the instant he put her down there was a
+crash, and looking back they discovered that this narrow neck of land
+had fallen into the sea. The mirage had disappeared, and there was
+nothing but rocks and sand, and the Supreme Brahma cursed them to the
+lowest hell. Then Adami spoke--and it showed him to be every inch a man
+--"Curse me, but curse not her; it was not her fault, it was mine."
+(Our Adam says, with a pusillanimous whine,--Curse her, for it is her
+fault:  she tempted me and I did eat!"  The world, today, is teeming
+with just such cowards!)  Then said Brahma, "I will save her, but not
+thee."  And then spoke his wife, out of the fullness of the love of a
+heart in which there was enough to make all her daughters rich in holy
+affection, "If thou wilt not spare him, spare neither me; I do not wish
+to live without him. I love him."  Then magnanimously said the Supreme
+Brahma, "I will spare you both, and watch over you and your children
+forever!"
+
+Now, tell me truly, which is the grander story?  The book containing
+this story is full of good things; and yet Christians style as heathens
+those who have adopted this book as their guide, and spend thousands of
+dollars annually in sending missionaries to convert them!
+
+It has been too often conceded that because the new testament contains,
+in many passages, a lofty and terse expression of love as the highest
+duty of man, Christianity must have a tendency to ennoble his nature.
+But Christianity is like sweetened whisky and water--it perverts and
+destroys that which it should nourish and strengthen.
+
+Christianity makes an often fatal attack on a man's morality--if he
+happens to be blessed with any--by substituting for the sentiments of
+love and duty to our neighbors, a sense of obligation of blind obedience
+to an infinite, mysterious, revengeful, tyrannical God!  The real
+principle of Christian morality, is servile obedience to a dangerous
+Power!  Dispute the assertions of even your priest as to the
+requirements, dislikes, desires and wishes of the Almighty, and you
+might as well count yourself as lost, sulphurically lost!  If you are
+one of God's chosen, or in other words, have been saved, and are even so
+fortunate as to attain to the glories and joys of the gold-paved streets
+of heaven, you are expected, in looking over the banisters of heaven
+down into the abyss of eternal torture, to view with complacency the
+agonized features of your mother, sister, brother, or infant child--who
+are writhing in hell--and laugh at their calamity!  You are not allowed
+to carry them a drop of water to cool their parched tongue!  And if you
+are a Christian, you at this moment believe you will enjoy the
+situation!
+
+If a man in a quarrel cuts down his neighbor in his sins, the poor,
+miserable victim goes directly to hell!  The murderer may reasonably
+count on a lease of a few weeks of life, interviews his pastor,
+confesses the crime, repents, accepts the grace of God, is forgiven, and
+then smoothly and gently slides from the rudely-constructed scaffold
+into a haven of joy and bliss, there to sing the praises of the Lamb of
+God forever and forever! Poor, unfortunate victim!  Happy murderer!
+
+Ah, what a beautiful religion humanitarianism and charity * might
+become!
+
+[* The following incident, showing Col. Ingersoll's disposition to
+practice what he preaches whenever the opportunity presents itself, we
+have never before seen in print.  One day, during the winter of 1863-4,
+when the colonel had a law office in Peoria. Ill.--and before the close
+of the late war of the rebellion--a thinly clad, middle-aged, lady-like
+woman came into his office and asked assistance, "My good woman, why do
+you ask it?" "Sir, my husband is a private in the --th Illinois
+infantry, and stationed somewhere in Virginia, but I do not know where
+as I have not heard from him for nearly six months, although previous to
+that time I seldom failed to get a letter from him as often as once a
+week, and whenever he received his pay the most of his money came to me.
+To tell the truth, I do not know whether he is living or not.  But one
+thing I do know, I do not hear from him. I have seven children to
+provide for, but no money in the house, not a particle of bread in the
+pantry, nor a lump of coal in the shed, and the landlord threatening to
+turn us out in the storm. This city pledged itself to give wives a
+certain sum monthly, providing they consented to their husband's
+responding to the call of the President for troops, but, disregarding
+these pledges, we and our children are left to starve and freeze, and to
+be turned out of our houses and homes by relentless landlords. Now, sir,
+can you tell me what I am to do?
+
+The Colonel drew his bandanna from his great coat pocket, lightly
+touched his eyes with it, and rising to his feet, pointed to a chair--
+"Sit down, madame, and remain till I return.  I will be back in a few
+minutes."  He picked up a half-sheet of legal-cap and a pencil, and
+departed for the law and other offices of the building--of which there
+were several.  Entering the first that appeared, "Good morning, Smith,
+give me half-a-dollar."  "Well, now, colonel, you are--"  "Never mind
+if I am--I must have it!"  It came.  He entered another.  "Hello!
+colonel, what's new?"  "I want a half-dollar from you!"  'What for?"
+"None of your business--I want the money."  He got it.  He entered a
+third.  "Hello, Bob!  Anything new on eter--"  "Never mind, I must have
+fifty cents!"  "But--"  "But nothing, Jones, give me what I ask for."
+Of course he got what he asked for.  So on through fourteen offices,
+from which he obtained $7.  Returning to his office, he put his hand in
+his own pocket and drew forth a $5 note, and handed the woman $12.
+"Take this, my good woman, and make it go as far as you can.  If you
+obtain relief from no other source, call on me again and I will do the
+best I can for you!"  And still Col. Ingersoll is styled by hell-fire
+advocates an infidel, atheist, dog!]
+
+To do so sweet a thing as to love our neighbors as we love ourselves;
+to strive to attain to as perfect a spirit as a Golden Rule would bring
+us into; to make virtue lovely by living it, grandly and nobly and
+patiently the outgrowth of a brotherhood not possible in this world
+where men are living away from themselves, and trampling justice and
+mercy and forgiveness under their feet!
+
+Speaking of the different religions, of course they are represented by
+the different churches; and the best hold of the churches, and the
+surest way of giving totally depraved humanity a realizing sense of
+their utterly lost condition, is to talk and preach hell with all its
+horrible, terrible concomitants.  True, the different priests advocate
+the doctrine, only when they see that it is the only thing to rouse the
+sinners from their lethargy; for where is the man who will not accept
+the grace of Jesus Christ, if he becomes convinced that his state in the
+hereafter is a terrible one!  The ministers of the different churches
+know full well which side of their bread is buttered.  A priest is a
+divinity among his people--a man around whom his parishioners throw a
+glamour of sanctity, and one who can do no wrong; albeit, his chief and
+growing characteristics are tyranny, arrogancy, self-conceit, deception,
+bigotry and superstition!  Tyrannical do I call them?  Most assuredly!
+Suppose, for example, the Methodist, or Presbyterian church had the
+power to decide whether you, or I, or any other man, should be a
+Methodist or Presbyterian, and we should decline to follow the path
+pointed out to us, or either of us, what I solemnly and candidly ask
+you, would be the result?  Our fate would be more terrible than their
+endless hell!  The inquisition would rise again in all its horrid
+blackness!  Instruments of torture would darken our vision on every
+hand!  But, thank God--not that terrible being whom Christians would
+have us believe is our Maker--this is a free land--free as the air we
+breathe; and you and I can partake of the orthodox waters of life
+freely, or we can let them alone!  When I see a man perched upon a
+pedestal called a "pulpit"     a man who is one of nature's noblemen,
+physically, and fully able to breast the storms of life and earn his
+honest living--telling his hearers with perspiring brow and all his
+might and main of the terrors of the seething cauldron of hell, and how
+certain it is that they are to be unceremoniously dumped therein to be
+boiled through all ages, yet never boiled done--unless they seek
+salvation--when I look upon that man, honor bright, I pity him, for I
+cannot help comparing him with the lower animals!  Then there is a
+reaction, and I feel an utter contempt for him, for he may know, when he
+declares hell is a reality, that he is lying!
+
+Now, of the deception of the preacher.  At the close of a sermon in an
+orthodox church, Rev. Mr. Solemnface steps to the side of Bro.
+Everbright, who has been absent from the brimstone-mill for several
+months:
+
+"Ah, Bro. Everbright, how do you do?  Long time since I have seen you;
+how's your family?  Quite well?  Is it well with thee today?  Rather
+lukewarm, eh?  Sorry, sorry.  Well, brother, can you do something for us
+financially, today?  Our people think my pulpit is too common, and say a
+couple hundred will put it in good shape, and make it desirable and
+attractive.  Can you contribute a few dollars to the fund?"
+
+"Well, Bro. Solemnface, for four long months I have been ill; not a
+day's work have I done, and not a cent of money have I that I can call
+my own.  Next year I trust I can do something for the cause of my
+Maker."
+
+"Ah-h-h-h-h-h!" and Bro. S.'s face assumes a terrible look of
+disappointment, and he is gone in a moment.  Out upon such a fraud!  The
+pulpits of the land are full of them.  The world is cursed with them!
+They possess all the elements of vagabonds, dead-beats, falsifiers,
+beggars, vultures, hyenas and jackals!
+
+In past ages the cross has been in partnership with the sword, and the
+religion of Christ was established by murderers, tyrants and hypocrites.
+I want you to know that the church carried the black flag, and I ask you
+what must have been the civilizing influence of such a religion?  Of all
+the selfish things in this world, it is one man wanting to get to
+heaven, caring nothing what becomes of the rest of mankind, saying:  "If
+I can only get my little soul in!"  I have always noticed that the
+people who have the smallest souls make the most fuss about getting them
+saved.  Here is what we are taught by the church of today.  We are
+taught by them that fathers and mothers can all be happy in heaven, no
+matter who may be in hell; that the husband could be happy there, with
+the wife that would have died for him at any moment of his life, in
+hell.  But they say, "Hell, we don't believe in fire.  I don't think you
+understand me.  What we believe in now is remorse."  What will you have
+remorse for?  For the mean things you have done when you are in hell?
+Will you have any remorse for the mean things you have done when you are
+in heaven?  Or will you be so good then that you won't care how you used
+to be?  I tell you today, that no matter in what heaven you may be, no
+matter in what star you are spending the summer; if you meet another man
+whom you have wronged, you will drop a little behind in the tune.  And,
+no matter in what part of hell you are, you will meet some one who has
+suffered, whose nakedness you have clothed, and the fire will cool up a
+little.  According to this Christian doctrine, you won't care how mean
+you were once.  Is it a compliment to an infinite God to say that every
+being He ever made deserved to be damned the minute He had got him done,
+and that He will damn everybody He has not had a chance to make over?
+Is it possible that somebody else can be good for me, and that this
+doctrine of the atonement is the only anchor for the human soul?
+
+We sit by the fireside and see the flames and sparks fly up the chimney
+--everybody happy, and the cold wind and sleet beating on the window, and
+out on the doorstep a mother with a child on her breast freezing.  How
+happy it makes a fire, that beautiful contrast.  And we say God is good,
+and there we sit, and there she sits and moans, not one night, but
+forever.  Or we are sitting at the table with our wives and children,
+everybody eating, happy and delighted, and Famine comes and pushes out
+its shriveled palms, and, with hungry eyes, implores us for a crust; how
+that would increase the appetite!  And that is the Christian heaven.
+Don't you see that these infamous doctrines petrify the human heart?
+And I would have every one who hears me swear that he will never
+contribute another dollar to build another church, in which is taught
+such infamous lies.  Let every man try to make every day a joy, and God
+cannot afford to damn such a man. Consequently humanity is the only real
+religion.
+
+"Man's inhumanity to man Makes countless millions mourn."
+
+
+
+
+
+Ingersoll's Lecture on the Review of His Reviewers
+
+
+
+Ladies and Gentlemen:   "What have I said?"  "What has been my offense?
+I have been spoken of as if I were a wolf endeavoring to devour the
+entire fold of sheep in the absence of the shepherd."  I believe in the
+trinity of observation, reason and science; the trinity of man, woman
+and child; the trinity of love, joy and hope; and thought that every
+man has a right to think for himself, and no other man has the right to
+debar him of this privilege by torture, by social ostracism, or any of
+the numerous other expedients resorted to by the enemies of advancement.
+I ask:  "Does God wish the lip-worship of a slave? a sneak? of the man
+that dares not reason?  If I were the infinite God, I would rather have
+the worship of one good man of brains than a world of such men.  I am
+told that I am in danger of everlasting fire, and that I shall burn
+forever in hell:  I tell you, my friends, if I were going to hell
+tonight I would take an overcoat with me.  Do not tell me that the
+eternal future of a man may depend upon his belief, I deny it.  That a
+man should be punished for having come to an honest conclusion, the
+honest production of his brain; that an honest conclusion should be
+deemed a crime and so declared, it is an infamous, monstrous assertion,
+and I would rather go to hell than to keep the company of a God who
+would damn his child for an honest belief.
+
+"Next, I 'preached' that a woman was the equal of man, entitled to
+everything that he is entitled to, to be his partner, and to be
+cherished and respected because she is the weaker, to be treated as a
+splendid flower.  I said that man should not be cross to her, but fill
+the house that she is in with such joy that it would burst out at the
+window.  I have said that matrimony is the holiest of sacraments, and I
+have said that the bible took woman up thousands of years ago and handed
+her down to man as a slave, and I have said that the bible is a
+barbarous book for teaching that she is a slave, and I repeat it, and
+will prove later what I have said.  I have pleaded for the right of man,
+of wife, and of the little child; I have said we can govern children by
+love and affection; I have asked for tender treatment for the child of
+crime; I have asked mothers to cease beating their children and take
+them to their hearts; and for this I am denounced by the religious
+press and men in the pulpits as a demon and a monster of heresy, who
+should be driven out from among you as an unclean thing.
+
+"But I should not complain.  Only a few years ago I should have been
+compelled to look at my denouncers through flame and smoke; but they
+dare not treat me so now or they would.  One hundred years ago I should
+have been burned for claiming the right of reason; fifty years ago I
+should have been imprisoned and my wife and children would have been
+torn away from me, and twenty-five years ago I could not have made a
+living in the United States in my profession--the law.  But I live now
+and can see through it all, and all is light.  I delivered another
+lecture, on "Ghosts," in which I sought to show that man had been
+controlled in the past by phantoms created by his own imagination; in
+which the pencil of fear had drawn pictures for him on the canvass of
+superstition, and that men had groveled in they dirt before their own
+superstitious creations.  I endeavored to show that man had received
+nothing from these ghosts but hatred, blood, ignorance and unhappiness,
+and that they had filled our world with woe and tears.  This is what I
+endeavored to show--no more.  Now, every one has as much right to differ
+with me as I with them, but it does not make the slightest difference
+for the purpose of argument whether I am a good man or a bad, whether I
+am ugly or handsome--although I would not object to resting my case on
+that issue; the only thing to be considered and discussed is, is what I
+have said true, or is it untrue?
+
+"Now, I said that the bible came from the ghosts, and that they gave us
+the doctrine of immortality of the soul, which I deny. Now, the
+immortality of the soul, if there is such a thing, is a fact, and
+therefore no book could make it.  If I am immortal, I am; if not, no
+book can make me so.  The doctrine of immortality is based in the hope
+of the human heart, and is not derived from any book or creed.  It has
+its origin in the ebb and flow of the human affections, and will
+continue as long as affection, and is the rainbow in the sky of hope.
+It does not depend on a book, on ghosts, superstition of any kind; it
+is a flower of the human heart.  I did say that these ghosts, or the
+book, taught that human slavery was right, that most monstrous of all
+crimes, that makes miserable the victim and debases the master, for a
+slave can have all the virtues while the master can not.  I did say that
+it riveted the chains upon the oppressed, and that it counseled the
+robbing of that most precious of all boons--Liberty.  I add that the
+book upheld all this, that it sustained and sanctified the institution
+of human slavery.  I did also assert that this same book, which my
+critics claim was inspired by God, inculcated the doctrine of
+witchcraft, for which people, through its teaching were hanged and
+burned for bringing disease upon the regal persons of kings, and for
+souring beer.  I did say that this book upheld that most of all
+infamies, polygamy, and that it did not teach political liberty or
+religious toleration, but political slavery and the most wretched
+intolerance.  I did try to prove that these ghosts knew less than
+nothing about medicine, politics, legislation, astronomy, geology and
+astrology, but I am also aware that in saving these things I have done
+what my censors think I ought not to have done.  But the victor ought
+not to feel malice, and I shall have none.  As soon as I had said all
+these things, some gentlemen felt called upon to answer them, which they
+had a right to do.  Now, I like fairness, am enamored with it, probably
+because I get so little of it.  I can say a great many mean things, for
+I have read all the religious papers, and I ought to be able to account
+for every motive in a mean manner after.
+
+"The first gentleman whom I shall call your attention to is the Rev. Dr.
+Woodbridge.  It seems that when I delivered my lectures the conclusion
+had come to "that man does not believe in anything but matter and force
+--that man does not believe in spirit."  Why not?  If by spirit you mean
+that which thinks, I am one of them myself.  If you mean by spirit that
+which hopes and reasons and loves and aspires, why, then, I am a
+believer in spirits; but whatever spirit there is in this universe I
+will take my oath is a natural product and not superimposed upon this
+world.  All I will say is that whatever is, is natural, and there is as
+much goodness in my judgment, as much spirit here in this world as in
+any other, and you are just as near the heart of the universe here as
+you ever can be.
+
+But, they say, "there is matter and force, and there is force and there
+is spirit."  Well, what of it?  There is no matter without force.  What
+would keep it together unless there was force?  Can you imagine matter
+without force?    Honor bright, can you conceive of force without
+matter?  And what is spirit?  They say spirit is the first thing that
+ever was.  It seems to me sometimes as though spirit was the blossom and
+fruit of all, and not the commencement.  But they say spirit was first.
+What would that spirit do?  No force--no matter--a spirit living in an
+infinite vacuum without side, edge or bottom.  This spirit created the
+world; and if this spirit did, there must have been a time when it
+commenced to create, and back of that an eternity spent in absolute
+idleness.  Can a spirit exist without matter or without force?  I
+honestly say I do not know what matter is, what force is, what spirit
+is; but if you mean by matter anything that I can touch, or by force
+anything that we can overcome then I believe in them.  If you mean by
+spirit anything that can think and love, I believe in spirits.
+
+"The next critic who assailed me was the Rev. Mr. Kalloch.  I am not
+going to show you what I can withstand.  I am not going to say a word
+about the reputation of this man, although he took some liberties with
+mine.  This gentleman says negation is a poor thing to die by.  I would
+just as lief die by that as the opposite.  He spoke of the last hours of
+Paine and Voltaire and the terrors of their death-beds; but the
+question arises, is there a word of truth in all he said?  I have
+observed that the murderer dies with courage and firmness in many
+instances, but that does not make me think that it sanctified his crime;
+in fact, it makes no impression upon me one way or the other. When a man
+through old age or infirmity approaches death the intellectual faculties
+are dimmed, his senses become less and less, and as he loses these he
+goes back to his old superstition. Old age brings back the memories of
+childhood.  And the great bard gave in the corrupt and besotted
+Falstaff--who prattled of babbling brooks and green fields--an instance
+of the retracing steps taken by the memory at the last gasp.  It has
+been said that the bible was sanctified by our mothers.  Every
+superstition in the world, from the beginning of all time, has had such
+a sanctification.  The Turk dying on the Russian battlefield, pressing
+the Koran to his bosom, breathes his last thinking of the loving
+adjuration of his mother to guard it.  Every superstition has been
+rendered sacred by the love of a mother.  I know what it has cost the
+noble and the brave to throw to the winds these superstitions.  Since
+the death of Voltaire, who was innocent of all else than a desire to
+shake off the superstitions of the past, the curse of Rome has pursued
+him, and ignorant protestants have echoed that curse.  I like Voltaire.
+Whenever I think of him it is as a plumed knight coming from the fray
+with victory shining upon his brow.  He was once in the Bastille, and
+while there he changed his name from Francis Marie Aloysius to Voltaire;
+and when the Bastille was torn down "Voltaire" was the battle cry of
+those who did it.  He did more to bring about religious toleration than
+any man in the galaxy of those who strove for the privilege of free
+thought.  He was always on the side of justice.  He was full of faults
+and had many virtues. His doctrines have never brought unhappiness to
+any country.  He died as serenely as anyone could.  Speaking to his
+servant, he said, "Farewell my faithful friend."  Could he have done a
+more noble act than to recognize him who had served him faithfully as a
+man?  What more could he wished?  And now let me say here, I will give a
+$1,000 in gold to any clergyman who can substantiate that the death of
+Voltaire was not as peaceful as the dawn.  And of Thomas Paine, whom
+they assert died in fear and agony, frightened by the clanking chains of
+devils, in fact, frightened to death by God--I will give $1,000 likewise
+to anyone who can substantiate this absurd story--a story without a word
+of truth in it.  And let me ask, who dies in the most fear, the man who,
+like the saint, exclaims:  "My God, my God! why hast thou forsaken me?"
+or Voltaire, who peacefully and quietly bade his servant farewell?  The
+question is not who died right, but who lived right.  I look upon death
+as the most unimportant moment of life, and believe that not half the
+responsibility is attached to dying that is to living properly.  This
+Rev. Mr. Kalloch is a baptist.  He has a right to be a baptist.  The
+first baptist, though was a heretic; but it is among the wonders that
+when a heretic gets fifteen or twenty to join him he suddenly begins to
+be orthodox.  Roger Williams was a baptist, but how he, or anyone not
+destitute of good sense, could be one, passes my comprehension.  Let me
+illustrate:
+
+Suppose it was the Day of Judgment tonight and we were all assembled, as
+the ghosts say we will be, to be judged, and God should ask a man:
+
+"Have you been a good man?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Have you loved your wife and children?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Have you taken good care of them and made them happy?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Have you tried to do right by your neighbors?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Paid all your debts?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+And then cap the climax by asking:
+
+"Were you ever baptized?"
+
+Could a solitary being hear that question without laughing?  I think
+not.  I once happened to be in the company of six or seven baptist
+elders (I never have been able to understand since how I got into such
+bad company), and they wanted to know what I thought of baptism.  I
+answered that I had not given the matter any attention, in fact I had no
+special opinion upon the subject. But they pressed me and finally I told
+them that I thought, with soap baptism was a good thing.
+
+The Rev. Mr. Guard has attacked me, and has described me, among other
+things, as a dog barking at a train.  Of course he was the train.  He
+said, first, the bible is not an immoral book, because I swore upon it
+when I joined the Free and Accepted Masons.  That settles the question.
+Secondly, he says that Solomon had softening of the brain and fatty
+degeneration of the heart; thirdly, that the Hebrews had the right to
+slay all the inhabitants of Canaan according to the doctrine of the
+survival of the fittest.  He says that the destruction of these
+Canaanites, the ripping open by the bloody sword of women with child was
+an act of sublime mercy.  Think of that!  He says that the Canaanites
+should have been driven from their homes, and not only driven, but that
+the men who simply were guilty of the crime of fighting for their native
+land--the old men with gray hairs; the old mothers, the young mothers,
+the little dimpled, prattling child--that it was an act of sublime mercy
+to plunge the sword of religious persecution into old and young.  If
+that is mercy, let us have injustice.  If there is that kind of a God I
+am sorry that I exist.  Fourthly, Mr. Guard said God has the right to do
+as he pleases with the beings he has created; and, fifthly, that God,
+by choosing the Jews and governing them personally, spoiled them to that
+degree that they crucified Him the first opportunity they had.  That
+shows what a good administration will do. Sixthly, He says polygamy is
+not a bad thing when compared with the picture of Anthony and Cleopatra,
+now on exhibition in this city.  I will just say one word about art.  I
+think this is one of the most beautiful words in our language, and do
+you know, it never seemed to me necessary for art to go into partnership
+with a rag?  I like the paintings of Angelo, of Raphael--I like those
+splendid souls that are put upon canvas--all there is of human beauty.
+There are brave souls in every land who worship nature grand and nude,
+and who, with swift, indignant hand, tear off the fig leaves of the
+prude.  Seventhly, it may be said that the bible sanctions slavery, but
+that it is not an immoral book if it does.  Mr. Guard playfully says
+that he is a puppy nine days old; that he was only eight days old when I
+came here.  I'm inclined to think he has over stated his age.  I account
+for his argument precisely as he did for the sin of Solomon, softening
+of the brain, or fatty degeneration of the heart.  It does seem to me
+that if I were a good Christian and knew that another man was going down
+to the bottomless pit to be miserable and in agony forever, I would try
+to stop him, and instead of filling my mouth with epithet and invective,
+and drawing the lips of malice back from the teeth of hatred, my eyes
+would be filled with tears, and I would do what I could to reclaim him
+and take him up in the arms of my affection.
+
+The next gentleman is the Rev. Mr. Robinson, who delivered a sermon
+entitled 'Ghost against God, or Ingersoll against Honesty.'  Of course
+he was honest.  He apologized for attending an infidel lecture upon the
+ground that he hated to contribute to the support of a materialistic
+showman.  I am willing to trade fagots for epithets, and the rack for
+anything that may be said in his sermon.  I am willing to trade the
+instrument of torture with which they could pull the nails from my
+fingers for anything which the ingenuity of orthodoxy can invent.   When
+I saw that report--although I do not know that I ought to tell it--I
+felt bad.  I knew that man's conscience must be rankling like a snake in
+his bosom, that he had contributed a dollar to the support of a man as
+bad as I.  I wrote him a letter, in which I said:  "The Rev. Samuel
+Robinson, My Dear Sir.  In order to relieve your conscience of the
+stigma of having contributed to the support of an unbeliever in Ghosts,
+I herewith enclose the dollar you paid to attend my lecture."  I then
+gave him a little good advice to be charitable, and regretted
+exceedingly that any man could listen to me for an hour and a half and
+not go away satisfied that other men had the same right to think that he
+had.
+
+The speaker went on to answer the argument of Mr. Robinson with regard
+to persecution, contending that protestants had been guilty of it no
+less than catholics; and showing that the first people to pass an act
+of toleration in the new world were the catholics in Maryland.  The
+reverend gentleman has stated also that infidelity has done nothing for
+the world in the development of art and science.  Has he ever heard of
+Darwin, of Tyndall, of Huxley, of John W. Draper, of Auguste Comte, of
+Descartes, Laplace, Spinoza, or any man who has taken a step in advance
+of his time?  Orthodoxy never advances, when it does advance, it ceases
+to be orthodoxy.
+
+A reply to certain strictures in the Occident led the lecturer up to
+another ministerial critic, namely, the Rev. W.E. Ijams.
+
+I want to say that, so far as I can see, in his argument this gentleman
+has treated me in a kind and considerate spirit.  He makes two or three
+mistakes, but I suppose they are the fault of the report from which he
+quoted.  I am made to say in his sermon that there is no sacred place in
+the universe.  What I did say was:  There is no sacred place in all the
+universe of thought; there is nothing too holy to be investigated,
+nothing too sacred to be understood, and I said that the fields of
+thought were fenceless, that they should be without a wall.  I say so
+tonight. He further said that I said that a man had not only the right
+to do right, but to do wrong.  What I did say, was:  "Liberty is the
+right to do right, and the right to think right, and the right to think
+wrong," not the right to do wrong.  That is all I have to say in regard
+to that gentleman, except that, so far as I could see, he was perfectly
+fair, and treated me as though I was a human being as well as he.
+
+The speaker sarcastically referred to the slurs thrown upon him by his
+reviewers, who have claimed that his theories have no foundation, his
+arguments no reason, and that his utterances are vapid, blasphemous, and
+unworthy a reply.  He said that their statements and their actions were
+sadly at variance, for, while declaring him a senseless idiot, they
+spent hours in striving to prove themselves not idiots; in other words,
+in one breath they declare that his views were absolutely without point,
+and needed no explaining away; while in direct rebuttal of this
+declaration, they devoted time and labor in attempts to disprove the
+very things they called self-evident absurdities.
+
+Turning from this subject, Mr. Ingersoll read numerous extracts from the
+bible, with interpolated comments.  He claimed that the bible authorized
+slavery, and that many devoted believers in that book had turned the
+cross of Christ into a whipping post.  He did not wish it understood
+that he could find no good in believers in creeds; far from it, for
+some of his dearest friends were most orthodox in their religious ideas,
+and there had been hundreds of thousands of good men among both clergy
+and laymen.  History has shown no people more nobly self-sacrificing
+than the Jesuit Fathers who first visited this country to proselyte
+among the Indians.  But these men and their like were better than their
+creeds; better than the book in which their faith was centered. The
+bible tells us distinctly that the world was made in six days--not
+periods, but actual, bona fide days--a statement which it iterates and
+reiterates.  It also tells us that God lengthened the day for the
+benefit of a gentleman named Joshua, in other words, that he stopped the
+rotary motion of the earth.  Motion is changed into heat by stoppage,
+and the world turns with such velocity that its sudden stoppage would
+create a heat of intensity beyond the wildest flight of our imagination,
+and yet this impossible feat was performed that Joshua might have longer
+time to expend in slaying a handful of Amorites.  The bible also upholds
+the doctrines of witchcraft and spiritualism, for Saul visited the witch
+of Endor, and she, after preparing the cabinet, trotted out the spirit
+of Samuel, said spirit kindly joining in conversation with Saul, without
+requiring the aid of a trance medium.  The speaker then quoted at length
+from Leviticus concerning wizards and evil spirits, described the
+temptation of Christ by Satan, and the driving of devils from man into
+swine. He sneered at the rights of children as biblically described,
+citing the law which sentenced them to be stoned to death for
+disobedience to parents, the almost sacrifice of Isaac by his father,
+and the actual murder of Jephthah's daughter, asking if a God who could
+demand such worship was worthy the love of man.  He next referred to the
+conversation between God and Satan concerning the man Job, and of the
+reward given to the latter for his long continued patience.  His three
+daughters and his seven sons had been taken from him merely to test his
+patience, and the merciful God gave him in exchange three other
+daughters and seven sons, but they were not the children whom he had
+loved and lost. The bible represents woman as vastly inferior to man,
+while he believed, with Robbie Burns, that God made man with a prentice-
+hand, and woman after He had learned the trade.  Polygamy, also, was a
+doctrine supported by this pure and pious work; a doctrine so foul that
+language is not strong enough to express its infamy. The bible taught,
+as a religious creed, that if your wife, your sister, your brother, your
+dearest friend, tempted you to change from the religion of your fathers,
+your duty to God demanded that you should at once strike a blow at the
+life of your tempter. Let us suppose, then, that in truth God went to
+Palestine and selected the scanty tribes of Israel as his chosen people,
+and supposing that he afterward came to Jerusalem in the shape of a man
+and taught a different doctrine from the one prescribed by their book
+and their clergy, and that the chosen people, in obedience to the
+education he had prepared for them, struck at the life of him who
+tempted them.  Were they to be cursed by God and man because the former
+had reaped the harvest of his own sowing?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Ingersoll's Lecture on "How the Gods Grow"
+
+
+
+Ladies and Gentlemen:  Priests have invented a crime called blasphemy.
+That crime is the breastwork behind which ignorance, superstition and
+hypocrisy have crouched for thousands of years, and shot their poisoned
+arrows at the pioneers of human thought.  Priests tell us that there is
+a God somewhere in heaven who objects to a human being, thinking and
+expressing his thought.  Priests tell us that there is a God somewhere
+who takes care of the people of this world; a God somewhere who watches
+over the widow and the orphan; a God somewhere who releases the slave;
+a God somewhere who visits the innocent man in prison; the same God that
+has allowed men for thousands of years to burn to ashes human beings
+simply for loving that God.  We have been taught that it is dangerous to
+reason upon these subjects--extremely dangerous--and that of all crimes
+in the world, the greatest is to deny the existence of that God.
+
+Redden your hands in innocent blood; steal the bread of the orphan,
+deceive, ruin and desert the beautiful girl who has loved and trusted
+you, and for all this you may be forgiven; for all this you can have
+the clear writ of that bankrupt court of the gospel.  But deny the
+existence of one of these gods, and the tearful face of mercy becomes
+lurid with eternal hate; the gates of heaven are shut against you, and
+you, with an infinite curse ringing in your ears, commence your
+wanderings as an immortal vagrant, as a deathless convict, as an eternal
+outcast.  And we have been taught that the infinite has become enraged
+at the finite simply when the finite said:  "I don't know!"  Why,
+imagine it.  Suppose Mr. Smith should hear a couple of small bugs in his
+front yard discussing the question as to the existence of Smith; and
+suppose one little red bug swore on the honor of a bug that, in his
+judgment, no such man as Smith lived.  What would you think of Mr. Smith
+if he fell into a rage, and brought his heel down on this little atheist
+bug and said:  "I will teach you that Smith is a diabolical fact!"  And
+yet if there is an infinite God, there is infinitely a greater
+difference between that God and a human being than between Shakespeare
+and the smallest bug that ever crawled.  It cannot be; there is
+something wrong in this thing somewhere.
+
+I am told, also, that this being watches over us, takes care of us.  And
+the other day I read a sermon (you will hardly believe it, but I did);
+I had nothing else to.  I had read everything in that paper, including
+the advertisements; so I read the sermon. It was a sermon by Rev. Mr.
+Moody on prayer, in which he took the ground that our prayer should be
+"Thy will be  done;"  and he seemed to believe that if we prayed that
+prayer often enough we could induce God to have his own way.  He gives
+an instance of a woman in Illinois who had a sick child, and she prayed
+that God would not take from her arms that babe.   She did not pray "Thy
+will be done," but she prayed, according to Mr. Moody, almost a prayer
+of rebellion, and said:  "I cannot give up my babe."  God heard her
+prayer, and the child got well; and Mr. Moody says it was an idiot when
+it got well.  For fifteen years that woman watched over and took care of
+that idiotic child; and Mr. Moody says how much better would it have
+been if she had allowed God to have had his own way.  Think of a God who
+would punish a mother for speaking to Him from an agonizing heart and
+saying, "I cannot give up my babe," and making the child an idiot.  What
+would the devil have done under the same circumstances?  That is the God
+we are expected to worship.  I range myself with the opposition. The
+next day I read another sermon preached by the Rev. De Witt Talmage, a
+man of not much fancy, but of great judgment.  He preached a sermon on
+dreams, and went on to say that God often visited us in dreams, and that
+He often convinces men of His existence in that way.  So far as I am
+concerned I had rather see something in the light.  And, according to
+that sermon, there was a poor woman in England, a pauper who had the
+rheumatism, and there was another pauper who had not the rheumatism;
+and the pauper who had not the rheumatism used to take food to the
+pauper that had.  After a while the pauper without rheumatism died, and
+then the pauper with the rheumatism began to think in her own mind, who
+will bring me food?  That night God appeared to her in a dream.  He did
+not cure her rheumatism though.  He appeared to her in a dream, and he
+took her out of the house and pointed on the right hand to an immense
+mountain of bread, and on the left hand to an immense mountain of
+butter.  And when I read that I said to myself, my Lord, what a place
+that would be to start a political party.  And he said to her:  "These
+belong to your father; do you think that he will allow one of his
+children to starve?  What a place would Ireland be with that mountain of
+bread and butter!  Until I read these two sermons I hardly believed that
+in this day and generation anybody believed that God would make a child
+an idiot simply because the mother had prayed for its sweet dear life,
+or that God's visits are only in dreams.  But so it is.
+
+Orthodoxy has not advanced upon the religion of the Fiji Islander.  It
+is the same yesterday, today and forever.  Now we are told that there is
+a god; and nearly every nation has had a god; generally a good many of
+them.  You see the raw material was so cheap, and Gods were manufactured
+so easily, that heaven has always been crammed with the phantoms of
+these monsters.  But they say there is a god, and every savage tribe
+believes in a God.  It is an argument made to me every day.  I concede
+to you that fact; I concede to you that all savages agree with you.  I
+admit it takes a certain amount of civilization, a certain amount of
+thought, to rise above the idea that some personal being, for his own
+ends, for his own glory, made and governs this universe. I admit that it
+takes some thought to see the universe is good and all that is good, and
+every star that shines is a part of God, and I am something, no matter
+how little, and that the infinite cannot exist without me, and that
+therefore I am a part of the infinite.  I admit that it takes a little
+civilization to get to that point.
+
+Now every nation has made a god, and every man that has made a god has
+used himself for a pattern; and men have put into the mouth of their
+god all their mistakes in astronomy, in geography, in philosophy, in
+morality, and the god is never wiser or better than his creators.  If
+they believe in slavery, so did he; if they believe in eating human
+flesh, he wanted his share; if they were polygamous, so was he; if they
+were cruel, so was he.  And just to the extent that man has become
+civilized, he has civilized his god.  You can hardly imagine the
+progress that our God has made in four thousand years.
+
+Four thousand years ago He was a barbarian; tonight He is quite an
+educated gentleman.  Four thousand years ago He believed in killing and
+butchering little babes at the breasts of their mothers; He has
+reformed.  Four thousand years ago He did not believe in taking
+prisoners of war.  He said, kill the old men; mingle their blood with
+the white hair.  Kill the women.  But what shall we do, O God, with the
+maidens?  Give them to satisfy the lust of the soldiers and of the
+priests!  If there is anywhere in the serene heaven a real God.  I want
+him to write in the book of His eternal remembrance, opposite my name,
+that I deny that lie for Him.
+
+Four thousand years ago our God was in favor of slavery; four thousand
+years ago our God would have a man beaten to death with rugged rocks for
+expressing his honest thought; four thousand years ago our God told the
+husband to kill his wife if she disagreed with him upon the important
+subject of religion; four thousand years ago our God was a monster;
+and if He is any better now, it is simply because we have made Him so.
+I am talking about the God of the Christian world.  There may be, for
+aught I know, upon the shore of the eternal vast, some being whose very
+thought is the constellation of those numberless stars.  I do not know;
+but if there is he has never written a bible; he has never been in
+favor of slavery; he has never advocated polygamy, and he never told
+the murderer to sheathe his dagger in the dimpled breast of a babe.  But
+they say to me, our God has written a book.  I am glad he did, and it is
+by that book that I propose to judge them.  I find in that book that it
+was a crime to eat of the tree of knowledge.  I find that the church has
+always been the enemy of education, and I find that the church still
+carries the flaming sword of ignorance and bigotry over the tree of
+knowledge.
+
+And if that story is true, ought we not after all to thank the devil?
+He was the first school master; he was the first to whisper liberty in
+our ears; he was the author of modesty.  He was the author of ambition
+and progress.  And as for me, give me the storm and tempest of thought
+and action rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith.  Punish me
+when and how you will, but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of
+knowledge.  And there is one peculiar thing I might as well speak of
+here.  While the world has made gods, it has also made devils; and as a
+rule the devils have been better friends to man than the gods.  It was
+not a devil that drowned the world; it was not a devil that covered
+with the multitudinous waves of an infinite sea the corpses of men,
+women and children.
+
+That was the good god.  The devil never sent pestilence and famine; the
+devil never starved women and children; that was the good God.  The
+meanest thing recorded of the devil is what happened concerning my
+servant Job.  According to that book God met the devil and said:  "Where
+have you been?"  "Oh, been walking up and down."  "Have you noticed my
+man Job; nobody like him!"  "Well, who wouldn't be; you have given him
+everything; but take away what he has, and he will curse you to your
+face." And so the devil went to work and tried it.  It was a mean thing.
+And that was all done to decide what you might call a wager on a
+difference of opinion between the serene highnesses.  He took away his
+property, but Job didn't sin; and when God met the devil, he said:
+"Well, what did I tell you, smarty?"  "Ah," he said, "that is all very
+well, but you touch his flesh and he will curse you; and he did, but
+Job didn't curse him.  And then what did God do to help him!  He gave
+him some other children better looking than the first ones.  What kind
+of an idea is that for a God to kill our children and then give us
+better looking ones! If you have loved a child, I don't care if it is
+deformed, if you have held it in your arms and covered its face with
+kisses, you want that child back and no other.
+
+I find in this bible that there was an old gentleman a little short of
+the article of hair.  And as he was going through the town a number of
+little children cried out to him "Go up, thou bald head!"  And this man
+of God turned and cursed them.  A real good-humored old fellow!  And two
+bears came out of the woods and tore in pieces forty-two children!  How
+did the bears get there? Elisha could not control the bears.  Nobody but
+God could control the bears in that way.  Now just think of an infinite
+God making a shining star, having his attention attracted by hearing
+some children saying to an old gentlemen, "Go up, thou bald head!" and
+then speaking to his secretary or somebody else, "Bring in a couple of
+bears now!"  What a magnificent God!  What would the devil have done
+under the same circumstances?  And yet that is the God they want to put
+into the constitution in order to make our children gentle and kind and
+loving.
+
+You hate a God like that.  I do; I despise him.  And yet little
+children in the Sabbath-school are taught that infamous lie. Why, I have
+very little respect for an old man that will get mad about such a thing,
+anyway.  What would the Christian world say of me if I should have a few
+children torn to pieces if they should make that remark in my face?
+What would the devil have done under the same circumstances?  I tell
+you, I cannot worship a God who is no better than the devil!  I cannot
+do it.  And if you will just read the old testament with the bandage off
+your eyes and the cloud of fear from your heart, you will come to the
+conclusion that it was written not only by men, but by barbarians, by
+savages, and that it is totally unworthy of a civilized age.  I believe
+in no God who believes in slavery.  I will worship no God who ever said
+that one of His children should own another of His children.  But they
+say to me, there must be a God somewhere!  Well, I say I don't know.
+There may be.  I hope there is more than one--one is so lonesome.  Just
+think of an old bachelor, always alone!  I want more than one.  And they
+say, somebody must have made this!  Well, I say I don't know.  But it
+strikes me that the indestructible cannot be created.  What would you
+make it of?  "Oh, nothing!"  Well, it strikes me that nothing,
+considered in the light of a raw material, is a decided failure.  For my
+part, I cannot conceive of force apart from matter, and I cannot
+conceive of matter apart from force.  I cannot conceive of force
+somewhere without acting upon something; because force must be active,
+or it is not force; and if it has no matter to act upon, it ceases to
+be force.  I cannot conceive of the smallest atom of matter staying
+together without force. Beside, if some god made all this, there must
+have been some morning when he commenced!  And if he has existed always,
+there is an eternity back of that when he never did anything; when he
+lived in an infinite hole, without side, top or bottom!  He did not
+think, for there was nothing to think about.  Certainly he did not
+remember, for nothing had ever happened.  Now I cannot conceive of this!
+I do not say it is not so.  I may be damned for my smartness, yet--I
+simply say I cannot conceive of it, that is all.  But men tell me, you
+cannot conceive of eternity!  That is just what I can conceive of.  I
+cannot conceive of its stopping.  They say I cannot conceive of infinite
+space!  That is just what I can conceive of; because, let me imagine
+all I can, my imagination will stand upon the verge and see infinite
+space beyond.  Infinite space is a necessity of the mind, because I
+cannot think of enough matter to fill it.  Eternity is a necessity of
+the mind, because I cannot dream of the cessation of time.  But they say
+there is a design in the world, consequently there must be a designer.
+Well, I don't know.
+
+Paley says that the more wonderful a thing is, the greater the necessity
+for creation; that a watch is a wonderful thing, and that it must have
+had a creator; that the watchmaker is more wonderful than the watch,
+therefore he must have had a creator. Then we come to God; He is
+altogether more wonderful than the watchmaker, therefore He had no
+creator.  There is a link out somewhere; I don't pretend to understand
+it.  And so I say, that had the world been any other way, you would have
+seen the same evidence of design, precisely.  We grow up with our
+conditions, and you cannot imagine of a first cause.  Why?  Every cause
+has an effect.
+
+Strike your hands together; they feel warm.  The effect becomes a cause
+instantly, and that cause produces another effect, and the effect
+another cause; and there could not have been a cause until there was an
+effect.  Because until there was an effect, nothing had been caused;
+until something had been caused, I am positive there was no cause.  Now
+you cannot conceive of a lost effect, because the lost effect of which
+you can think, will in turn become a cause and that cause produce
+another effect.  And as you cannot think of a lost effect, you cannot
+think of a first cause; it is not thinkable by the human mind.
+
+They say God governs this world.  Why does He not govern Russia as well
+as He does Massachusetts?  Why does He allow the Czar to send beautiful
+girls of sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, simply for saying a word in favor
+of human liberty, to mines in Siberia, where they draw carts with knees
+bruised and bleeding, with hands scarred and swollen?  What is that God
+worth that allows such things in the world He governs?  Did He govern
+this country when it had four millions of slaves?--when it turned the
+cross of Christ into a whipping-post--when the holy bible was an
+auction-block on which the mother stood while her babe was sold from her
+breast?--when bloodhounds were considered apostles?  Was God governing
+the world when the prisoners were confined in the Bastille?  It seems to
+me, if there is a God, and someone would repeat the word "Bastille." it
+would cover almost his face with the blood of shame.  But they say
+heaven will balance all the ills of life.  Let us see:  A large majority
+of us are sinners--at least a large majority with whom I am acquainted;
+and a majority of the Christians with whom I am acquainted are worse
+than sinners.  And if their doctrine is true, you will be astonished at
+the gentlemen you will see in hell that day.  You will know by the cast
+of their countenance that they used to preach here.  They say that it
+may be that the sinners here have a very good time, and that the
+Christians don't have a very good time; that it is awful hard work to
+serve the Lord, and that you carry a cross when you deny yourself the
+delights of murder and forgery, and all manner of rascality that fills
+life with delight.  But they say that while the rascals are having a
+good time, they will catch it in the other world.  But, according to
+their account, ninety-nine out of a hundred will be damned, and I think
+it will be a close call for the hundredth.  Like that dear old Scotch
+woman, when she was talking about the Presbyterian faith, some one said
+to her:  "My dear woman, if your doctrine is true, nobody but you and
+your husband will be saved."  "Ah," said she,  "I'm na' sae sure about
+John."  About one in a hundred will be saved, and the other ninety-nine
+will be in misery.  So that on the average there will not be half as
+much happiness in the next world as in this.  So, instead of God's plan
+getting better, it gets worse; and throughout all the ages of eternity
+there will be less happiness than in this world.  This world is a
+school; this world is where we develop moral muscle.  It may be that we
+are here simply because men cannot advance only through agony and pain.
+If it is necessary to have pain and agony to advance morally, then
+nobody can advance in heaven.  Hell will be the only place offering
+opportunities to any gentleman who wishes to increase his moral muscle.
+
+A gentleman once asked me if I could suggest any improvement on the
+present order of things, if I had the power.  Well, said I, in the first
+place, I would make good health catching instead of disease.  There will
+be no humanity until we get the orthodox God out of our religion.  I
+want to do what little I can to put another one in God's name, so that
+we will worship a supreme human god, so that we will worship mercy,
+justice, love and truth, and not have the idea that we must sacrifice
+our brother upon the altar of fear to please some imaginary phantom.
+See what Christianity has done for the world!  It has reduced Spain to a
+guitar, Italy to a hand organ and Ireland to exile.  That is what
+religion has done.  Take every country in the whole world, and the
+country that has got the least religion is the most prosperous, and the
+country that has got the most religion is in the worst condition.
+
+In the vast cemetery, called the past, are most of the religions of men
+and there, too, are nearly all their gods.
+
+The sacred temples of India were ruins long ago.  Over column and
+cornice; over the painted and pictured walls, cling and creep the
+trailing vines.  Brahma, the golden, with four heads and four arms;
+Vishnu, the sombre, the punisher of the wicked, with his three eyes, his
+crescent, and his necklace of skulls; Siva, the destroyer, red with
+seas of blood; Kali, the goddess; Draupadi, the white-armed, and
+Chrishna, the Christ, all passed away and left the thrones of heaven
+desolate.  Along the banks of the sacred Nile, Iris no longer wandering
+weeps, searching for the dead Osiris.  The shadow of Typhon's scowl
+falls no more upon the waves.  The sun rises as of yore, and his golden
+beams still smite the lips of Memnon, but Memnon is as voiceless as the
+Sphinx.  The sacred fanes are lost in desert sands; the dusty mummies
+are still waiting for the resurrection promised by their priests, and
+the old beliefs wrought in curiously sculptured stone, sleep in the
+mystery of a language lost and dead Odin, the author of life and soul,
+Vili and Ve, and the mighty giant Ymir, strode long ago from the ice
+halls of the North; and Thor, with iron glove and glittering hammer,
+dashes mountains to the earth no more.
+
+Broken are the circles and the cromlechs of the ancient Druids; fallen
+upon the summits of the hills, and covered with the centuries' moss are
+the sacred cairns.  The divine fires of Persia and of the Aztecs have
+died out in the ashes of the past, and there is none to rekindle, and
+none to feed the holy flames. The harp of Orpheus is still; the drained
+cup of Bacchus has been thrown aside; Venus lies dead in stone, and her
+white bosom heaves no more with love.  The streams still murmur, but no
+naiads bathe; the trees still wave, but in the forest aisles no dryads
+dance.  The gods have flown from high Olympus.  Not even the beautiful
+women can lure them back, and Danae lies unnoticed, naked to the stars.
+Hushed forever are the thunders of Sinai; lost are the voices of the
+prophets, and the lard once flowing with milk and honey is but a desert
+waste.  One by one the myths have faded from the clouds; one by one the
+phantom host has disappeared, and, one by one, facts, truths and
+realities have taken their places.  The supernatural has almost gone,
+but man is the natural remains.  The gods have fled, but man is here.
+Nations, like individuals, have their periods of youth, of manhood and
+decay.  Religions are the same.  The same inexorable destiny awaits them
+all.  The gods created with the nations must perish with their creators.
+They were created by men, and, like men, they must pass away.  The
+deities of one age are the by-words of the next.  The religion of our
+day, and country, is no more exempt from the sneer of the future than
+others have been. When India was supreme, Brahma sat upon the world's
+throne.  When the sceptre passed to Egypt, Isis and Osiris received the
+homage of mankind.  Greece, with her fierce valor, swept to empire, and
+Zeus put on the purple of authority.  The earth trembled with the tread
+of Rome's intrepid sons, and Jove grasped with mailed hand the
+thunderbolts of heaven.  Rome fell, and Christians from her territory,
+with the red sword of war, carved out the ruling nations of the world,
+and now Jehovah sits upon the old throne. Who will be His successor?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Ingersoll's lecture on The Religion of Our Day
+
+
+Ladies and Gentlemen:--I am glad that I have lived long enough to see
+one gentleman in the pulpit brave enough to say that God would not be
+offended at one who speaks according to the dictates of his conscience;
+who does not believe that God will give wings to a bird, and then damn
+the bird for flying.  I thank the pastor and I thank the church for
+allowing its pastor to be so brave.
+
+I admit that thousands and thousands of church people, with their
+pastors and the deacons, are today advocating religious principles that
+they deem right and good.  I honor these men, but I do not believe that
+their method is a good one.  I do not want these people to forgive me
+for the views I entertain, but I want them so to act that I will not
+have to forgive them.  I am the friend of every one who preaches the
+gospel of absolute intellectual liberty, and that man is my friend.
+
+Is there a God who says that if man does so and so He will damn him?
+Can there be such a fiend?  I am not responsible to man unless I injure
+him; nor to God unless I injure Him, but one cannot injure God, for "He
+is infinite."
+
+When I was young I was told that the bible was inspired, written by God,
+that even the lids of the book were inspired.  They say He is a personal
+God; if so, He has not revealed Himself to me. There may be many gods.
+As I look around I see that justice does not prevail, that innocence is
+not always effectual and a perfect shield.  If there be a God these
+things could not be.  If God made us all, why did He not make us all
+equally well.  He had the power of an infinite god.  Why did God people
+the earth with so many idiots?  I admit that orthodoxy could not exist
+without them, but why did God make them?  If we believe the bible then
+He should have made us all idiots, for the orthodox Christian says the
+idiots will not be damned, simply transplanted, while the sensible man,
+who believeth not, will be sent to eternal damnation?  If there is any
+God that made us, what right had He to make idiots?  Is a man with a
+head like a pin under any obligation to thank God?  Is the black man,
+born in slavery, under any obligation to thank God for his badge of
+servitude?
+
+What kind of a God is it that will allow men and women to be put in
+dungeons and chains simply because they loved Him and prayed to Him?
+And what kind of a God is it that will allow such men and women to be
+burned at the stake?  If God won't love such men and women, then under
+what circumstances will he love?
+
+Famine stalks over the land and millions die, not only the bad but the
+good, and there in the heavens above sits an infinite God who can do
+anything, can change the rocks and the stones, and yet these millions
+die.  I do not say there is no God, but I do ask, what is God doing?
+Look at the agony, and wretchedness and woe all over the land.  Is there
+goodness, is there mercy in this?  I do not say there is not, but I want
+to know, and I want to know if a man is to be damned for asking the
+question?
+
+(He eloquently recited the agonies that clustered around the French
+Bastille, where great men and heroic women suffered and died for loving
+liberty, and said:  If there is a God, I think that one word, Bastille,
+would bring the blush of shame to His face.)
+
+I find that the men who have received revelation are the worst; and that
+where the bible goes there go the sword and the fagot. If an infinite
+God makes a revelation to me He knows how I will understand it.  If God
+wrote the bible he knew that no two people would understand it alike.
+
+When I read the bible I found that God in His infinite wisdom couldn't
+control the people He had created and that He had to drown them.  If I
+had infinite power and couldn't make a people that I could control and
+had to drown them, why I'd resign.
+
+Then I read in the bible such cruel things, and I do not believe that
+God can be cruel.  Such cruelty may make one afraid, but cannot inspire
+love.  I can't love a god that will inflict pain and sorrow, and I
+won't.
+
+The preachers say all unbelievers will go to hell--tidings of great joy.
+When I confront them they--say I'm taking away their consolation.  The
+old bible does not mention hell or heaven.  Now God should have notified
+Adam and Cain of hell, but He didn't. When He came to drown all those
+people He didn't tell a single one that He would drown him.  He talked
+all about water--nothing about fire.  When He came down on Mount Sinai,
+and told Moses how to cut out clothes for a priest, He never said one
+word on the subject.  When God gave Moses the ten commandments, engraved
+on stone, there He said not one word about hell.  There was plenty of
+room on the stone; why did He not add:  "If you don't keep these
+commandments you will be damned."  Through all these ages, when God was
+talking all the time, and when every howling prophet had His ear, not
+one word did He utter of hell or heaven.  For 4,000 years God got along
+without mentioning those places or even hinting of them.  It seems to me
+that we ought to have been notified by Him.
+
+(Here the orator recalled many stories from the old bible and subjected
+them to keen irony and ridicule.  Reciting the story wherein the she
+bears came out of the woods and tore to pieces the forty children who
+mocked the prophet, he asked:  If God did that, what would the devil
+have done under the same circumstances?  Why; he said, did not God give
+a sure cure for leprosy, unless He wanted to have His chosen people to
+have that frightful disease?)
+
+Do you believe that God ever told a widow if her brother-in-law refused
+to marry her to spit in his face?  Do you believe any such nonsense from
+a god?  I call that courting under difficulties.  (Then Colonel
+Ingersoll dwelt pathetically on the sweet, innocent babes eaten up by
+the lions in the den, after Daniel was rescued from their jaws, and
+asked the question, what kind of a god was it that allowed such horrible
+deeds?)
+
+They say that I pick out all the bad things in the bible.  Well, God
+ought not to have put bad things in the book.  If you only read the
+bible you will not believe it.  Why, it is such a bad book that it has
+to be supported by legislation.  In Maine and elsewhere they will send
+you to jail for two years if you deny the bible or the judgment day.
+
+No, we are told we must not only believe in the God we have been talking
+about, but must also believe in another one.
+
+Let us look at the church today.  The orthodox church--that is, all but
+the Universalist.  He is trying to be orthodox, but he can't get in.
+The God of the Universalists, to say the least, is a gentleman.
+
+Now, what is this religion?  To believe certain things that we may be
+saved, that we won't be damned.  What are they? First, that the old and
+new testament are inspired.  No matter how kind, how just a man may be,
+unless he believes in the inspiration, he will be damned.
+
+Second, he must believe in the trinity.  That there are three in one.
+That father and son are precisely of the same age, the son, possibly, a
+little mite older; that three times one is one, and that once one is
+three.  It is a mercy you don't know how to understand it, but you must
+believe it or be damned.  Therein you see the mercy of the Lord.  This
+trinity doctrine was announced several hundred years after Christ was
+born:  Do you believe such a doctrine will make a man good or honest?
+Will it make him more just?  Is the man that believes any better than
+the man who does not believe?  How is it with nations?  Look at Spain,
+the last slave-holder in the civilized world; she's christian, she
+believes in the trinity!  And Italy, the beggar of the world. Under the
+rule of priestcraft money streamed in from every land and yet she did
+not advance.  Today she is reduced to a hand-organ.  Take poor Ireland,
+groaning under the heel of British oppression; could she cast off her
+priests she would soon be one with America in freedom.
+
+Protestantism is better than Catholicism, because there is less of it.
+Both dread education.  They say they brought the arts and sciences out
+of the dark ages; why, they made the dark ages and what did they
+preserve?  Nothing of value, only an account of events that never
+happened.  What did they teach the world! Slavery!
+
+The best country the sun ever shown upon is the northern part of the
+United States, and there you will find less religion than anywhere else
+on the face of the earth.  You will find here more people that don't
+believe the bible, and you will find better husbands, better wives,
+happier homes, where the women are most respected and where the children
+get less blows and more huggings and kissings.  We have improved just as
+we lost this religion and this superstition.
+
+Great Britain is the religious nation par excellence, and there you will
+find the most cant and most hypocrisy.  They are always thanking God
+that they have killed somebody.  Look at the opium war with China.  They
+forced the Chinese to open their ports and receive the deadly drug, and
+then had the impudence to send a lot of driveling idiots of missionaries
+into China.
+
+Go around the world, and where you find the least superstition, there
+you will find the best men, the best women, the best children.  Two
+powerful levers are at work; love and intelligence.  The true test of a
+man is generosity, that covers a multitude of sins.
+
+They have got so now they damn a man on a technicality.  You must be
+baptized by immersion, sprinkling or pouring.  If you come to the day of
+judgment and can't show the watermark, you're damned!
+
+What more:  That a fellow named Adam, whom you don't know and never
+voted for, is your representative.  You are charged with his sins.
+Equally abused is the doctrine of atonement, that you are created with
+the sacrifice of another.  If Christ had more virtue than Adam had
+meanness, then you are ahead.
+
+Atonement is the corner-stone of the Christian religion.  But there is
+one great objection.  It saves the wrong man, and it is not honest.  (In
+holding up the atonement to ridicule the orator said:  "If Judas had
+failed to betray Christ, the mother of Christ would be in hell today."
+Then he ridiculed the miracles recorded in the new testament, pronounced
+them absurdities.  He said that the four apostolic writers were very
+contradictory in their statements, and did not even agree as to the last
+word of this great man.)
+
+The ascension was the most striking, the grandest of the miracles, if
+true, yet the ascension is only recorded by two of these writers.  If He
+was God, I know he will forgive somebody for not believing the miracles,
+unless convinced.
+
+Another contradiction in the book:  in one gospel the condition of
+salvation is "whosoever believeth shall not be damned," and in another
+we are promised that if we forgive our enemies God will forgive us--and
+there's sense in this last promise.  The first I believe a lie--it was
+never spoken by God.
+
+Christ said:  Love your enemies.  Nobody can do that.  The doctrine of
+Confucius is sound--to love one's friends and to do justice to one's
+enemies without any mixture of revenge.
+
+If Christ was God, did He not know on His cross what crimes would be
+done in His name?  Why didn't He settle all disputes about the trinity
+and about baptism?  Why didn't He post His disciples? Because He could
+no more see into the future than I can.  Only in this way can you acquit
+him of the crimes committed in His name. The way to save our own souls
+is to save another soul.  God can't turn into hell a man who makes on
+this earth a little heaven for himself, wife and babes.
+
+Any minister who preaches the doctrine of hell ought to be ashamed.  I
+want, if I can while I live, to put an end to all belief in this
+infamous doctrine.  That doctrine has done incalculable harm, wrought
+incalculable injury.  I despise it, and I defy it.
+
+The orthodox church says that religion does good; that it restrains
+crime.  It restrains a man from artificial, not from natural crimes.  A
+man can be made so religious that he will not eat meat on Friday, yet he
+will steal.
+
+Did you ever hear of a tramp coming to town and inquiring where the
+deacon of the Presbyterian church lived.
+
+The bible says consider the lilies.  What good would it do a naked man
+standing out in the bitter blasts of this night to consider the lilies.
+
+What is the social position of a man in heaven who through all eternity
+remembers that if he had had a grain of courage he would never have been
+there.
+
+The realization of our day does not satisfy the intelligence of the
+people--the people have outgrown it.  It shocks us and we have got to
+have another religion. We must have a religion of charity; one that
+will do away with poverty, close the prisons and cover this world with
+homes.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Ingersoll's Lecture on Heretics and Heresies
+
+"Liberty, a word without which--All other words are vain."
+
+
+Whoever has an opinion of his own, and honestly expresses it, will be
+guilty of heresy.  Heresy is what the minority believe; it is a name
+given by the powerful to the doctrine of the weak. This word was born of
+the hatred, arrogance, and cruelty of those who love their enemies, and
+who, when smitten on one cheek, turn the other.  This word was born of
+intellectual slavery in the feudal ages of thought.  It was an epithet
+used in the place of argument.  From the commencement of the Christian
+era, every art has been exhausted, and every conceivable punishment
+inflicted to force all people to hold the same religious opinions.  This
+effort was born of the idea that a certain belief was necessary to the
+salvation of the soul.  Christ taught, and the church still teaches,
+that unbelief is the blackest of crimes.  God is supposed to hate with
+an infinite and implacable hatred, every heretic upon the earth, and the
+heretics who have died are supposed, at this moment, to be suffering the
+agonies of the damned.  The church persecutes the living, and her God
+burns the dead.
+
+It is claimed that God wrote a book called the bible, and it is
+generally admitted that this book is somewhat difficult to understand.
+As long as the church had all the copies of this book, and the people
+were not allowed to read it, there was comparatively little heresy in
+the world; but when it was printed and read, people began honestly to
+differ as to its meaning.  A few were independent and brave enough to
+give the world their real thoughts, and for the extermination of these
+men the church used all her power.  Protestants and Catholics vied with
+each other in the work of enslaving the human mind.  For ages they were
+rivals in the infamous effort to rid the earth of honest people.  They
+infested every country, every city, town, hamlet, and family.  They
+appealed to the worst passions of the human heart.  They sowed the seeds
+of discord and hatred in every land.  Brother denounced brother, wives
+informed against their husbands, mothers accused their children,
+dungeons were crowded with the innocent; the flesh of the good and true
+rotted in the clasp of chains, the flames devoured the heroic, and in
+the name of the most merciful God, his children were exterminated with
+famine, sword and fire.  Over the wild waves of battle rose and fell the
+banner of Jesus Christ.  For sixteen hundred years the robes of the
+church were red with innocent blood.  The ingenuity of Christians was
+exhausted in devising punishment severe enough to be inflicted upon
+other Christians who honestly and sincerely differed with them upon any
+point whatever.
+
+Give any orthodox church the power, and today they would punish heresy
+with whip, and chain, and fire.  As long as a church deemed a certain
+belief essential to salvation, just so long it will kill and burn if it
+has the power.  Why should the church pity a man whom her God hates?
+Why should she show mercy to a kind and noble heretic whom her God will
+burn in eternal fire? Why should a Christian be better than his God?  It
+is impossible for the imagination to conceive of a greater atrocity than
+has been perpetrated by the church.  Let it be remembered that all
+churches have persecuted heretics to the extent of their power. Every
+nerve in the human body capable of pain has been sought out and touched
+by the church.  Toleration has increased only when and where the power
+of the church has diminished.  From Augustine until now the spirit of
+the Christian has remained the same. There has been the same
+intolerance, the same undying hatred of all who think for themselves,
+the same determination to crush out of the human brain all knowledge
+inconsistent with the ignorant creed.
+
+Every church pretends that it has a revelation from God, and that this
+revelation must be given to the people through the church; that the
+church acts through its priests, and that ordinary mortals must be
+content with a revelation--not from God--but from the church.  Had the
+people submitted to this preposterous claim, of course there could have
+been but one church, and that church never could have advanced.  It
+might have retrograded, because it is not necessary to think, or
+investigate, in order to forget. Without heresy there could have been no
+progress.
+
+The highest type of the orthodox christian does not forget. Neither does
+he learn.  He neither advances nor recedes.  He is a living fossil,
+imbedded in that rock called faith.  He makes no effort to better his
+condition, because all his strength is exhausted in keeping other people
+from improving theirs.  The supreme desire of his heart is to force all
+others to adopt his creed, and in order to accomplish this object, he
+denounces all kinds of free thinking as a crime, and this crime he calls
+heresy.  When he had the power, heresy was the most terrible and
+formidable of words.  It meant confiscation, exile, imprisonment,
+torture, and death.
+
+In those days the cross and rack were inseparable companions. Across the
+open bible lay the sword and fagot.  Not content with burning such
+heretics as were alive, they even tried the dead, in order that the
+church might rob their wives and children.  The property of all heretics
+was confiscated, and on this account they charged the dead with being
+heretical--indicted, as it were, their dust--to the end that the church
+might clutch the bread of orphans.  Learned divines discussed propriety
+of tearing out the tongues of heretics before they were burned, and the
+general opinion was that this ought to be done, so that the heretics
+should not be able, by uttering blasphemies, to shock the christians who
+were burning them.  With a mixture of ferocity and christianity, the
+priests insisted that heretics ought to be burned at a slow fire, giving
+as a reason, that more time was given them for repentance.
+
+No wonder that Jesus Christ said, "I came not to bring peace but a
+sword!"
+
+Every priest regarded himself as the agent of God.  He answered all
+questions by authority, and to treat him with disrespect was an insult
+offered to God.  No one was asked to think, but all were commanded to
+obey.
+
+In 1208 the inquisition was established.  Seven years afterward; the
+fourth council of the Lateran enjoined all kings and rulers to swear an
+oath that they would exterminate heretics from their dominions.  The
+sword of the church was unsheathed, and the world was at the mercy of
+ignorant and infuriated priests, whose eyes feasted upon the agonies
+they inflicted.  Acting as they believed, or pretended to believe under
+the command of God, stimulated by the hope of infinite reward in another
+world--hating heretics with every drop of their bastille blood--savage
+beyond description--merciless beyond conception--these infamous priests
+in a kind of frenzied joy, leaped upon the helpless victims of their
+rage.  They crushed their bones in iron boots, tore their quivering
+flesh with iron hooks and pinchers, cut off their lips and eyelids,
+pulled out their nails, and into the bleeding quick thrust needles, tore
+out their tongues, extinguished their eyes, stretched them upon racks,
+flayed them alive, crucified them with their head downward, exposed them
+to wild beasts, burned them at the stake, mocked their cries and groans,
+ravished their wives, robbed their children, and then prayed God to
+finish the holy work in hell.
+
+Millions upon millions were sacrificed upon the altars of bigotry.  The
+Catholic burned the Lutheran, the Lutheran burned the Catholic; the
+Episcopalian tortured the Presbyterian, the Presbyterian tortured the
+Episcopalian.   Every denomination killed all it could of every other;
+and each Christian felt it duty bound to exterminate every other
+Christian who denied the smallest fraction of his creed.
+
+In the reign of Henry the VIII., that pious and moral founder of the
+Apostolic Episcopal church, there was passed by the Parliament of
+England an act entitled, "An act for abolishing of diversity of
+opinion."  And in this act was set forth what a good Christian was
+obliged to believe.
+
+First, that in the sacrament was the real body and blood of Jesus
+Christ.
+
+Second, that the body and blood of Jesus Christ was in the bread, and
+the blood and body of Jesus Christ was in the wine.
+
+Third, that priests should not marry.
+
+Fourth, that vows of chastity were of perpetual obligation.
+
+Fifth, that private masses ought to be continued.
+
+And sixth, that auricular confession to a priest must be maintained.
+
+This creed was made by law, in order that all men might know just what
+to believe by simply reading the statute.  The church hated to see the
+people wearing out their brains in thinking upon these subjects.  It was
+thought far better that a creed should be made by Parliament, so that
+whatever might be lacking in evidence might be made up in force.  The
+punishment for denying the first article was death by fire.  For the
+denial of any other article, imprisonment, and for the second offense--
+death.
+
+Your attention is called to these six articles, established during the
+reign of Henry VIII, and by the Church of England, simply because not
+one of these articles is believed by that church today.  If the law then
+made by the church could be enforced now, every Episcopalian would be
+burned at the stake.
+
+Similar laws were passed in most Christian countries, as all orthodox
+churches firmly believed that mankind could be legislated into heaven.
+According to the creed of every church, slavery leads to heaven, liberty
+leads to hell.  It was claimed that God had founded the church, and that
+to deny the authority of the church was to be a traitor to God, and
+consequently an ally of the devil.  To torture and destroy one of the
+soldiers of Satan was a duty no good Christian cared to neglect.
+Nothing can be sweeter than to earn the gratitude of God by killing your
+own enemies.  Such a mingling of profit and revenge, of heaven for
+yourself and damnation for those you dislike, is a temptation that your
+ordinary Christian never resists.
+
+According to the theologians, God, the father of us all wrote a letter
+to His children.  The children have always differed somewhat as to the
+meaning of this letter.  In consequence of these honest differences,
+these brothers began to cut out each other's hearts.  In every land,
+where this letter from God has been read, the children to whom and for
+whom it was written have been filled with hatred and malice.  They have
+imprisoned and murdered each other, and the wives and children of each
+other. In the name of God every possible crime has been committed, every
+conceivable outrage has been perpetrated.  Brave men, tender and loving
+women, beautiful girls, prattling babes have been exterminated in the
+name of Jesus Christ.  For more than fifty generations the church has
+carried the black flag.  Her vengeance has been measured only by her
+power.  During all these years of infamy no heretic has ever been
+forgiven.  With the heart of a fiend she has hated; with the clutch of
+avarice she has grasped; with the jaws of a dragon she has devoured,
+pitiless as famine, merciless as fire, with the conscience of a serpent.
+Such is the history of the church of God.
+
+I do not say, and I do not believe, that Christians are as bad as their
+creeds.  In spite of church and dogma, there have been millions and
+millions of men and women true to the loftiest and most generous
+promptings of the human heart.  They have been true to their
+convictions, and with a self-denial and fortitude excelled by none, have
+labored and suffered for the salvation of men.  Imbued with the spirit
+of self-sacrifice, believing that by personal effort they could rescue
+at least a few souls from the infinite shadow of hell, they have
+cheerfully endured every hardship and scorned danger and death.  And
+yet, notwithstanding all this, they believed that honest error was a
+crime.  They knew that the bible so declared, and they believed that all
+unbelievers would be eternally lost.  They believed that religion was of
+God, and all heresy of the devil.  They killed heretics in defense of
+their own souls and the souls of their children.  They killed them,
+because, according to their idea, they were the enemies of God, and
+because the bible teaches that the blood of the unbeliever is a most
+acceptable sacrifice to heaven.
+
+Nature never prompted a loving mother to throw her child into the
+Ganges.  Nature never prompted men to exterminate each other for a
+difference of opinion concerning the baptism of infants.  These crimes
+have been produced by religions filled with all that is illogical, cruel
+and hideous.  These religions were produced for the most part by
+ignorance, tyranny, and hypocrisy.  Under the impression that the
+infinite ruler and creator of the universe had commanded the destruction
+of heretics and infidels, the church perpetrated all these crimes.
+
+Men and women have been burned for thinking that there was but one God;
+that there was none; that the Holy Ghost is younger than God; that God
+was somewhat older than his Son; for insisting that good works will
+save a man, without faith; that faith will do without good works; for
+declaring that a sweet babe will not be barred eternally, because its
+parents failed to have its head wet by a priest; for speaking of God as
+though He had a nose; for denying that Christ was His own father; for
+contending that three persons, rightly added together, make more than
+one; for believing in purgatory; for denying the reality of hell; for
+pretending that priests can forgive sins; for preaching that God is an
+essence; for denying that witches rode through the air on sticks; for
+doubting the total depravity of the human heart; for laughing at
+irresistible grace, predestination, and particular redemption; for
+denying that good bread could be made of the body of a dead man; for
+pretending that the Pope was not managing this world for God, and in
+place of God, for disputing the efficacy of a vicarious atonement; for
+thinking that the Virgin Mary was born like other people; for thinking
+that a man's rib was hardly sufficient to make a good sized woman; for
+denying that God used His finger for a pen; for asserting that prayers
+are not answered, that diseases are not set to punish unbelief; for
+denying the authority of the bible; for having a bible in their
+possession; for attending mass, and for refusing to attend, for wearing
+a surplice; for carrying a cross, and for refusing; for being a
+Catholic, and for being a Protestant, for being an Episcopalian, a
+Presbyterian, a Baptist, and for being a Quaker.  In short, every virtue
+has been a crime, and every crime a virtue.  The church has burned
+honesty and rewarded hypocrisy, and all this she did because it was
+commanded by a book--a book that men had been taught implicitly to
+believe, long before they knew one word that was in it.  They had been
+taught that to doubt the truth of this book, to examine it, even, was a
+crime of such enormity that it could not be forgiven, either in this
+world or in the next.
+
+The bible was the real persecutor.  The bible burned heretics, built
+dungeons, founded the Inquisition, and trampled upon all the liberties
+of men.
+
+How long, O how long will mankind worship a book?  How long will they
+grovel in the dust before the ignorant legends of the barbaric past?
+How long, O how long will they pursue phantoms in a darkness deeper than
+death?
+
+Unfortunately for the world, about the beginning of the sixteenth
+century a man by the name of Gerard Chauvin was married to Jeanne
+Lefranc, and still more unfortunately for the world, the fruit of this
+marriage was a son, called John Chauvin, who afterward became famous as
+John Calvin, the founder of the Presbyterian church.
+
+This man forged five fetters for the brain.  These fetters he called
+points.  That is to say, predestination, particular redemption, total
+depravity, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints.
+About the neck of each follower he put a collar, bristling with these
+five iron points.  The presence of all these points on the collar is
+still the test of orthodoxy in the church he founded.  This man, when in
+the flush of youth, was elected to the office of preacher in Geneva.  He
+at once, in union with Farel, drew up a condensed statement of the
+Presbyterian doctrine, and all the citizens of Geneva, on pain of
+banishment, were compelled to take an oath that they, believed this
+statement.  Of this proceeding Calvin very innocently remarked, that it
+produced great satisfaction.  A man by the name of Caroli had the
+audacity to dispute with Calvin.  For this outrage he was banished.
+
+To show you what great subjects occupied the attention of Calvin, it is
+only necessary to state, that he furiously discussed the question, as to
+whether the sacramental bread should be leavened or unleavened.  He drew
+up laws regulating the cut of the citizens' clothes, and prescribed
+their diet, and all whose garments were not in the Calvin fashion were
+refused the sacrament.  At last, the people becoming tired of this
+petty, theological tyranny, banished Calvin.  In a few years, however,
+he was recalled and received with great enthusiasm.  After this, he was
+supreme, and the will of Calvin became the law of Geneva. Under the
+benign administration of Calvin, James Gruet was beheaded because he had
+written some profane verses.  The slightest word against Calvin or his
+absurd doctrine was punished as a crime.
+
+In 1553, a man was tried at Vienne by the Catholic church for heresy.
+He was convicted and sentenced to death by burning.  It was his good
+fortune to escape.  Pursued by the sleuth hounds of intolerance he fled
+to Geneva for protection.  A dove flying from hawks, sought safety in
+the nest of a vulture.  This fugitive from the cruelty of Rome asked
+shelter from John Calvin, who had written a book in favor of religious
+toleration.   Servetus had forgotten that this book was written by
+Calvin when in the minority; that it was written in weakness to be
+forgotten in power; that it was produced by fear instead of principle.
+He did not know that Calvin had caused his arrest at Vienne, in France,
+and had sent a copy of his work, which was claimed to be blasphemous to
+the archbishop.  He did not then know that the Protestant, Calvin, was
+acting as one of the detectives of the Catholic church, and had been
+instrumental in procuring his conviction for heresy.  Ignorant of all
+this unspeakable infamy, he put himself in the power of this very
+Calvin.  The maker of the Presbyterian creed caused the fugitive
+Servetus to be arrested for blasphemy.  He was tried; Calvin was his
+accuser. He was convicted and condemned to death by fire.  On the
+morning of the fatal day, Calvin saw him; and Servetus, the victim,
+asked forgiveness of Calvin, the murderer, for anything he might have
+said that had wounded his feelings.  Servetus was bound to the stake,
+the fagots were lighted.  The wind carried the flames somewhat away from
+his body, so that he slowly roasted for hours. Vainly he implored a
+speedy death.  At last the flame climbed around his form; through smoke
+and fire his murderers saw a white, heroic face.  And there they watched
+until a man became a charred and shriveled mass.
+
+Liberty was banished from Geneva, and nothing but Presbyterianism was
+left; honor, justice, mercy, reason and charity were all exiled; but
+the five points of predestination, particular redemption, irresistible
+grace, total depravity, and the certain perseverance of the saints
+remained instead.
+
+Calvin founded a little theocracy in Geneva, modeled after the old
+testament, and succeeded in erecting the most detestable government that
+ever existed, except the one from which it was copied.
+
+Against all this intolerance, one man, a minister, raised his voice.
+The name of this man should never be forgotten.  It was Castellio.  This
+brave man had the goodness and the courage to declare the innocence of
+honest error.  He was the first of the so-called reformers to take this
+noble ground.  I wish I had the genius to pay a fitting tribute to his
+memory.  Perhaps it would be impossible to pay him a grander compliment
+than to say, Castellio was in all things the opposite of Calvin.  To
+plead for the right of individual judgment was considered as a crime,
+and Castellio was driven from Geneva by John Calvin.  By him he was
+denounced as a child of the devil, as a dog of Satan, as a beast from
+hell, and as one who, by this horrid blasphemy of the innocence of
+honest error, crucified Christ afresh, and by him he was pursued until
+rescued by the hand of death.
+
+Upon the name of Castellio, Calvin heaved every epithet, until his
+malice was satisfied and his imagination exhausted.  It is impossible to
+conceive how human nature can become so frightfully perverted as to
+pursue a fellow-man with the malignity of a fiend, simply because he is
+good, just and generous.
+
+Calvin was of a pallid, bloodless complexion, thin, sickly, irritable,
+gloomy, impatient, egotistic, tyrannical, heartless and infamous.  He
+was a strange compound of revengeful morality, malicious forgiveness,
+ferocious charity, egotistic humility, and a kind of hellish justice.
+In other words, he was as near like the God of the old testament as his
+Health permitted.
+
+The best thing, however, about the Presbyterians of Geneva was, that
+they denied the power of the Pope, and the best thing about the Pope
+was, that he was not a Presbyterian.
+
+The doctrines of Calvin spread rapidly, and were eagerly accepted by
+multitudes on the continent.  But Scotland, in a few years, became the
+real fortress of Presbyterianism.  The Scotch rivaled the adherents of
+Calvin, and succeeded in establishing the same kind of theocracy that
+flourished in Geneva.  The clergy took possession and control of
+everybody and everything.  It is impossible to exaggerate the slavery,
+the mental degradation, the abject superstition of the people of
+Scotland during the reign of Presbyterianism.  Heretics were hunted and
+devoured as though they had been wild beasts.  The gloomy insanity of
+Presbyterianism took possession of a great majority of the people.  They
+regarded their ministers as the Jews did Moses and Aaron.  They believed
+that they were the especial agents of God, and that whatsoever they
+bound in Scotland would be bound in heaven.  There was not one particle
+of intellectual freedom.  No one was allowed to differ from the church,
+or to even contradict a priest.  Had Presbyterianism maintained its
+ascendancy, Scotland would have been peopled by savages today.  The
+revengeful spirit of Calvin took possession of the Puritans and caused
+them to redden the soil of the new world with the brave blood of honest
+men.  Clinging to the five points of Calvin, they, too, established
+governments in accordance with the teachings of the old testament.
+They, too, attached the penalty of death to the expression of honest
+thought.  They, too, believed their church supreme, and exerted all
+their power to curse this continent with a spiritual despotism as
+infamous as it was absurd.  They believed with Luther that universal
+toleration is universal error, and universal error is universal hell.
+Toleration was denounced as a crime.  Fortunately for us, civilization
+has had a softening effect upon the Presbyterian church.  To the
+ennobling influence of the arts and science the savage spirit of
+Calvinism has, in some slight degree, succumbed. True, the old creed
+remains substantially as it was written, but by a kind of tacit
+understanding it has come to be regarded as a relic of the past.  The
+cry of "heresy" has been growing fainter and fainter, and, as a
+consequence, the ministers of that denomination have ventured now and
+then to express doubts as to the damnation of infants, and the doctrine
+of total depravity. The fact is, the old ideas became a little
+monotonous to the people.  The fall of man, the scheme of redemption and
+irresistible grace, began to have a familiar sound.  The preachers told
+the old stories while the congregation slept. Some of the ministers
+became tired of these stories themselves. The five points grew dull, and
+they felt that nothing short of irresistible grace could bear this
+endless repetition.  The outside world was full of progress, and in
+every direction men advanced, while the church, anchored to a creed,
+idly rotted at the shore.  Other denominations, imbued some little with
+the spirit of investigation, were springing up on every side, while the
+old Presbyterian ark rested on the Ararat of the past, filled with the
+theological monsters of another age.
+
+Lured by the splendors of the outer world, tempted by the achievements
+of science, longing to feel the throw and beat of the mighty march of
+the human race, a few of the ministers of this conservative denomination
+were compelled by irresistible sense, to say a few words in harmony with
+the splendid ideas of today.
+
+These utterances have upon several occasions so nearly awakened some of
+the members, that, rubbing their eyes, they have feebly inquired whether
+these grand ideas were not somewhat heretical? These ministers found
+that just in proportion as their orthodoxy decreased, their
+congregations increased.  Those who dealt in the pure unadulterated
+article, found themselves demonstrating the five points to a less number
+of hearers than they had points. Stung to madness by this bitter truth,
+this galling contrast, this harassing fact, the really orthodox have
+raised the cry of heresy, and expect with this cry to seal the lips of
+honest men. One of these ministers, and one who has been enjoying the
+luxury of a little honest thought, and the real rapture of expressing
+it, has already been indicted, and is about to be tried by the
+Presbytery of Illinois.
+
+He has been charged:
+
+First.  With speaking in an ambiguous language in relation to that dear
+old doctrine of the fall of man.  With having neglected to preach that
+most comforting and consoling truth, the eternal damnation of the soul.
+
+Surely, that man must be a monster who could wish to blot this blessed
+doctrine out and rob earth's wretched children of this blissful hope!
+
+Who can estimate the misery that has been caused by this most infamous
+doctrine of eternal punishment?  Think of the lives it has blighted--of
+the tears it has caused--of the agony it has produced.  Think of the
+millions who have been driven to insanity by this most terrible of
+dogmas.  This doctrine renders God the basest and most cruel being in
+the universe.  Compared with him, the most frightful deities of the most
+barbarous and degraded tribes are miracles of goodness and mercy.  There
+is nothing more degrading than to worship such a God.  Lower than this
+the soul can never sink.  If the doctrine of eternal damnation is true,
+let me have my portion in hell, rather than in heaven with a God
+infamous enough to inflict eternal misery upon any of the sons of men.
+
+Second.  With having spoken a few kind words of Robert Collyer and John
+Stuart Mill.
+
+I have the honor of a slight acquaintance with Robert Collyer. I have
+read with pleasure some of his exquisite productions.  He has a brain
+full of the dawn, the head of a philosopher, the imagination of a poet,
+and the sincere heart of a child.
+
+Is a minister to be silenced because he speaks fairly of a noble and
+candid adversary?  Is it a crime to compliment a lover of justice, an
+advocate of liberty; one who devoted his life to the elevation of man,
+the discovery of truth, and the promulgation of what he believed to be
+right?
+
+Can that tongue be palsied by a presbytery that praises a self-denying
+and heroic life?  Is it a sin to speak a charitable word over the grave
+of John Stuart Mill?  Is it heretical to pay a just and graceful tribute
+to departed worth?  Must the true Presbyterian violate the sanctity of
+the tomb, dig open the grave, and ask his God to curse the silent dust?
+Is Presbyterianism so narrow that it conceives of no excellence, of no
+purity of intention, of no spiritual and moral grandeur outside of its
+barbaric creed?  Does it still retain within its stony heart all the
+malice of its founder?  Is it still warming its fleshless hands at the
+flames that consumed Servetus? Does it still glory in the damnation of
+infants, and does it still persist in emptying the cradle in order that
+perdition may be filled?  Is it still starving the soul and famishing
+the heart?  Is it still trembling and shivering, crouching and crawling,
+before its ignorant confession of faith?  Had such men as Robert Collyer
+and John Stuart Mill been present at the burning of Servetus, they would
+have extinguished the flames with their tears.  Had the Presbytery of
+Chicago been there, they would have quietly turned their backs, solemnly
+divided their coat-tails and warmed themselves.
+
+Third.  With having spoken disparagingly of the doctrine of
+predestination.
+
+If there is any dogma that ought to be protected by law, predestination
+is that doctrine.  Surely it is a cheerful, joyous thing to one who is
+laboring, struggling and suffering in this weary world, to think that
+before he existed, before the earth was, before a star had glittered in
+the heavens, before a ray of light had left the quiver of the sun, his
+destiny had been irrevocably fixed, and that for an eternity before his
+birth he had been doomed to bear eternal pain!
+
+Fourth.  With having failed to preach the efficacy of vicarious
+sacrifice.
+
+Suppose a man had been convicted of murder, and was about to be hanged--
+the Governor acting as the executioner.  And suppose just as the doomed
+man was to suffer death, some one in the crowd should step forward and
+say, "I am willing to die in the place of that murderer.  He has a
+family, and I have none."  And suppose further that the Governor should
+reply, "Come forward, young man, your offer is accepted.  A murder has
+been committed, and somebody must be hung, and your death will satisfy
+the law just as well as the death of the murderer."  What would you then
+think of the doctrine of  vicarious sacrifice?"
+
+This doctrine is the consummation of two outrages--forgiving one crime
+and committing another.
+
+Fifth.  With having inculcated a phase of the doctrine commonly known as
+"Evolution" or "Development."  The church believes and teaches the exact
+opposite of this doctrine.  According to the philosophy of theology, man
+has continued to degenerate for six thousand years.  To teach that there
+is that in Nature which impels to higher forms and grander ends, is
+heresy of course. The Deity will damn Spencer and his "Evolution,"
+Darwin and his "Origin of Species," Bastin and his "Spontaneous
+Generation," Huxley and his "Protoplasm," Tyndall and his "Prayer
+Guage," and will save those, and those only who declare that the
+universe has been cursed from the smallest atom to the grandest star;
+that everything tends to evil, and to that only; and that the only
+perfect thing in Nature is the Presbyterian confession of faith.
+
+Sixth.  With having intimated that the reception of Socrates and
+Penelope at heaven's gate was, to say the least, a trifle more cordial
+than that of Catherine II.
+
+Penelope waiting patiently and trustfully for her lord's return,
+delaying her suitors, while sadly weaving and un-weaving the shroud of
+Laertes, is the most perfect type of wife and woman produced by the
+civilization of Greece.
+
+Socrates, whose life was above reproach, and whose death was beyond all
+praise, stands today, in the estimation of every thoughtful man, at
+least the peer of Christ.
+
+Catharine II assassinated her husband.  Stepping upon his corpse, she
+mounted the throne.  She was the murderess of Prince Ivan, the grand-
+nephew of Peter the Great, who was imprisoned for eighteen years, and
+who, during all that time, saw the sky but once.  Taken all in all,
+Catharine was probably one of the most intellectual beasts that ever
+wore a crown.
+
+Catharine, however, was the head of the Greek Church, Socrates was a
+heretic, and Penelope lived and died without having once heard of
+"particular redemption," or "irresistible grace."
+
+Seventh.  With repudiating the idea of a "call" to ministry, and
+pretending that men were "called," to preach as they were to the other
+avocations of life.
+
+If this doctrine is true, God, to say the least of it, is an exceedingly
+poor judge of human nature.  It is more than a century since a man of
+true genius has been found in an orthodox pulpit.  Every minister is
+heretical just to the extent that his intellect is above the average.
+The Lord seems to be satisfied with mediocrity; but the people are not.
+
+An old deacon, wishing to get rid of an unpopular preacher, advised him
+to give up the ministry, and turn his attention to something else.  The
+preacher replied that he could not conscientiously desert the pulpit, as
+he had a "call" to the ministry.  To which the deacon replied, "That
+may be so, but it's mighty unfortunate for you that when God called you
+to preach, He forgot to call anybody to hear you."
+
+There is nothing more stupidly egotistic than the claim of the clergy
+that they are, in some divine sense, set apart to the service of the
+Lord; that they have been chosen and sanctified; that there is an
+infinite difference between them and persons employed in secular
+affairs.  They teach us that all other professions must take care of
+themselves; that God allows anybody to be a doctor, a lawyer,
+statesman, soldier, or artist; that the Motts and Coopers--the
+Mansfields and Marshalls--the Wilberforces and Sumners--the Angelos and
+Raphaels--were never honored by a "call."  These chose their professions
+and won their laurels without the assistance of the Lord.  All these men
+were left free to follow their own inclinations while God was busily
+engaged selecting and "calling" priests, rectors, elders, ministers and
+exhorters.
+
+Eighth.  With having doubted that God was the author of the 109th Psalm.
+
+The portion of that Psalm which carries with it the clearest and most
+satisfactory evidences of inspiration, and which has afforded almost
+unspeakable consolation to the Presbyterian church, is as follows:
+
+"Set thou a wicked man over him; and let Satan stand at his right hand.
+
+"When he shall be judged, let him be condemned; and let his prayer
+become sin.
+
+"Let his days be few; and let another take his office.
+
+"Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.
+
+"Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg; let them seek
+their bread also out of their desolate places.
+
+"Let the extortioner catch all that he hated; and let the strangers
+spoil his labor.
+
+"Let there be none to extend mercy unto him; neither let there be none
+to favor his fatherless children.
+
+"Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let
+their name be blotted out.
+
+"But do thou for me, O God the Lord, for Thy name's sake; because Thy
+mercy is good, deliver thou me....  I will greatly praise the Lord with
+my mouth."
+
+Think of a God wicked and malicious enough to inspire this prayer.
+Think of one infamous enough to answer it.  Had this inspired Psalm been
+found in some temple erected for the worship of snakes, or in the
+possession of some cannibal king, written with blood upon the dried
+skins of babes, there would have been a perfect harmony between its
+surroundings and its sentiments.
+
+No wonder that the author of this inspired Psalm coldly received
+Socrates and Penelope, and reserved his sweetest smiles for Catharine
+the Second!
+
+Ninth.  With having said that the battles in which the Israelites
+engaged with the approval and command of Jehovah surpassed in cruelty
+those of Julius Caesar.
+
+Was it Julius Caesar who said, "And the Lord our God delivered him
+before us; and we smote him, and his sons, and all his people.  And we
+took all his cities, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women and
+the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain?"
+
+Did Julius Caesar send the following report to the Roman Senate? "And
+we took all his cities at that time, there was not a city which we took
+not from them, three-score city, all the region of Argob, the kingdom of
+Og, in Bashan.  All these cities were fenced with high walls, gates and
+bars; besides unwalled towns a great many.  And we utterly destroyed
+them, as we did unto Sihon, king of Heshbon, utterly destroying the men,
+women, and children of every city."
+
+Did Caesar take the city of Jericho "and utterly destroy all that was in
+the city, both man and woman, young and old?"  Did he smite "all the
+country of the hills, and of the south, and of the vale, and of the
+springs, and all their kings, and leave none remaining that breathed, as
+the Lord God had commanded?"
+
+Search the records of the whole world, find out the history of every
+barbarous tribe, and you can find no crime that touched a lower depth of
+infamy than those the bible's God commanded and approved.  For such a
+God I have no words to express my loathing and contempt, and all the
+words in all the languages of man would scarcely be sufficient.  Away
+with such a God!  Give me Jupiter rather, with Io and Europa, or even
+Siva with his skulls and snakes, or give me none.
+
+Tenth.  With having repudiated the doctrines of total depravity.
+
+What a precious doctrine is that of the total depravity of the human
+heart!  How sweet it is to believe that the lives of all the good and
+great were continual sins and perpetual crimes; that the love a mother
+bears her child is, in the sight of God, a sin; that the gratitude of
+the natural heart is simple meanness; that the tears of pity are impure;
+that for the unconverted to live and labor for others is an offense to
+heaven; that the noblest aspirations of the soul are low and groveling
+in the sight of God; that man should fall upon his knees and ask
+forgiveness, simply for loving his wife and child, and that even the act
+of asking forgiveness is in fact a crime.
+
+Surely it is a kind of bliss to feel that every woman and child in the
+wide world, with the exception of those who believe the five points, or
+some other equally cruel creed, and such children as have been baptized,
+ought at this very moment to be dashed down to the lowest glowing gulf
+of the hell!
+
+Take from the Christian the history of his own church; leave that
+entirely out of the question, and he has no argument left with which to
+substantiate the total depravity of man.
+
+A minister once asked an old lady, a member of his church, what she
+thought of the doctrine of total depravity, and the dear old soul
+replied that she thought it a mighty good doctrine if the Lord would
+only give the people grace enough to live up to it?
+
+Eleventh.  With having doubted the "perseverance of the saints."
+
+I suppose the real meaning of this doctrine is that Presbyterians are
+just as sure of going to heaven as all other folks are of going to hell.
+The real idea being, that it all depends upon the will of God, and not
+upon the character of the person to be damned or saved; that God has
+the weakness to send Presbyterians to Paradise, and the justice to doom
+the rest of mankind to eternal fire.
+
+It is admitted that no unconverted brain can see the least of sense in
+this doctrine; that it is abhorrent to all who have not been the
+recipients of a "new heart;"  that only the perfectly good can justify
+the perfectly infamous.
+
+It is contended that the saints do not persevere of their own free will
+--that they are entitled to no credit for persevering; but that God
+forces them to persevere; while on the other hand, every crime is
+committed in accordance with the secret will of God, who does all things
+for His own glory.  Compared with this doctrine, there is no other idea,
+that has ever been believed by man, that can properly be called absurd.
+
+As to the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, I wish with all my
+heart that it may prove to be a fact, I really hope that every saint, no
+matter how badly he may break on the first quarter, nor how many shoes
+he may cast at the half-mile pole, will foot it bravely down the long
+home-stretch, and win eternal heaven by at least a neck.
+
+Twelfth.  With having spoken and written somewhat lightly of the idea of
+converting the heathen with doctrinal sermons.
+
+Of all the failures of which we have any history or knowledge the
+missionary effort is the most conspicuous.  The whole question has been
+decided here, in our own country, and conclusively settled.  We have
+nearly exterminated the Indians; but we have converted none.  From the
+days of John Eliot to the execution of the last Modoc, not one Indian
+has been the subject of irresistible grace or particular redemption.
+The few red men who roam the Western wilderness have no thought or care
+concerning the five points of Calvin.  They are utterly oblivious to the
+great and vital truths contained in the Thirty-nine articles, the
+Saybrook platform, and the resolutions of the Evangelical Alliance.  No
+Indian has ever scalped another on account of his religious belief.
+This of itself shows conclusively that the missionaries have had no
+effect.
+
+Why should we convert the heathen of China and kill our own?  Why should
+we send missionaries across the seas, and soldiers over the plains?  Why
+should we send bibles to the East and muskets to the West?  If it is
+impossible to convert Indians who have no religion of their own; no
+prejudice for or against the "eternal procession of the Holy Ghost," how
+can we expect to convert a heathen who has a religion; who has plenty
+of gods and bibles and prophets and Christs, and who has a religious
+literature far grander than our own?  Can we hope, with the story of
+Daniel in the lion's den, to rival the stupendous miracles of India?  Is
+there anything in our bible as lofty and loving as the prayer of the
+Buddhist?  Compare your "Confession of Faith" with the following:
+
+"Never will I seek nor receive private individual salvation--never enter
+into final peace alone; but forever and everywhere will I live and
+strive for the universal redemption of every creature throughout all
+worlds.  Until all are delivered, never will I leave the world of sin,
+sorrow and struggle, but will remain where I am."
+
+Think of sending an average Presbyterian to convert a man who daily
+offers this tender, this infinitely generous and incomparable prayer!
+Think of reading the 109th Psalm to a heathen who has a bible of his
+own, in which is found this passage:  "Blessed is that man, and beloved
+of all the gods, who is afraid of no man, and of whom no man is afraid!"
+
+Why should you read even the new testament to a Hindoo, when his own
+Chrishna has said:  "If a man strike thee, and in striking drop his
+staff, pick it up and hand it to him again?"  Why send a Presbyterian to
+a Sufi, who says:  "Better one moment of silent contemplation and inward
+love, than seventy thousand years of outward worship?"  "Whosoever would
+carelessly tread one worm that crawls on earth, that heartless one is
+darkly alienate from God; but he that, living, embraceth all things in
+his love, to live with him God bursts all bounds above, below."
+
+Why should we endeavor to thrust our cruel and heartless theology upon
+one who prays this prayer:  "O God, show pity toward the wicked; for on
+the good thou hast already bestowed thy mercy by having created them
+virtuous?"
+
+Compare this prayer with the curses and cruelties of the old testament--
+with the infamies commanded and approved by the being whom the are
+taught to worship as a God, and with the following tender product of
+Presbyterianism:  "It may seem absurd to human wisdom that God should
+harden, blind, and deliver up some men to a reprobate sense; that He
+should first deliver them over to evil, and then condemn them for that
+evil; but the believing spiritual man sees no absurdity in all this,
+knowing that God would never be a whit less good, even though He should
+destroy all men."
+
+Of all the religions that have been produced by the egotism, the malice,
+the ignorance and ambition of man, Presbyterianism is the most hideous.
+
+But what shall I say more? for the time would fail me to tell of
+Sabellianism, of a "Model trinity" and the "eternal procession of the
+Holy Ghost."
+
+Upon these charges a minister is to be tried, here in Chicago; in this
+city of pluck and progress--this marvel of energy, and this miracle of
+nerve.  The cry of "heresy" here, sounds like a wail from the Dark Ages
+--a shriek from the Inquisition, or a groan from the grave of Calvin.
+
+Another effort is being made to enslave a man.  It is claimed that every
+member of the church has solemnly agreed never to outgrow the creed;
+that he has pledged himself to remain an intellectual dwarf.  Upon this
+condition the church agrees to save his soul, and he hands over his
+brains to bind the bargain. Should a fact be found inconsistent with the
+creed, he binds himself to deny the fact and curse the finder.  With
+scraps of dogmas and crumbs of doctrine, he agrees that his soul shall
+be satisfied forever.  What an intellectual feast the confession of
+faith must be!  It reminds one of the dinner described by Sidney Smith,
+where everything was cold except the water, and everything sour except
+the vinegar.
+
+Every member of a church promises to remain orthodox, that is to say--
+stationary.  Growth is heresy.  Orthodox ideas are the feathers that
+have been molted by the eagle of progress.  They are the dead leaves
+under the majestic palm; while heresy is the bud and blossom at the
+top.
+
+Imagine a vine that grows at one end and decays at the other. The end
+that grows is heresy; the end that rots is orthodox. The dead are
+orthodox, and your cemetery is the most perfect type of a well regulated
+church.  No thought, no progress, no heresy there.  Slowly and silently,
+side by side, the satisfied members peacefully decay.  There is only
+this difference--the dead do not persecute.
+
+And what does a trial for heresy mean?  It means that the church says to
+a heretic, "Believe as I do, or I will withdraw my support; I will not
+employ you; I will pursue you until your garments are rags; until your
+children cry for bread; until your cheeks are furrowed with tears.  I
+will hunt you to the very portals of the tomb, and then my God will do
+the rest.  I will not imprison you.  I will not burn you.  The law
+prevents my doing that.  I helped make the law, not, however, to protect
+you, nor deprive me of the right to exterminate you, but in order to
+keep other churches from exterminating me."
+
+A trial for heresy means that the spirit of persecution still lingers in
+the church; that it still denies the right of private judgment; that
+it still thinks more of creed than truth; that it is still determined
+to prevent the intellectual growth of man. It means that churches are
+shambles in which are bought and sold the souls of men.  It means that
+the church is still guilty of the barbarity of opposing thought with
+force.  It means that if it had the power, the mental horizon would be
+bounded by a creed, that it would bring again the whips, and chains, and
+dungeon keys, the rack and fagot of the past.
+
+But let me tell the church it lacks the power.  There has been, and
+still are, too many men who own themselves--too much thought, too much
+knowledge for the church to grasp again the sword of power.  The church
+must abdicate.  For the Eglon of superstition, science has a message
+from truth.
+
+The heretics have not thought and suffered and died in vain. Every
+heretic has been, and is, a ray of light.  Not in vain did Voltaire,
+that great man, point from the foot of the Alps, the finger of scorn at
+every hypocrite in Europe.  Not in vain were the splendid utterances of
+the infidels, while beyond all price are the discoveries of science.
+The church has impeded, but it has not and it cannot stop the onward
+march of the human race. Heresy can not be burned, nor imprisoned, nor
+starved.  It laughs at presbyteries and synods, at Ecumenical councils
+and the impotent thunders of Sinai.  Heresy is the eternal dawn, the
+morning star, the glittering herald of the day.  Heresy is the last and
+best thought.  It is the perpetual new world; the unknown sea, toward
+which the brave all sail.  It is the eternal horizon of progress.
+Heresy extends the hospitalities of the brain to new thoughts.  Heresy
+is a cradle; orthodoxy a coffin.
+
+Why should a man be afraid to think, and why should he fear to express
+his thoughts?
+
+Is it possible that an infinite Deity is unwilling that man should
+investigate the phenomena by which he is surrounded?
+
+Is it possible that a God delights in threatening and terrifying men?
+What glory, what honor and renown a God must win in such a field!  The
+ocean raving at a drop; a star envious of a candle; the sun jealous of
+a firefly!
+
+Go on, presbyteries and synods, go on!  Thrust the heretics out of the
+church.  That is to say, throw away your brains--put out your eyes.  The
+Infidels will thank you.  They are willing to adopt your exiles.  Every
+deserter from your camp is a recruit for the army of progress.  Cling to
+the ignorant dogmas of the past; read the 109th Psalm; gloat over the
+slaughter of mothers and babes; thank God for total depravity; shower
+your honors upon hypocrites, and silence every minister who is  touched
+with that heresy called genius.
+
+Be true to your history.  Turn out the astronomers, the geologists, the
+naturalists, the chemists, and all the honest scientists.  With a whip
+of scorpions, drive them all out.  We want them all.  Keep the ignorant,
+the superstitious, the bigoted, and the writers of charges and
+specifications.  Keep them, and keep them all.  Repeat your pious
+platitudes in the drowsy ears of the faithful, and read your bible to
+heretics, as kings read some forgotten riot-act to stop and stay the
+waves of revolution.  You are too weak to excite anger.  We forgive your
+efforts as the sun forgives a cloud--as the air forgives the breath you
+waste.
+
+How long, O how long will man listen to the threats of God, and shut his
+ears to the splendid promises of Nature?  How long, O how long will man
+remain the cringing slave of a false and cruel creed.
+
+By this time the whole world should know that the real bible has not yet
+been written; but is being written, and that it will never be finished
+until the race begins its downward march or ceases to exist.  The real
+bible is not the work of inspired men, nor prophets, nor apostles, nor
+evangelists, nor of Christ. Every man who finds a fact, adds, as it
+were, a word to this great book.  It is not attested by prophecy, by
+miracles or by signs.  It makes no appeal to faith, to ignorance, to
+credulity of fear.  It has no punishment for unbelief, and no reward for
+hypocrisy.  It appears to men in the name of demonstration.  It has
+nothing to conceal.  It has no fear of being read, of being investigated
+and understood.  It does not pretend to be holy or sacred; it simply
+claims to be true.  It challenges the scrutiny of all, and implores
+every reader to verify every line for himself.  It is incapable of being
+blasphemed.  This book appeals to all the surroundings of man.  Each
+thing that exists testifies of its perfection.  The earth with its heart
+of fire and crowns of snow; with its forests and plains, its rocks and
+seas; with its every wave and cloud; with its every leaf, and bud, and
+flower, confirms its every word, and the solemn stars, shining in the
+infinite abysses, are the eternal witnesses of its truth.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Ingersoll's Lecture on The Bible
+
+
+
+The true bible appeals to man in the name of demonstration.  It has
+nothing to conceal.  It has no fear of being read, of being
+contradicted, of being investigated and understood.  It does not pretend
+to be holy or sacred, it simply claims to be true.  It challenges the
+scrutiny of all, and implores every reader to verify every line for
+himself.  It is incapable of being blasphemed.  This book appeals to all
+the surroundings of man. Each thing that exists testifies of its
+perfection.  The earth, with its heart of fire and crowns of snow; with
+its forests and plains, its rocks and seas; with its every wave and
+cloud; with its every leaf and bud and flower, confirms its every word,
+and the solemn stars, shining in the infinite abysses, are the external
+witnesses of its truth.
+
+I will tell you what I mean by inspiration.  I go and look at the sea,
+and the sea says something to me; it makes an impression upon my mind.
+That impression depends, first, upon my experience; secondly, upon my
+intellectual capacity. Another looks upon the same sea. He has a
+different brain, he has had a different experience, he has different
+memories and different hopes. The sea may speak to him of joy and to me
+of grief and sorrow. The sea cannot tell the same thing to two beings,
+because no two human beings have had the same experience. So, when I
+look upon a flower, or a star, or a painting, or a statue, the more I
+know about sculpture the more that statue speaks to me. The more I have
+had of human experience, the more I have read, the greater brain I have,
+the more the star says to me. In other words, nature says to me all that
+I am capable of understanding.
+
+Think of a God wicked and malicious enough to inspire this prayer in the
+109th Psalm! Think of one infamous enough to answer it! Had this
+inspired Psalm been found in some temple erected for the worship of
+snakes, or in the possession of some cannibal king, written with blood
+upon the dried skins of babes, there would have been a perfect harmony
+between its surroundings and its sentiments.
+
+Now, I read the bible, and I find that God so loved this world that he
+made up his mind to damn the most of us. I have read this book and what
+shall I say of it? I believe it is generally better to be honest. Now, I
+don't believe the bible. Had I not better say so? They say that if you
+do you will regret it when you come to die. If that be true, I know a
+great many religious people who will have no cause to regret it--they
+don't tell their honest convictions about the bible.
+
+The bible was the real persecutor. The bible burned heretics, built
+dungeons, founded the Inquisition, and trampled upon all the liberties
+of men. How long, O how long, will mankind worship a book? How long will
+they grovel in the dust before the ignorant legends of the barbaric
+past? How long, O how long, will they pursue phantoms in a darkness
+deeper than death?
+
+The believers in the bible are loud in their denunciation of what they
+are pleased to call the immoral literature of the world; and yet few
+books have been published containing more moral filth than this inspired
+word of God. These stories are not redeemed by a single flash of wit or
+humor. They never rise above the dull details of stupid vice. For one, I
+cannot afford to soil my pages with extracts from them; and all such
+portions of the scriptures I leave to be examined, written upon, and
+explained by the clergy. Clergymen may know some way by which they can
+extract honey from these flowers. Until these passages are expunged from
+the old testament, it is not a fit book to be read by either old or
+young. It contains pages that no minister in the United States would
+read to his congregation for any reward whatever. There are chapters
+that no gentleman would read in the presence of a lady. There are
+chapters that no father would read to his child. There are narratives
+utterly unfit to be told; and the time will come when mankind will
+wonder that such a book was ever called inspired.
+
+But as long as the bible is considered as the work of God, it will be
+hard to make all men too good and pure to imitate it; and as long as it
+is imitated there will be vile and filthy books. The literature of our
+country will not be sweet and clean until the bible ceases to be
+regarded as the production of a god.
+
+In the days of Thomas Paine the church believed and taught that every
+word in the bible was absolutely true. Since his day it has been proven
+false in its cosmogony, false in its astronomy, false in its chronology,
+false in its history, and so far as the old testament is concerned,
+false in almost everything. There are but few, if any, scientific men
+who apprehend that the bible is literally true. Who on earth at this day
+would pretend to settle any scientific question by a text from the
+bible? The old belief is confined to the ignorant and zealous. The
+church itself will before long be driven to occupy the position of
+Thomas Paine!
+
+I love any man who gave me, or helped to give me, the liberty I enjoy
+tonight. I love every man who helped put our flag in heaven. I love
+every man who has lifted his voice in all the ages for liberty, for a
+chainless body, and a fetterless brain. I love every man who has given
+to every other human being every right that he claimed for himself. I
+love every man who thought more of principle than he did of position. I
+love the men who have trampled crowns beneath their feet that they might
+do something for mankind.
+
+The best minds of the orthodox world, today, are endeavoring to prove
+the existence of a personal Deity. All other questions occupy a minor
+place. You are no longer asked to swallow the bible whole, whale, Jonah
+and all; you are simply required to believe in God, and pay your pew-
+rent. There is not now an enlightened minister in the world who will
+seriously contend that Samson's strength was in his hair, or that the
+necromancers of Egypt could turn water into blood, and pieces of wood
+into serpents. These follies have passed away.
+
+For my part, I would infinitely prefer to know all the results of
+scientific investigation than to be inspired as Moses was. Supposing the
+bible to be true; why is it any worse or more wicked for free-thinkers
+to deny it, than for priests to deny the doctrine of evolution, or the
+dynamic theory of heat? Why should we be damned for laughing at Samson
+and his foxes, while others, holding the nebular hypothesis in utter
+contempt, go straight to heaven?
+
+Now when I come to a book, for instance, I read the writings of
+Shakespeare--Shakespeare, the greatest human being who ever existed upon
+this globe. What do I get out of him? All that I have sense enough to
+understand. I get my little cup full. Let another read him who knows
+nothing of the drama, who knows nothing of the impersonation of passion;
+what does he get from him? Very little. In other words, every man gets
+from a book, a flower, a star, or the sea, what he is able to get from
+his intellectual development and experience. Do you then believe that
+the bible is a different book to every human being that receives it? I
+do. Can God, then, through the bible, make the same revelation to two
+men? He cannot. Why? Because the man who reads is the man who inspires.
+Inspiration is in the man and not in the book.
+
+The real oppressor, enslaver and corrupter of the people is the bible.
+That book is the chain that binds, the dungeon that holds the clergy.
+That book spreads the pall of superstition over the colleges and
+schools. That book puts out the eyes of science, and makes honest
+investigation a crime. That book unmans the politician and degrades the
+people. That book fills the world with bigotry, hypocrisy and fear.
+
+Volumes might be written upon the infinite absurdity of this most
+incredible, wicked and foolish of all the fables contained in that
+repository of the impossible, called the bible. To me it is a matter of
+amazement, that it ever was for a moment believed by any intelligent
+human being.
+
+Is it not infinitely more reasonable to say that this book is the work
+of man, that it is filled with mingled truth and error, with mistakes
+and facts, and reflects, too faithfully perhaps, the "very form and
+pressure of its time?" If there are mistakes in the bible, certainly
+they were made by man. If there is anything contrary to nature, it was
+written by man. If there is anything immoral, cruel, heartless or
+infamous, it certainly was never written by a being worthy of the
+adoration of mankind.
+
+It strikes me that God might write a book that would not necessarily
+excite the laughter of his children. In fact, I think it would be safe
+to say that a real god could produce a work that would excite the
+admiration of mankind.
+
+The man who now regards the old testament as, in any sense, a sacred or
+inspired book is, in my judgment, an intellectual and moral deformity.
+There is in it so much that is cruel, ignorant and ferocious that it is
+to me a matter of amazement that it was ever thought to be the work of a
+most merciful deity.
+
+Admitting that the bible is the book of God, is that His only good job?
+Will not a man be damned as quick for denying the equator as denying the
+bible? Will he not be damned as quick for denying geology as for denying
+the scheme of salvation? When the bible was first written it was not
+believed. Had they known as much about science as we know now, that
+bible would not have been written.
+
+Every sect is a certificate that God has not plainly revealed His will
+to man. To each reader the bible conveys a different meaning. About the
+meaning of this book, called a revelation, there have been ages of war
+and centuries of sword and flame. If written by an infinite God, He must
+have known that these results must follow; and thus knowing, He must be
+responsible for all.
+
+Paine thought the barbarities of the old testament inconsistent with
+what he deemed the real character of God. He believed that murder,
+massacre and indiscriminate slaughter had never been commanded by the
+Deity. He regarded much of the bible as childish, unimportant and
+foolish. The scientific world entertains the same spirit in which he had
+attacked the pretensions of kings. He used the same weapons. All the
+pomp in the world could not make him cower. His reason knew no "Holy of
+Holies," except the abode of Truth.
+
+Nothing can be clearer than that Moses received from the Egyptians the
+principal parts of his narrative, making such changes and additions as
+were necessary to satisfy the peculiar superstitions of his own people.
+
+According to the theologians, God, the Father of us all, wrote a letter
+to His children. The children have always differed somewhat as to the
+meaning of this letter. In consequence of these honest difficulties,
+these brothers began to cut out each other's hearts. In every land,
+where this letter from God has been read, the children to whom and for
+whom it was written have been filled with hatred and malice. They have
+imprisoned and murdered each other, and the wives and children of each
+other. In the name of God every possible crime has been committed, every
+conceivable outrage has been perpetrated. Brave men, tender and loving
+women, beautiful girls and prattling babes have been exterminated in the
+name of Jesus Christ.
+
+The church has burned honesty and rewarded hypocrisy. And all this,
+because it was commanded by a book--a book that men had been taught
+implicitly to believe, long before they knew one word that was in it.
+They had been taught that to doubt the truth of this book--to examine
+it, even--was a crime of such enormity that it could not be forgiven,
+either in this world or in the next.
+
+All that is necessary, as it seems to me, to convince any reasonable
+person that the bible is simply and purely of human invention--of
+barbarian invention--is to read it. Read it as you would any other book;
+think of it as you would any other; get the bandage of reverence from
+your eyes; drive from your heart the phantom of fear; push from the
+throne of you brain the cowled form of superstition--then read the holy
+bible, and you will be amazed that you ever, for one moment, supposed a
+being of infinite wisdom, goodness and purity, to be the author of such
+ignorance and such atrocity.
+
+Whether the bible is false or true, is of no consequence in comparison
+with the mental freedom of the race. Salvation through slavery is
+worthless. Salvation from slavery is inestimable. As long as man
+believes the bible to be infallible, that book is his master. The
+civilization of this century is not the child of faith, but of unbelief
+--the result of free thought.
+
+What man who ever thinks, can believe that blood can appease God? And
+yet our entire system of religion is based on that belief. The Jews
+pacified Jehovah with the blood of animals, and according to the
+christian system, the blood of Jesus softened the heart of God a little,
+and rendered possible the salvation of a fortunate few.
+
+It is hard to conceive how any sane man can read the bible and still
+believe in the doctrine of inspiration.
+
+The bible was originally written in the Hebrew language, and the Hebrew
+language at that time had no vowels in writing. It was written entirely
+with consonants, and without being divided into chapters and verses, and
+there was no system of punctuation whatever. After you go home to-night
+write an English sentence or two with only consonants close together,
+and you will find that it will take twice as much inspiration to read it
+as it did to write it.
+
+The real bible is not the result of inspired men, nor prophets, nor
+evangelists, nor christs. The real bible has not been written, but is
+being written. Every man who finds a fact adds a word to this great
+book.
+
+The bad passages in the bible are not inspired. No god ever ordered a
+soldier to sheathe his sword in the breast of a mother. No god ever
+ordered a warrior to butcher a smiling, prattling babe. No god ever
+upheld tyranny. No god ever said, be subject to the powers that be. No
+god endeavored to make man a slave and woman a beast of burden. There
+are thousands of good passages in the bible. Many of them are true.
+There are in it wise laws, good customs, some lofty and splendid things.
+And I do not care whether they are inspired or not, so they are true.
+But what I do insist upon is that the bad is not inspired.
+
+There is no hope for you. It is just as bad to deny hell as it is to
+deny heaven. Prof. Swing says the bible is a poem. Dr. Ryder says it is
+a picture. The Garden of Eden is pictorial; a pictorial snake and a
+pictorial woman, I suppose, and a pictorial man, and may be it was a
+pictorial sin. And only a pictorial atonement!
+
+Man must learn to rely on himself. Reading bibles  will not protect him
+from the blasts of winter, but  houses, fire and clothing will. To
+prevent famine  one plow is worth a million sermons, and even patent
+medicines will cure more diseases than all the prayers uttered since the
+beginning of the world.
+
+
+
+
+
+Ingersoll's Lecture on Voltaire
+
+
+Ladies and Gentlemen:  The infidels of one age have often been the
+aureoled saints of the next.
+
+The destroyers of the old are the creators of the new.  As time sweeps
+on the old passes away and the new in its turn becomes of old.
+
+There is in the intellectual world, as in the physical, decay and
+growth, and ever by the grave of buried age stand youth and joy.
+
+The history of intellectual progress is written in the lives of
+infidels.
+
+Political rights have been preserved by traitors; the liberty of mind
+by heretics.
+
+To attack the king was treason; to dispute the priest was blasphemy.
+
+For many years the sword and cross were allies.  Together they attacked
+the rights of man.  They defended each other.
+
+The throne and altar were twins--two vultures from the same egg.
+
+James I said:  "No bishop; no king."  He might have added:  No cross,
+no crown.  The king owned the bodies of men; the priest, the souls.
+One lived on taxes collected by force, the other on alms collected by
+fear--both robbers, both beggars.
+
+These robbers and these beggars controlled two worlds.  The king made
+laws, the priest made creeds.  Both obtained their authority from God,
+both were the agents of the infinite.  With bowed backs the people
+carried the burdens of one, and with wonder's open mouth received the
+dogmas of the other.  If the people aspired to be free, they were
+crushed by the king, and every priest was a Herod, who slaughtered the
+children of the brain.
+
+The king ruled by force, the priest by fear, and both by both. The king
+said to the people:  "God made you peasants, and He made me king; He
+made you to labor, and me to enjoy; He made rags and hovels for you,
+robes and palaces for me.  He made you to obey and me to command.  Such
+is the justice of God,"  And the priest said:  "God made you ignorant
+and vile; He made me holy and wise; you are the sheep, I am the
+shepherd; your fleeces belong to me.  If you do not obey me here, God
+will punish you now and torment you forever in another world.  Such is
+the mercy of God."
+
+"You must not reason.  Reason is a rebel.  You must not contradict--
+contradiction is born of egotism; you must believe. He that has ears to
+hear let him hear.  Heaven is a question of ears."
+
+Fortunately for us, there have been traitors and there have been
+heretics, blasphemers, thinkers, investigators, lovers of liberty, men
+of genius, who have given their lives to better the condition of their
+fellow-men.
+
+It may be well enough here to ask the question:  "What is greatness?"  A
+great man adds to the sum of knowledge, extends the horizon of thought,
+releases souls from the Bastille of fear, crosses unknown and mysterious
+seas, gives new islands and new continents to the domain of thought, new
+constellations to the firmament of mind.  A great man does not seek
+applause or place; he seeks for truth; he seeks the road to happiness,
+and what he ascertains he gives to others.       A great man throws
+pearls before swine, and the swine are sometimes changed to men.  If the
+great had always kept their pearls, vast multitudes would be barbarians
+now.
+
+A great man is a torch in the darkness, a beacon in superstition's
+night, an inspiration and a prophecy.  Greatness is not the gift of
+majorities; it cannot be thrust upon any man; men cannot give it to
+another; they can give place and power, but not greatness.  The place
+does not make the man, nor the sceptre the king.  Greatness is from
+within.
+
+The great men are the heroes who have freed the bodies of men; they are
+the philosophers and thinkers who have given liberty to the soul; they
+are the poets who have transfigured the common and filled the lives of
+many millions with love and song.  They are the artists who have covered
+the bare walls of weary life with the triumphs of genius.  They are the
+heroes who have slain the monsters of ignorance and fear, who have
+outgazed the Gorgon and driven the cruel gods from their thrones.
+
+They are the inventors, the discoverers, the great mechanics, the kings
+of the useful who have civilized this world.
+
+At the head of this heroic army, foremost of all, stands Voltaire, whose
+memory we are honoring tonight.  Voltaire! a name that excites the
+admiration of men, the malignity of priests. Pronounce that name in the
+presence of a clergyman, and you will find that you have made a
+declaration of war.  Pronounce that name, and from the face of the
+priest the mask of meekness will fall, and from the mouth of forgiveness
+will pour a Niagara of vituperation and calumny.  And yet Voltaire was
+the greatest man of his century, and did more for the human race than
+ally other of the sons of men.
+
+On Sunday, the 21st of November, 1694, a babe was born; a babe
+exceedingly frail, whose breath hesitated about remaining.  This babe
+became the greatest man of the eighteenth century.
+
+When Voltaire came to this "great stage of fools," his country had been
+christianized--not civilized--for about fourteen hundred years.  For a
+thousand years the religion of peace and good will had been supreme.
+The laws had been given by christian kings, sanctioned by "wise and holy
+men."
+
+Under the benign reign of universal love, every court had its chamber of
+torture, and every priest relied on the thumbscrew and rack.  Such had
+been the success of the blessed gospel that every science was an
+outcast.  To speak your honest thoughts, to teach your fellow men, to
+investigate for yourself, to seek the truth, these were crimes, and the
+"Holy Mother Church" pursued the criminals with sword and flame.
+
+The believers in a God of love--an infinite father--punished hundreds of
+offenses with torture and death.  Suspected persons were tortured to
+make them confess.  Convicted persons were tortured to make them give
+the names of their accomplices.  Under the leadership of the church
+cruelty had become the only reforming power.  In this blessed year 1694
+all authors were at the mercy of king and priest.  The most of them were
+cast into prisons, impoverished by fines and costs, exiled or executed.
+The little time that hangmen could snatch from professional duties was
+occupied in burning books.  The courts of justice were traps in which
+the innocent were caught.  The judges were almost as malicious and cruel
+as though they had been bishops or saints. There was no trial by jury,
+and the rules of evidence allowed the conviction of the supposed
+criminal by the proof of suspicion or hearsay.  The witnesses, being
+liable to torture, generally told what the judges wished to hear.
+
+When Voltaire was born the church ruled and owned France.  It was a
+period of almost universal corruption.  The priests were mostly
+libertines, the judges cruel and venal.  The royal palace was a house of
+prostitution.  The nobles were heartless, proud, arrogant and cruel to
+the last degree.  The common people were treated as beasts.  It took the
+church a thousand years to bring about this happy condition of things.
+
+The seeds of the revolution unconsciously were being scattered by every
+noble and by every priest.  They were germinating slowly in the hearts
+of the wretched; they were being watered by the tears of agony; blows
+began to bear interest.  There was a faint longing for blood.  Workmen,
+blackened by the sun, bowed by labor, deformed by want; looked at the
+white throats of scornful ladies and thought about cutting them.  In
+those days the witnesses were cross-examined with instruments of
+torture; the church was the arsenal of superstition; miracles, relics,
+angels, and devils were as common as lies.
+
+Voltaire was of the people.  In the language of that day, he had no
+ancestors.  His real name was Francois Marie Arouet.  His mother was
+Marguerite d'Aumard.  This mother died when he was seven years of age.
+He had an elder brother, Armand, who was a devotee, very religious and
+exceedingly disagreeable.  This brother used to present offerings to the
+church, hoping to make amends for the unbelief of his brother.  So far
+as we know none of his ancestors were literary people.  The Arouets had
+never written a line.  The Abbe le Chaulieu was his godfather, and,
+although an abbe, was a deist who cared nothing about his religion
+except in connection with his salary.  Voltaire's father wanted to make
+a lawyer of him, but he had no taste for law.  At the age of 10 he
+entered the college of Louis le Grand.  This was a Jesuit school, and
+here he remained for seven years, leaving at 17, and never attending any
+other school.  According to Voltaire he learned nothing at this school
+but a little Greek, a good deal of Latin, and a vast amount of nonsense.
+
+In this college of Louis le Grand they did not teach geography, history,
+mathematics, or any science.  This was a Catholic institution,
+controlled by the Jesuits.  In that day the religion was defended, was
+protected, or supported by the state.  Behind the entire creed were the
+bayonet, the ax, the wheel, the fagot, and the torture chamber.  While
+Voltaire was attending the college of Louis le Grand the soldiers of the
+king were hunting Protestants in the mountains of Cevennes for
+magistrates to hang on gibbets, to put to torture, to break on the wheel
+or to burn at the stake.
+
+There is but one use for law, but one excuse for government--the
+preservation of liberty--to give to each man his own, to secure to the
+farmer what he produces from the soil, the mechanic what he invents and
+makes, to the artist what he creates, to the thinker the right to
+express his thoughts.  Liberty is the breath of progress.  In France the
+people were the sport of a king's caprice.  Everywhere was the shadow of
+the Bastille.  It fell upon the sunniest field, upon the happiest home.
+With the king walked the headsman; back of the throne was the chamber
+of torture.  The church appealed to the rack, and faith relied on the
+fagot.  Science was an outcast, and philosophy, so-called, was the
+pander of superstition.  Nobles and priests were sacred. Peasants were
+vermin.  Idleness sat at the banquet and industry gathered the crumbs
+and crusts.
+
+At 17 Voltaire determined to devote his life to literature.  The father
+said, speaking of his two sons, Armand and Francois:  "I have a pair of
+fools for sons, one in verse and the other in prose."  In 1713 Voltaire,
+in a small way, became a diplomat.  He went to The Hague attached to the
+French minister, and there he fell in love.  The girl's mother objected.
+Voltaire sent his clothes to the young lady that she might visit him.
+Everything was discovered and he was dismissed.  To this girl he wrote a
+letter, and in it you will find the keynote of Voltaire:  "Do not expose
+yourself to the fury of your mother.  You know what she is capable of.
+You have experienced it too well.  Dissemble; it is your only chance.
+Tell her that you have forgotten me, that you hate me; then after
+telling her, love me all the more."  On account of this episode Voltaire
+was formally disinherited by his father.  The father procured an order
+of arrest and gave his son the choice of going to prison or beyond the
+seas.  He finally consented to become a lawyer, and says:  "I have
+already been a week at work in the office of a solicitor learning the
+trade of a pettifogger."  About this time he competed for a prize,
+writing a poem on the king's generosity in building the new choir in the
+cathedral Notre Dame.  He did not win it.  After being with the
+solicitor a little while, he hated the law, he began to write poetry and
+the outlines of tragedy.  Great questions were then agitating the public
+mind, questions that throw a flood of light upon that epoch.
+
+Louis XIV having died, the regent took possession; and then the prisons
+were opened.  The regent called for a list of all persons then in the
+prisons sent there at the will of the king.  He found that, as to many
+prisoners, nobody knew any cause why they had been in prison.  They had
+been forgotten.  Many of the prisoners did not know themselves, and
+could not guess why they had been arrested.  One Italian had been in the
+Bastille thirty-three years without ever knowing why.  On his arrival to
+Paris thirty-three years before he was arrested and sent to prison.  He
+had grown old.  He had survived his family and friends.  When the rest
+were liberated he asked to remain where he was, and lived there the rest
+of his life.
+
+The old prisoners were pardoned; but in a little while their places
+were taken by new ones.  At this time Voltaire was not interested in the
+great world--knew very little of religion or of government.  He was busy
+writing poetry, busy thinking of comedies and tragedies.  He was full of
+life.  All his fancies were winged, like moths.  He was charged with
+having written some cutting epigrams.  He was exiled to Tulle, three
+hundred miles away.  From this place he wrote in the true vein:  "I am
+at a chateau, a place that would be the most agreeable in the world if I
+had not been exiled to it, and where there is nothing wanting for my
+perfect happiness except the liberty of leaving.  It would be delicious
+to remain if I only were allowed to go."  At last the exile was allowed
+to return.  Again he was arrested; this time sent to the Bastille,
+where he remained for nearly a year. While in prison he changed his name
+from Francois Marie Arouet to Voltaire, and by that name he has since
+been known.  Voltaire began to think, to doubt, to inquire.  He studied
+the history of the church of the creed.  He found that the religion of
+his time rested on the usurpation of the scriptures--the infallibility
+of the church--the dreams of insane hermits--the absurdities of the
+fathers--the mistakes and falsehoods of saints--the hysteria of nuns--
+the cunning of priests and the stupidity of the people.  He found that
+the Emperor Constantine, who lifted christianity into power, murdered
+his wife Fansta and his eldest son Crispus the same year that he
+convened the council of Nice to decide whether Christ was a man or the
+son of God.  The council decided, in the year 325, that Christ was
+consubstantial with the Father.  He found that the church was indebted
+to a husband who assassinated his wife--a father who murdered his son--
+for settling the vexed question of the divinity of the Savior.  He found
+that Theodosius called a council at Constantinople in 381 by which it
+was decided that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father--that
+Theodosius, the younger, assembled a council at Ephesus in 431 that
+declared the Virgin Mary to be the mother of God--that the Emperor
+Martian called another council at Chalcedon in 451 that decided that
+Christ had two wills--that Pognatius called another in 680 that declared
+that Christ had two natures to go with his two wills--and that in 1274,
+at the council of Lyons, the important fact was found that the Holy
+Ghost "proceeded" not only from the Father, but also from the Son at the
+same time.
+
+So Voltaire has been called a mocker!  What did he mock?  He mocked
+kings that were unjust; kings who cared nothing for the sufferings of
+their subjects.  He mocked the titled fools of his day.  He mocked the
+corruption of courts; the meanness, the tyranny, and the brutality of
+judges.  He mocked the absurd and cruel laws, the barbarous customs.  He
+mocked popes and cardinals, bishops and priests, and all the hypocrites
+on the earth.  He mocked historians who filled their books with lies,
+and philosophers who defended superstition.  He mocked the haters of
+liberty, the persecutors of their fellow-men.  He mocked the arrogance,
+the cruelty, the impudence and the unspeakable baseness of his time.
+
+He has been blamed because he used the weapon of ridicule. Hypocrisy has
+always hated laughter, and always will.  Absurdity detests humor and
+stupidity despises wit.  Voltaire was the master of ridicule.  He
+ridiculed the absurd, the impossible.  He ridiculed the mythologies and
+the miracles, the stupid lives and lies of the saints.  He found
+pretense and mendacity crowned by credulity.  He found the ignorant many
+controlled by the cunning and cruel few.  He found the historian,
+saturated with superstition, filling his volumes with the details of the
+impossible, and he found the scientists satisfied with "they say."
+Voltaire had the instinct of the probable.  He knew the law of average;
+the sea level; he had the idea of proportion; and so he ridiculed the
+mental monstrosities and deformities--the non sequiturs--of his day.
+Aristotle said women had more teeth than men.  This was repeated again
+and again by the Catholic scientists of the eighteenth century.
+Voltaire counted the teeth.  The rest were satisfied with "they say."
+
+We may, however, get an idea of the condition of France from the fact
+that Voltaire regarded England as the land of liberty. While he was in
+England he saw the body of Sir Isaac Newton deposited in Westminster
+Abbey.   He read the works of this great man and afterward gave to
+France the philosophy of the great Englishman.  Voltaire was the apostle
+of common sense.  He knew that there could have been no primitive or
+first language from which all other languages had been formed.  He knew
+that every language had been influenced by the surroundings of the
+people. He knew that the language of snow and ice was not the language
+of palm and flower.  He knew also that there had been no miracle in
+language.  He knew it was impossible that the story of the Tower of
+Babel should be true.  That everything in the whole world had been
+natural.  He was the enemy of alchemy, not only in language, but in
+science.  One passage from him is enough to show his philosophy in this
+regard.  He says:  "To transmute iron into gold two things are
+necessary.  First, the annihilation of the iron; second, the creation
+of gold."  Voltaire was a man of humor, of good nature, of cheerfulness.
+He despised with all his heart the philosophy of Calvin, the creed of
+the somber, of the severe, of the unnatural.  He pitied those who needed
+the aid of religion to be honest, to be cheerful.  He had the courage to
+enjoy the present and the philosophy to bear what the future might
+bring.  And yet for more than a hundred and fifty years the Christian
+world has fought this man and has maligned his memory. In every
+christian pulpit his name has been pronounced with scorn, and every
+pulpit has been an arsenal of slander.  He is one man of whom no
+orthodox minister has ever told the truth.  He has been denounced
+equally by Catholics and Protestants.
+
+Priests and ministers, bishops and exhorters, presiding elders and popes
+have filled the world with slanders, with calm calumnies about Voltaire.
+I am amazed that ministers will not or cannot tell the truth about an
+enemy of the church.  As a matter of fact, for more than 1,000 years
+almost every pulpit has been a mint in which slanders were coined.
+
+For many years this restless man filled Europe with the product of his
+brain.  Essays, epigrams, epics, comedies, tragedies, histories, poems,
+novels, representing every phase and every faculty of the human mind.
+At the same time engrossed in business, full of speculation, making
+money like a millionaire, busy with the gossip of courts, and even with
+the scandals of priests.  At the same time alive to all the discoveries
+of science and the theories of philosophers, and in this babel never
+forgetting for a moment to assail the monster of superstition. Sleeping
+and waking he hated the church.  With the eyes of Argus he watched, and
+with the arms of Briarieius he struck.  For sixty years he waged
+continuous and unrelenting war, sometimes in the open field, sometimes
+striking from the hedges of opportunity, taking care during all this
+time to remain independent of all men.  He was in the highest sense
+successful.  He lived like a prince, became one of the powers of Europe,
+and in him, for the first time, literature was crowned.  Voltaire, in
+spite of his surroundings, in spite of almost universal tyranny and
+oppression, was a believer in God and in what he was pleased to call the
+religion of nature.  He attacked the creed of his time because it was
+dishonorable to his God.  He thought of the Deity as a father, as the
+fountain of justice, intelligence and mercy, and the creed of the
+Catholic church made him a monster of cruelty and stupidity.  He
+attacked the bible with all the weapons at his command.  He assailed its
+geology, its astronomy, its idea of justice, its laws and customs, its
+absurd and useless miracles, its foolish wonders, its ignorance on all
+subjects, its insane prophecies, its cruel threats, and its extravagant
+promises.  At the same time he praised the God of nature, the God who
+gives us rain and light, and food and flowers, and health and happiness
+--he who fills the world with youth and beauty.
+
+In 1755 came the earthquake at Lisbon.  This frightful disaster became
+an immense interrogation.  The optimist was compelled to ask, "What was
+my God doing?  Why did the Universal Father crush to shapelessness
+thousands of his poor children, even at the moment when they were upon
+their knees returning thanks to Him?" What could be done with this
+horror?  If earthquake there must be, why did it not occur in some
+uninhabited desert on some wide waste of sea?  This frightful fact
+changed the theology of Voltaire.  He became convinced that this is not
+the best possible of all worlds.  He became convinced that evil is evil
+here, now and forever.
+
+Who can establish the existence of an infinite being?  It is beyond the
+conception--the reason--the imagination of man--probably or possibly--
+where the zenith and nadir meet this God can be found.
+
+Voltaire, attacked on every side, fought with every weapon that wit,
+logic, reason, scorn, contempt, laughter, pathos and indignation could
+sharpen, form, devise or use.  He often apologized, and the apology was
+an insult.  He often recanted, and the recantation was a thousand times
+worse than the thing recanted.  He took it back by giving more.  In the
+name of eulogy he flayed his victim.  In his praise there was poison.
+He often advanced by retreating, and asserted by retraction.  He did not
+intend to give priests the satisfaction of seeing him burn or suffer.
+Upon this very point of recanting, he wrote:  "They say I must retract.
+Very willingly.  I will declare the Pascal is always right.  That if St.
+Luke and St. Mark contradict one another it is only another proof of the
+truth of religion to those who know how to understand such things; and
+that another lovely proof of religion is that it is unintelligible.  I
+will even avow that all priests are gentle and disinterested; that
+Jesuits are honest people; that monks are neither proud nor given to
+intrigue, and that their odor is agreeable; that the Holy Inquisition
+is the triumph of humanity and tolerance.  In a word, I will say all
+that may be desired of me, provided they leave me in repose, and will
+not prosecute a man who has done harm to none."
+
+He gave the best years of his wondrous life to succor the oppressed, to
+shield the defenseless, to reverse infamous decrees, to rescue the
+innocent, to reform the laws of France, to do away with torture, to
+soften the hearts of priests, to enlighten judges, to instruct kings, to
+civilize the people, and to banish from the heart of man the love and
+lust of war. Voltaire was not a saint.  He was educated by the Jesuits.
+He was never troubled about the salvation of his soul.  All the
+theological disputes excited his laughter, the creeds his pity, and the
+conduct of bigots his contempt.  He was much better than a saint.  Most
+of the Christians in his day kept their religion not for everyday use
+but for disaster, as ships carry lifeboats to be used only in the stress
+of storm.
+
+Voltaire believed in the religion of humanity--of good and generous
+deeds.  For many centuries the church had painted virtue so ugly, sour
+and cold that vice was regarded as beautiful. Voltaire taught the beauty
+of the useful, the hatefulness and hideousness of superstition.  He was
+not the greatest of poets, or of dramatists, but he was the greatest man
+of his time, the greatest friend of freedom, and the deadliest foe of
+superstition.  He wrote the best French plays--but they were not
+wonderful.  He wrote verses polished and perfect in their way. He filled
+the air with painted moths--but not with Shakespearean eagles.
+
+You may think that I have said too much; that I have placed this man
+too high.  Let me tell you what Goethe, the great German, said of this
+man:  "If you wish depth, genius, imagination, taste, reason,
+sensibility, philosophy, elevation, originality, nature, intellect,
+fancy, rectitude, facility, flexibility, precision, art, abundance,
+variety, fertility, warmth, magic, charm, grace, force, an eagle sweep
+of vision, vast understanding, instruction rich, tone excellent,
+urbanity, suavity, delicacy, correctness, purity, cleanness, eloquence,
+harmony, brilliancy, rapidity, gayety, pathos, sublimity, and
+universality perfection, indeed, behold Voltaire."
+
+Even Carlyle, the old Scotch terrier, with the growl of a grizzly bear,
+who attacked shams, as I have sometime thought, because he hated rivals,
+was forced to admit that Voltaire gave the death stab to modern
+superstition.  It was the hand of Voltaire that sowed the seeds of
+liberty in the heart and brain of Franklin, of Jefferson, and of Thomas
+Paine.
+
+Toulouse was a favored town.  It was rich in relics.  The people were as
+ignorant as wooden images, but they had in their possession the dried
+bodies of seven apostles--the bones of many of the infants slain by
+Herod--part of a dress of the Virgin Mary, and lots of skulls and
+skeletons of the infallible idiots known as saints.
+
+In this city the people celebrated every year with great joy two holy
+events:  The expulsion of the Huguenots and the blessed massacre of St.
+Bartholomew.  The citizens of Toulouse had been educated and civilized
+by the church.  A few Protestants, mild because in the minority, lived
+among these jackals and tigers. One of these Protestants was Jean Calas
+--a small dealer in dry goods.  For forty years he had been in this
+business, and his character was without a stain.  He was honest, kind
+and agreeable.  He had a wife and six children, four sons and two
+daughters.  One of the sons became a Catholic.  The eldest son, Marc
+Antoine, disliked his father's business and studied law.  He could not
+be allowed to practice unless he became a Catholic.  He tried to get his
+license by concealing that he was a Protestant. He was discovered--grew
+morose.  Finally he became discouraged and committed suicide by hanging
+himself one evening in his father's store.  The bigots of Toulouse
+started the story that his parents had killed him to prevent his
+becoming a Catholic. On this frightful charge the father, mother, one
+son, a servant, and one guest at their house were arrested.  The dead
+son was considered a martyr, the church taking possession of the body.
+This happened in 1761.  There was what was called a trial.  There was no
+evidence, not the slightest, except hearsay.  All the facts were in
+favor of the accused.  The united strength of the defendants could not
+have done the deed.
+
+Jean Calas was doomed to torture and to death upon the wheel. This was
+on the 9th of March, 1762, and the sentence was to be carried out the
+next day.  On the morning of the 10th the father was taken to the
+torture room.  The executioner and his assistants were sworn on the
+cross to administer the torture according to the judgment of the court.
+They bound him by the wrists to an iron ring in the stone wall four feet
+from the ground and his feet to another ring in the floor.  Then they
+shortened the ropes and chains until every joint in his arms and legs
+were dislocated.  Then he was questioned.  He declared that he was
+innocent.  Then the ropes were again shortened until life fluttered in
+the torn body; but he remained firm.  This was called the question
+ordinaire.  Again the magistrate exhorted the victim to confess, and
+again he refused, saying that there was nothing to confess.  Then came
+the question extraordinaire.  Into the mouth of the victim was placed a
+horn holding three pints of water.  In this way thirty pints of water
+were forced into the body of the sufferer.  The pain was beyond
+description, and yet Jean Calas remained firm.  He was then carried to a
+scaffold in a tumbril.  He was bound to a wooden cross that lay on the
+scaffold.  The executioner then took a bar of iron, broke each leg and
+arm in two places, striking eleven blows in all.  He was then left to
+die if he could.  He lived for two hours, declaring his innocence to the
+last.  He was slow to die and so the executioner strangled him.  Then
+his poor lacerated, bleeding and broken body was chained to a stake and
+burned.  All this was a spectacle--a festival for the savages of
+Toulouse.  What would they have done if their hearts had not been
+softened by the glad tidings of great joy, peace on earth and good
+will to men?
+
+But this was not all.  The property of the family was confiscated; the
+son was released on condition that he become a Catholic; the servant if
+she would enter a convent.  The two daughters were consigned to a
+convent and the heart-broken widow was allowed to wander where she
+would.
+
+Voltaire heard of this case.  In a moment his soul was on fire. He took
+one of the sons under his roof.  He wrote a history of the case.  He
+corresponded with kings and queens, with chancellors and lawyers.  If
+money was needed he advanced it. For years he filled Europe with the
+echoes of the groans of Jean Calas.  He succeeded.  The horrible
+judgment was annulled--the poor victim declared innocent and thousands
+of dollars raised to support the mother and family.  This was the work
+of Voltaire.
+
+Sirven, a Protestant, lived in Languedoc with his wife and three
+daughters.  The housekeeper of the bishop wanted to make one of the
+daughters a Catholic.  The law allowed the bishop to take the child of
+Protestants from its parents for the sake of its soul. The little girl
+was so taken and placed in a convent.  She ran away and came back to her
+parents.  Her poor little body was covered with the marks of the convent
+whip.  "Suffer little children to come unto me."  The child was out of
+her mind; suddenly she disappeared; and three days after her little
+body was found in a well, three miles from home.  The cry was raised
+that her folks had murdered her to keep her from becoming a Catholic.
+This happened only a little way from the christian city of Toulouse
+while Jean Calas was in prison.  The Sirvens knew that a trial would end
+in conviction.  They fled.  In their absence they were convicted, their
+property confiscated.  The parents sentenced to die by the hangman, the
+daughters to be under the gallows during the execution of their mother
+and then to be exiled.  The family fled in the midst of winter; the
+married daughter gave birth to a child in the snows of the Alps; the
+mother died, and at last the father, reaching Switzerland, found himself
+without the means of support.  They went to Voltaire.  He espoused their
+cause.  He took care of them, gave them the means to live, and labored
+to annul the sentence that had been pronounced against them for nine
+long and weary years. He appealed to kings for money, to Catherine II of
+Russia, and to hundreds of others.  He was successful.  He said of this
+case:--The Sirvens were tried and condemned in two hours in January,
+1762, and now in January, 1772, after ten years of effort, they have
+been restored to their rights."
+
+This was the work of Voltaire.  Why should the worshipers of God hate
+the lovers of men?
+
+Espenasse was a Protestant, of good estate.  In 1740 he received into
+his house a Protestant clergyman, to whom he gave supper and lodging.
+In a country where priests repeated the parable of the "Good Samaritan"
+this was a crime.  For this crime Espenasse was tried, convicted and
+sentenced to the galleys for life.  When he had been imprisoned for
+twenty-three years his case came to the knowledge of Voltaire, and he
+was, through the efforts of Voltaire, released and restored to his
+family.
+
+This was the work of Voltaire.  There is not time to tell of the case of
+Gen. Lally, of the English Gen. Byng, of the niece of Corneille, of the
+Jesuit Adam, of the writers, dramatists, actors, widows and orphans for
+whose benefit he gave his influence, his money and his time.
+
+But I will tell another case:  In 1765 at the town of Abbeville an old
+wooden cross on a bridge had been mutilated--whittled with a knife--a
+terrible crime.  Sticks, when crossing each other, were far more sacred
+than flesh and blood.  Two young men were suspected--the Chevalier de la
+Barre and d'Ettalonde. D'Ettallonde fled to Prussia and enlisted as a
+common soldier. La Barre remained and stood his trial.  He was convicted
+without the slightest evidence, and he and d'Ettallonde were both
+sentenced:  First, to endure the torture, ordinary and extraordinary;
+second, to have their tongues torn out by the roots with pincers of
+iron; third, to have their right hands cut off at the door of the
+church; and fourth, to be bound to stakes by chains of iron and burned
+to death by a slow fire.  "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those
+who trespass against us." Remembering this, the judges mitigated the
+sentence by providing that their heads should be cut off before their
+bodies were given to the flames.  The case was appealed to Paris; heard
+by a court composed of twenty-five judges learned in law, and the
+judgment was confirmed.  The sentence was carried out on the 1st day of
+July, 1766.
+
+Voltaire had fought with every weapon that genius could devise or use.
+He was the greatest of all caricaturists, and he used this wonderful
+gift without mercy.  For pure crystallized wit he had no equal.  The art
+of flattery was carried by him to the height of an exact science.  He
+knew and practiced every subterfuge.  He fought the army of hypocrisy
+and pretense, the army of faith and falsehood.  Voltaire was annoyed by
+the meaner and baser spirits of his time, by the cringers and crawlers,
+by the fawners and pretenders, by those who wished to gain the favors of
+priests, the patronage of nobles.  Sometimes he allowed himself to be
+annoyed by these scorpions; sometimes he attacked them.  And, but for
+these attacks, long ago they would have been forgotten. In the amber of
+his genius Voltaire preserved these insects, these tarantulas, these
+scorpions.
+
+It is fashionable to say that he was not profound.  This is because he
+was not stupid.  In the presence of absurdity he laughed, and was called
+irreverent.  He thought God would not damn even a priest forever.  This
+was regarded as blasphemy.  He endeavored to prevent Christians from
+murdering each other, and did what he could to civilize the disciples of
+Christ.  Had he founded a sect, obtained control of some country, and
+burned a few heretics at slow fires, he would have won the admiration,
+respect and love of the christian world.  Had he only pretended to
+believe all the fables of antiquity, and had he mumbled Latin prayers,
+counted beads, crossed himself, devoured now and then the flesh of God,
+and carried fagots to the feet of Philosophy in the name of Christ, he
+might have been in heaven this moment, enjoying a sight of the damned.
+
+If he had only adopted the creed of his time--if he had asserted that a
+God of infinite power and mercy had created millions and billions of
+human beings to suffer eternal pain, and all for the sake of his
+glorious justice--that he had given his power of attorney to a cunning
+and cruel Italian pope, authorizing him to save the soul of his mistress
+and send honest wives to hell--if he had given to the nostrils of this
+God the odor of burning flesh--the incense of the fagot--if he had
+filled his ears with the shrieks of the tortured--the music of the rack,
+he would now be known as St. Voltaire.
+
+Instead of doing these things he willfully closed his eyes to the light
+of the gospel, examined the bible for himself, advocated intellectual
+liberty, struck from the brain the fetters of an arrogant faith,
+assisted the weak, cried out against the torture of man, appealed to
+reason, endeavored to establish universal toleration, succored the
+indigent, and defended the oppressed. He demonstrated that the origin of
+all religions is the same, the same mysteries--the same miracles--the
+same impostures--the same temples and ceremonies--the same kind of
+founders, apostles and dupes--the same promises and threats--the same
+pretense of goodness and forgiveness and the practice of the same
+persecution and murder.  He proved that religion made enemies--
+philosophy, friends--and that above the rites of gods were the rights of
+man. These were his crimes.  Such a man God would not suffer to die in
+peace.      If allowed to meet death with a smile, others might follow
+his example, until none would be left to light the holy fires of the
+auto da fe.  It would not do for so great, so successful an enemy of the
+church to die without leaving some shriek of fear, some shudder of
+remorse, some ghastly prayer of chattered horror, uttered by lips
+covered with blood and foam. For many centuries the theologians have
+taught that an unbeliever--an infidel--one who spoke or wrote against
+their creed, could not meet death with composure; that in his last
+moments God would fill his conscience with the serpents of remorse.  For
+a thousand years the clergy have manufactured the facts to fit this
+theory--this infamous conception of the duty of man and the justice of
+God.  The theologians have insisted that crimes against men were, and
+are, as nothing compared with crimes against God.  That, while kings and
+priests did nothing worse than to make their fellows wretched, that so
+long as they only butchered and burnt the innocent and helpless, God
+would maintain the strictest neutrality; but when some honest man, some
+great and tender soul, expressed a doubt as to the truth of the
+scriptures, or prayed to the wrong god, or to the right one by the wrong
+name, then the real God leaped like a wounded tiger upon his victim, and
+from his quivering flesh tore the wretched soul.
+
+There is no recorded instance where the uplifted hand of murder has been
+paralyzed--no truthful account in all the literature of the world of the
+innocent child being shielded by God.  Thousands of crimes are being
+committed ever day--men are at this moment lying in wait for their human
+prey--wives are whipped and crushed, driven to insanity and death--
+little children begging for mercy, lifting imploring, tear-filled eyes
+to the brutal faces of fathers and mothers--sweet girls are deceived,
+lured and outraged, but God has no time to prevent these things--no time
+to defend the good and protect the pure.  He is too busy numbering hairs
+and watching sparrows.  He listens for blasphemy; looks for persons who
+laugh at priests; examines baptismal registers; watches professors in
+college who begin to doubt the geology of Moses and the astronomy of
+Joshua.  He does not particularly object to stealing, if you don't
+swear.  A great many persons have fallen dead in the act of taking God's
+name in vain, but millions of men, women and children have been stolen
+from their homes and used as beasts of burden, but no one engaged in
+this infamy has ever been touched by the wrathful hand of God.  All
+kinds of criminals, except infidels, meet death with reasonable
+serenity.  As a rule there is nothing in the death of a pirate to cast
+any discredit on his profession.  The murderer upon the scaffold, with a
+priest on either side, smilingly exhorts the multitude to meet him in
+heaven.  The man who has succeeded in making his home a hell meets death
+without a quiver, provided he has never expressed any doubt as to the
+divinity of Christ or the eternal "procession" of the Holy Ghost.
+
+Now and then a man of genius, of sense, of intellectual honesty, has
+appeared.  Such men have denounced the superstition of their day.  They
+have pitied the multitude.  To see priests devour the substance of the
+people--priests who made begging one of the learned professions--filled
+them with loathing and contempt. These men were honest enough to tell
+their thoughts, brave enough to speak the truth.  Then they were
+denounced, tried, tortured, killed by rack or flame.  But some escaped
+the fury of the fiends who loved their enemies and died naturally in
+their beds.  It would not do for the church to admit that they died
+peacefully. That would show that religion was essential at the last
+moment. Superstition gets its power from the terror of death.  It would
+not do to have the common people understand that a man could deny the
+bible, refuse to kiss the cross; contend that humanity was greater than
+Christ, and then die as sweetly as Torquemada did after pouring molten
+lead into the ears of an honest man, or as calmly as Calvin after he had
+burned Servetus, or as peacefully as King David after advising with his
+last breath one son to assassinate another.
+
+The church has taken great pains to show that the last moments of all
+infidels (that Christians did not succeed in burning) were infinitely
+wretched and despairing.  It was alleged that words could not paint the
+horrors that were endured by a dying infidel. Every good Christian was
+expected to, and generally did, believe these accounts.  They have been
+told and retold in every pulpit of the world.  Protestant ministers have
+repeated the lies invented by Catholic priests, and Catholics, by a kind
+of theological comity, have sworn to the lies told by the Protestants.
+Upon this point they have always stood together, and will as long as the
+same falsehood can be used by both.  Upon the death-bed subject the
+clergy grew eloquent.  When describing the shudderings and shrieks of
+the dying unbeliever their eyes glitter with delight.  It is a festival.
+They are no longer men. They become hyenas.  They dig open graves.  They
+devour the dead. It is a banquet.  Unsatisfied still, they paint the
+terrors of hell.  They gaze at the souls of the infidels writhing in the
+coils of the worm that never dies.  They see them in flames--in oceans
+of fire--in gulfs of pain--in abysses of despair.  They shout with joy.
+They applaud.
+
+It is an auto da fe, presided over by God.  But let us come back to
+Voltaire--to the dying philosopher.  He was an old man of 84. He had
+been surrounded with the comforts, the luxuries of life. He was a man of
+great wealth, the richest writer that the world had known.  Among the
+literary men of the earth he stood first. He was an intellectual
+monarch--one who had built his own throne and had woven the purple of
+his own power.  He was a man of genius.  The Catholic God had allowed
+him the appearance of success.  His last years were filled with the
+intoxication of flattery--of almost worship.  He stood at the summit of
+his age. The priests became anxious.  They began to fear that God would
+forget, in a multiplicity of business, to make a terrible example of
+Voltaire.  Toward the last of May, 1778, it was whispered in Paris that
+Voltaire was dying.  Upon the fences of expectation gathered the unclean
+birds of superstition, impatiently waiting for their prey.  Two days
+before his death, his nephew went to seek the cure of Saint Surplice and
+the Abbe Gautier, and brought them to his uncle's sick chamber, who,
+being informed that they were there, said:  "Ah, well, give them my
+compliments and my thanks."  The abbe spoke some words to him, exhorting
+him to patience.  The cure of Saint Surplice then came forward, having
+announced himself, and asked of Voltaire, elevating his voice, if he
+acknowledged the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The sick man pushed
+one of his hands against the cure's coif, shoving him back, and cried,
+turning abruptly to the other side:  "Let me die in peace."  The cure
+seemingly considered his person soiled and his coif dishonored by the
+touch of a philosopher.  He made the nurse give him a little brushing
+and went out with the Abbe Gautier.  He expired, says Wagnierre, on the
+30th of May, 1778, at about a quarter past 11 at night, with the most
+perfect tranquility.  A few moments before his last breath he took the
+hand of Morand, his valet de chambee, who was watching by him, pressed
+it, and said:  "Adieu, my dear Morand, I am gone."  These were his last
+words.  Like a peaceful river, with green and shaded banks, he flowed
+without a murmur into the waveless sea, where life is rest.
+
+From this death, so simple and serene, so kind, so philosophic and
+tender; so natural and peaceful; from these words so utterly destitute
+of cant or dramatic touch, all the frightful pictures, all the
+despairing utterances have been drawn and made. From these materials,
+and from these alone, or rather, in spite of these facts, have been
+constructed by priests and clergymen and their dupes all the shameless
+lies about the death of this great and wonderful man.  A man, compared
+with whom all of his calumniators, dead and living, were, and are, but
+dust and vermin.  Let us be honest.  Did all the priests of Rome
+increase the mental wealth of man as much as Bruno?  Did all the priests
+of France do as great a work for the civilization of the world as
+Voltaire or Diderot?  Did all the ministers of Scotland add as much to
+the such of human knowledge as David Hume?  Have all the clergymen,
+monks, friars, ministers, priests, bishops, cardinals and popes, from
+the day of Pentecost to the last election, done as much for human
+liberty as Thomas Paine?  What would the world be if infidels had never
+been?  The infidels have been the brave and thoughtful men; the flower
+of all the world; the pioneers and heralds of the blessed day of
+liberty and love; the generous spirits of the unworthy past; the seers
+and prophets of our race; the great chivalric souls, proud victors on
+the battlefields of thought, the creditors of all the years to be.
+
+In those days the philosophers--that is to say, the thinkers--were not
+buried in holy ground.  It was feared that their principles might
+contaminate the ashes of the just.  And they also feared that on the
+morning of the resurrection they might, in a moment of confusion, slip
+into heaven.  Some were burned and their ashes scattered; and the
+bodies of some were thrown naked to beasts, and others buried in unholy
+earth.  Voltaire knew the history of Adrienne Le Couvreur, a beautiful
+actress, denied burial.  After all, we do feel an interest in what is to
+become of our bodies.  There is a modesty that belongs to death.  Upon
+this subject Voltaire was infinitely sensitive.  It was that he might be
+buried that he went through the farce of confession, of absolution, and
+of the last sacrament.  The priests knew that he was not in earnest, and
+Voltaire knew that they would not allow him to be buried in any of the
+cemeteries of Paris.  His death was kept a secret.  The Abbe Mignot made
+arrangements for the burial at Romilli-on-the-Seine, more than 100 miles
+from Paris. Sunday evening, on the last day of May, 1778, the body of
+Voltaire, clad in a dressing gown, clothed to resemble an invalid, posed
+to simulate life, was placed in a carriage; at its side a servant, whose
+business it was to keep it in position.  To this carriage were attached
+six horses, so that people might think a great lord was going to his
+estates.  Another carriage followed in which were a grand-nephew and two
+cousins of Voltaire.  All night they traveled, and on the following day
+arrived at the courtyard of the abbey.  The necessary papers were shown,
+the mass was performed in the presence of the body, and Voltaire found
+burial.  A few moments afterward the prior who "for charity had given a
+little earth" received from his bishop a menacing letter forbidding the
+burial of Voltaire.  It was too late.  He could not then be removed, and
+he was allowed to remain in peace until 1791.
+
+Voltaire was dead.  The foundations of State and throne had been sapped.
+The people were becoming acquainted with the real kings and with the
+actual priests.  Unknown men born in misery and want, men whose fathers
+and mothers had been pavement for the rich, were rising towards the
+light and their shadowy faces were emerging from darkness.  Labor and
+thought became friends.  That is, the gutter and the attic fraternized.
+The monsters of the night and the angels of dawn--the first thinking of
+revenge and the others dreaming of equality, liberty and fraternity.
+For 400 years the Bastille had been the outward symbol of oppression.
+Within its walls the noblest had perished.  It was a perpetual threat.
+It was the last and often the first argument of king and priest.  Its
+dungeons, damp and rayless, its massive towers, its secret cells, its
+instruments of torture, denied the existence of God.  In 1789, on the
+14th of July, the people, the multitude, frenzied by suffering, stormed
+and captured the Bastille.  The battlecry was, "Vive le Voltaire!"
+
+In 1791 permission was given to place in the Pantheon the ashes of
+Voltaire.  He had been buried 110 miles from Paris.  Buried by stealth
+he was to be removed by a nation.  A funeral procession of a hundred
+miles; every village with its flags and arches in his honor; all the
+people anxious to honor the philosopher of France--the savior of Calas--
+the destroyer of superstition!  On reaching Paris the great procession
+moved along the Rue St. Antoine.  Here it paused, and for one night upon
+the ruins of the Bastille rested the body of Voltaire--rested in
+triumph, in glory--rested on fallen wall and broken arch, on crumbling
+stone still damp with tears, on rusting chain, and bar and useless bolt
+--above the dungeons dark and deep, where light had faded from the lives
+of men and hope had died in breaking hearts.  The conqueror resting upon
+the conquered.  Throned upon the Bastille, the fallen fortress of night,
+the body of Voltaire, from whose brain had issued the dawn.
+
+For a moment his ashes must have felt the Promethean fire, and the old
+smile must have illumined once more the face of the dead.
+
+While the vast multitude were trembling with love and awe, a priest was
+heard to cry, "God shall be avenged!"
+
+The grave of Voltaire was violated.  The cry of the priest, "God shall
+be avenged!" had borne its fruit.  Priests, skulking in the shadows,
+with faces sinister as night-ghouls--in the name of the gospel,
+desecrated the gave.  They carried away the body of Voltaire.  The tomb
+was empty.  God was avenged!  The tomb was empty, but the world is
+filled with Voltaire's fame.  Man has conquered!
+
+What cardinal, what bishop, what priest raised his voice for the rights
+of men?  What ecclesiastic, what nobleman, took the side of the
+oppressed--of the peasant?  Who denounced the frightful criminal code
+the torture of suspected persons?  What priest pleaded for the liberty
+of the citizen?  What bishop pitied the victim of the rack?  Is there
+the grave of a priest in France on which a lover of liberty would now
+drop a flower or a tear?  Is there a tomb holding the ashes of a saint
+from which emerges one ray of light?  If there be another life, a day of
+judgment, no God can afford to torture in another world a man who
+abolished torture in his.  If God be the keeper of an eternal
+penitentiary, He should not imprison there those who broke the chain of
+slavery here.  He cannot afford to make eternal convicts of Franklin, of
+Jefferson, of Paine, of Voltaire.
+
+Voltaire was perfectly equipped for his work.  A perfect master of the
+French language, knowing all its moods, tenses, and declinations, in
+fact and in feeling, playing upon it as skillfully, as Paganini on his
+violin, finding expression for every thought and fancy, writing on the
+most serious subjects with the gayety of a harlequin, plucking jests
+from the mouth of death, graceful as the waving of willows, dealing in
+double meanings--that covered the asp with flowers and flattery, master
+of satire and compliment, mingling them often in the same line, always
+interested himself, therefore interesting others, handling thoughts,
+questions, subjects, as a juggler does balls, keeping them in the air
+with perfect ease, dressing old words in new meanings, charming,
+grotesque, pathetic, mingling mirth with tears, wit with wisdom, and
+sometimes wickedness, logic, and laughter.  With a woman's instinct
+knowing the sensitive nerves--just where to touch--hating arrogance of
+place, the stupidity of the solemn, snatching masks from priest and
+king, knowing the springs of action and ambition's ends, perfectly
+familiar with the great world, the intimate of kings and their
+favorites, sympathizing with the oppressed and imprisoned, with the
+unfortunate and poor, hating tyranny, despising superstition, and loving
+liberty with all his heart.  Such was Voltaire, writing "Edipus" at
+seventeen, "Irene" at eighty-three, and crowding between these two
+tragedies, the accomplishment of a thousand lives.
+
+
+
+
+
+Ingersoll's Lecture on Myth and Miracles
+
+
+Ladies and Gentlemen:  What, after all, is the object of life? What is
+the highest possible aim?  The highest aim is to accomplish the only
+good.  Happiness is the only good of which man by any possibility can
+conceive.  The object of life is to increase human joy, and that means
+intellectual and physical development.  The question, then, is:  Shall
+we rely upon superstition or upon growth?  Is intellectual development
+the highway of progress or must we depend on the pit of credulity? Must
+we rely on belief or credulity, or upon manly virtues, courageous
+investigation, thought, and intellectual development? For thousands of
+years men have been talking about religious freedom.  I am now
+contending for the freedom of religion, not religious freedom--for the
+freedom which is the only real religion.  Only a few years ago our poor
+ancestors tried to account for what they saw.  Noticing the running
+river, the shining star, or the painted flower, they put a spirit in the
+river, a spirit in the star, and another in the flower. Something makes
+this river run, something makes this star shine, something paints the
+blossom of that flower.  They were all spirits.  That was the first
+religion of mankind--fetichism--and in everything that lived, everything
+that produced an effect upon them, they said:  "This is a spirit that
+lives within."  That is called the lowest phase of religious thought,
+and yet it is quite the highest phase of religious thought.  One by one
+these little spirits died.  One by one nonentities took their places,
+and last of all we have one infinite fetich that takes the place of all
+others.  Now, what makes the river run?  We say the attraction of
+gravitation, and we know no more about that than we do about this
+fetich.  What makes the tree grow?  The principle of life--vital forces.
+These are simply phrases, simply names of ignorance. Nobody knows what
+makes the river run, what makes the trees grow, why the flowers burst
+and bloom--nobody knows why the stars shine, and probably nobody ever
+will know.
+
+There are two horizons that have never been passed by man--origin and
+destiny.  All human knowledge is confined to the diameter of that
+circle.  All religions rest on supposed facts beyond the circumference
+of the absolutely known.  What next?  The next thing that came in the
+world--the next man--was the mythmaker. He gave to these little spirits
+human passions; he clothed ghosts in flesh; he warmed that flesh with
+blood, and in that blood he put desire--motive.  And the myths were
+born, and were only produced through the fact of the impressions that
+nature makes upon the brain of man.  They were every one a natural
+production, and let me say here, tonight, that what men call
+monstrosities are only natural productions.  Every religion has grown
+just as naturally as the grass; every one, as I said before, and it
+cannot be said too often, has been naturally produced.  All the Christs,
+all the gods and goddesses, all the furies and fairies, all the mingling
+of the beastly and human, were all produced by the impressions of nature
+upon the brain of man--by the rise of the sun, the silver dawn, the
+golden sunset, the birth and death of day, the change of seasons, the
+lightning, the storm, the beautiful bow--all these produced within the
+brain of man all myths, and they are all natural productions.
+
+There have been certain myths universal among men.  Gardens of Eden have
+been absolutely universal--the golden age, which is absolutely the same
+thing.  And what was the golden age born of? Any old man in Boston will
+tell you that fifty years ago all people were honest.  Fifty years ago
+all people were sociable--there was no stuck-up aristocracy then.
+Neighbors were neighbors.  Merchants gave full weight.  Everything was
+full length; everything was a yard wide and all wool.  Now everybody
+swindles everybody else, and calls it business.  Go back fifty years and
+you will find an old man who will tell you that there was a time when
+all were honest.  Go back another fifty years and you will find another
+sage who will tell you the same story. Every man looks back to his
+youth, to the golden age, and what is true of the individual is true of
+the whole human race.  It has its infancy, its manhood, and, finally,
+will have an old age. The garden of Eden is not back of us.  There are
+more honest men, good women, and obedient children in the world today
+than ever before.
+
+The myth of the Elysian fields--universally born of sunsets. When the
+golden clouds in the west turned to amethyst, sapphire, and purple, the
+poor savage thought it a vision of another land--a land without care or
+grief--a world of perpetual joy.  This myth was born of the setting of
+the sun.  A universal myth, all nations have believed in floods.
+Savages found everywhere evidences of the sea having been above the
+earth, and saw in the shells souvenirs of the ocean's visit.  It had
+left its cards on the tops of mountains.  The savage knew nothing of the
+slow rise and sinking of the crust of the earth.  He did not dream of
+it. We now know that where the mountains lift their granite foreheads to
+the sun, the billows once held sway, and that where the waves dash into
+white caps of joy, the mountains will stand once more. Everywhere the
+land is, the ocean will be; and where the ocean is the land will be.
+The Hindoos believed in the flood myth. Their hero, who lived almost
+entirely on water, went to the Ganges to perform his ablutions, and,
+taking up a little water in his hand, he saw a small fish that prayed
+him to save it from the monster of the river, and it would save him in
+turn from his enemies.  He did so, and put it into different receptacles
+until it grew so large that he let it loose in the sea; then it was
+large enough to take care of itself.  The fish told him that there was
+going to be an immense flood, and told him to gather all kinds of seed
+and take two of each kind of animals of use to man, and he would come
+along with an ark and take them all in. He told him to pick out seven
+saints.  And the fish towed the ark along tied to its horns, and took
+them in and carried them to the top of a mountain, where he hitched the
+ark to a tree.  When the waters receded, they came out and followed them
+down until they reached the plain.  There were the same number--eight--
+in this ark as there were with Noah.
+
+I find that the myth of the virgin mother is universal.  The virgin
+mother is the earth.  I find also in countries the idea of a trinity.
+In Egypt I find Isis, Osiris, and Horus.  This idea prevailed in Central
+America among the Aztecs.  We find the myth of the judgment almost
+universal.  I imagine men have seen so much injustice here that they
+naturally expect that there must be some day of final judgment
+somewhere.  Nearly every theist is driven to the necessity of having
+another world in which his god may correct the mistakes he has made in
+this.  We find on the walls of Egyptian temples pictures of the
+judgment; the righteous all go on the right hand, and those unworthy on
+the left.  The myth of the sun god was universal.  Agni was the sun god
+of the Hindoos.  He was called the most generous of all gods, yet he ate
+his own father and mother.  Baldur was another sun god; he was a sun
+myth.  Hercules was a sun god, and so was Samson.  Jonah, too, was a sun
+god, and was swallowed by a fish. So was Hercules, and a wonderful thing
+is that they were swallowed in about the same place, near Joppa.  Where
+did the big fish go?  When the sun went down under the earth, it was
+thought to be followed by the fish, which was said to swallow it, and
+carry it safely through the under world.  The sun thus came to be
+represented as the body of a woman with the tail of a fish, and so the
+mermaid was born.  Another strange thing is that all the sun gods were
+born near Christmas.  The myth of Red Riding Hood, was known among the
+Aztecs.  The myth of eucharist came from the story of Ceres and Bacchus.
+When the cakes made by the product of the field were eaten, it was the
+body of Ceres, and when the wine was drank it was the blood of Bacchus.
+From this idea the eucharist was born.  There is nothing original in
+christianity. Holy water!  Another myth.  The Hindoos imagined that the
+water had its source in the throne of God.  The Egyptians thought the
+Nile sacred.  Greece was settled by Egyptian colonies, and they carried
+with them the water of the Nile, and when any one died the water was
+sprinkled on him.  Finally Rome conquered Greece physically, but Greece
+conquered Rome intellectually.  This is the myth of holy water, and with
+it grew up the idea of baptism, and I presume that that is as old as
+water and dirt.  The cross is another universal symbol.  There was once
+an ancient people in Italy before the Romans, before the Etruscans.
+They faded from the world, and history does not even know the name of
+that nation.  We find where they buried the ashes of their dead, and we
+find chiseled, hundreds of years before Christ, the cross, a symbol of a
+hope of another life.  We find the cross in Egypt, in the cylinders from
+Babylon, and, more than that, we find them in Central America.  On the
+temples of the Aztecs we find the cross, and on it a bleeding, dying
+god.  Our cross was built in the middle ages.
+
+When Adam was very sick he sent Seth, his son, to the garden of Eden.
+He told him he would have no trouble in finding it; all he had to do
+was to follow the tracks made by his mother and father when they left
+it.  He wanted a little balsam from the tree of life that he might not
+die.  Seth found there a cherub, with flaming sword, who would not let
+him pass the door.  He moved  his wings so that he could see in, and he
+saw the tree of life, with its roots running down to hell, and among
+them Cain, the murderer.  The angel gave Seth three seeds, and told him
+to put them in his father's mouth when he was buried and to watch the
+effect.  The result was that these trees grew up--one pine, one cedar,
+and on cypress.  Solomon cut down one of these trees to put in the
+temple, but it grew through the roof and he threw it into the pool of
+Bethesda.  When the soldiers went for a beam on which to crucify Christ
+they took this tree and made a cross of it.  Helen, the mother of
+Constantine, went to Jerusalem to find this cross.  She found the two
+crosses, also, that the thieves were crucified on.  They could not tell
+which was which, so they called a sick woman who touched them, and when
+she touched the right one she was immediately made whole.
+
+Such is myth and fable.  The history of one religion is substantially
+the history of all religions.  In embryo man lives all lives.  The man
+of genius knows within himself the history of the human race; he knows
+the history of all religions.  The man of imagination, genius, having
+seen a leaf and a drop of water, can construct the forests, the rivers,
+and the seas.  In his presence all the cataracts fall and foam, the
+mists rise, and the clouds form and float.  To really know one fact is
+known its kindred and its neighbors.  Shakespeare, looking at a coat of
+mail, instantly imagined the society, the conditions that produced it,
+and what it, in its turn, produced.  He saw the castle, the moat, the
+drawbridge, the lady in the tower, and the knightly lover spurring over
+the plain.  He saw the bold baron and the rude retainer, the trampled
+serfs, and all the glory and the grief of feudal life.  The man of
+imagination has lived the life of all people, of all races.  He has been
+a citizen of Athens in the days of Pericles; listened to the eager
+eloquence of the great orator, and has sat upon the cliff, and with the
+tragic poet heard "the multitudinous laughter of the sea."  He has seen
+Socrates thrust the spear of question through the shield and heart of
+falsehood--was present when the great man drank hemlock and met the
+night of death tranquil as a star meets morning.  He has followed the
+peripatetic philosophers, and has been puzzled by the sophists.  He has
+watched Phidias, as he chiseled shapeless stone to forms of love and
+awe.  He has lived by the slow Nile, amid the vast and monstrous.  He
+knows the very thought that wrought the form and features of the Sphinx.
+He has heard great Memnon's morning song, has laid him down with the
+embalmed dead, and felt within their dust the expectation of another
+life, mingled with cold and suffocating doubts--the children born of
+long delay.  He has walked the ways of mighty Rome, has seen the great
+Caesar with his legions in the field, has stood with vast and motley
+throngs and watched the triumphs given to victorious men, followed by
+uncrowned kings, the captured hosts and all the spoils of ruthless war.
+He has heard the shout that shook the Coliseum's roofless walls when
+from the reeling gladiator's hand the short sword fell, while from his
+bosom gushed the stream of wasted life.  He has lived the life of savage
+men--has trod the forest's silent depths, and in the desperate name of
+life or death has matched his thought against the instinct of the beast.
+He has sat beneath the bo tree's contemplative shade, rapt in Buddha's
+mighty thought, and he has dreamed all dreams that light, the alchemist,
+hath wrought from dust and dew and stored within the slumbrous poppy's
+subtle blood.  He has knelt with awe and dread at every prayer; has
+felt the consolation and the shuddering fear; has seen all the devils;
+has mocked and worshiped all the gods; enjoyed all heavens, and felt
+the pangs of every hell.  He has lived all lives, and through his blood
+and brain have crept the shadow and the chill of every death, and his
+soul, Mazeppa-like, has been lashed naked to the wild horse of every
+fear and love and hate. The imagination hath a stage within the brain,
+whereon he sets all scenes that lie between the morn of laughter and the
+night of tears, and where his players body forth the false and true, the
+joys and griefs, the careless shadows, and the tragic deeps of human
+life.
+
+Through with the myth-makers, we now come to the wonder-worker. There is
+this difference between the miracle and the myth--a myth is an idealism
+of a fact, and a miracle is a counterfeit of a fact.  There is some
+difference between a myth and a miracle. There is the difference that
+there is between fiction and falsehood and poetry and perjury.  Miracles
+are probably only in the far past or the very remote future.  The
+present is the property of the natural.  You say to a man:  "The dead
+were raised 4,000 years ago."  He says, "Well, that's reasonable." You
+say to him, "In 4,000,000 years we shall all be raised." He says, "That
+is what I believe."  Say to him, "A man was raised from the dead this
+morning," and he will say, "What are you giving us?"  Miracles never
+convince at the time they were said to have been performed.
+
+John the Baptist was the forerunner of Christ.  He was cast into prison.
+When Christ heard of it He "departed from that country." Afterward he
+returned and heard that John had been beheaded, and he again departed
+from that country.  There is no possible relation between the miraculous
+and the moral.  The miracles of the middle ages are the children of
+superstition.  In the middle ages men told everything but the truth, and
+believed everything but the facts.  The middle ages--a trinity of
+ignorance, mendacity and insanity.  There is one thing about humanity.
+You see the faults of others, but not your own.  A Catholic in India
+sees a Hindoo bowing before an idol and thinks it absurd.  Why does he
+not get him a plaster of paris virgin and some beads and holy water?
+Why does the protestant shut his eyes when he prays? The idea is a
+souvenir of sun worship.  It is the most natural worship in the world.
+Religious dogmas have become absurd.  The doctrine of eternal torment
+today has become absurd, low, groveling, ignorant, barbaric, savage,
+devilish and no gentleman would preach it.
+
+Science, thou art the great magician!  Thou alone performest the true
+miracles.  Thou alone workest the real wonders.  Fire is thy servant,
+lightning thy messenger.  The waves obey thee, and thou knowest the
+circuits of the wind.  Thou art the great philanthropist.  Thou hast
+freed the slave and civilized the master.  Thou hast taught man to
+chain, not his fellow-man, but the forces of nature--forces that have no
+backs to be scarred, no limbs for chains to chill and eat--forces that
+never know fatigue, that shed no tears--forces that have no hearts to
+break. Thou gavest man the plow, the reaper and the loom--thou hast fed
+and clothed the world.  Thou art the great physician.  Thy touch hath
+given sight.  Thou hast made the lame to leap, the dumb to speak, and in
+the pallid cheek thy hand hath set the rose of health.  "Thou hast
+given thy beloved sleep"--a sleep that wraps in happy dreams the
+throbbing nerves of pain.  Thou art the perpetual providence of man--
+preserver of life and love.  Thou art the teacher of every virtue, and
+the enemy of every vice. Thou has discovered the true basis of morals--
+the origin and office of conscience--and hast revealed the nature and
+measure of obligation.  Thou hast taught that love is justice in its
+highest form, and that even self-love, guided by wisdom, embraces with
+loving arms the human race.  Thou hast slain the monsters of the past.
+Thou hast discovered the one inspired book.  Thou hast read the records
+of the rocks, written by wind and wave, by frost and flame--records that
+even priestcraft cannot change--and in thy wondrous scales thou hast
+weighed the atoms and the stars.  Thou art the founder of the only true
+religion.  Thou art the very Christ, the only savior of mankind!
+
+Theology has always been in the way of the advance of the human race.
+There is this difference between science and theology--science is modest
+and merciful, while theology is arrogant and cruel.  The hope of science
+is the perfection of the human race. The hope of theology is the
+salvation of a few and the damnation of almost everybody.  As I told you
+in the first place, I believe in the religion of freedom.  O liberty!
+thou art the god of my idolatry.  Thou art the only deity that hates the
+bended knee. In thy vast and unwalled temple, beneath the roofless dome,
+star-gemmed and luminous with suns, thy worshipers stand erect.  They do
+not bow or cringe or crawl or bend their foreheads to the earth.  Thy
+dust hast never borne the impress of lips, upon thy sacred altars
+mothers do not sacrifice their babes, nor men their rights.  Thou askest
+naught from man except the things that good men hate, the whip, the
+chain, the dungeon key.  Thou hast no kings, no popes, no priests to
+stand between their fellow-men and thee.  Thou hast no monks, no nuns,
+who, in the name of duty, murder joy.  Thou carest not for forms nor
+mumbled prayers.  At thy sacred shrine hypocrisy does not bow, fear does
+not crouch, virtue does not tremble, superstition's feeble tapers do not
+burn, but reason holds aloft her inextinguishable torch, while on the
+ever-broadening brow of science falls the ever coming morning of the
+ever better day.
+
+
+
+
+
+Ingersoll on The Chinese God
+
+
+Messrs. Wright, Dickey, O'Conner and Murch, of the select committee on
+the causes of the present depression of labor, presented the majority
+special report upon Chinese immigration.
+
+These gentlemen are in great fear for the future of our most holy and
+perfectly authenticated religion, and have, like faithful watchmen from
+the walls and towers of Zion, hastened to give the alarm.  They have
+informed Congress that "Joss has his temple of worship in the Chinese
+quarters, in San Francisco.  Within the walls of a dilapidated structure
+is exposed to the view of the faithful the god of the Chinaman, and here
+are his altars of worship.  Here he tears up his pieces of paper; here
+he offers up his prayers; here he receives his religious consolations,
+and here is his road to the celestial land."  That "Joss is located in a
+long, narrow room, in a building in a back alley, upon a kind of altar;"
+that "he is a wooden image, looking as much like an alligator as like a
+human being;"  that the Chinese "think there is such a place as heaven;"
+that "all classes of Chinamen worship idols;"  that "the temple is open
+every day at all hours;"  that "the Chinese have no Sunday;"  that this
+heathen god has "huge jaws, a big red tongue, large white teeth, a half-
+dozen arms, and big, fiery eyeballs.  About him are placed offerings of
+meat, and other eatables--a sacrificial offering."
+
+No wonder that these members of the committee were shocked at such a
+god, knowing as they did that the only true God was correctly described
+by the inspired lunatic of Patmos in the following words:
+
+"And there sat in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks one like
+unto the son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt
+about the paps with a golden girdle.  His head and his hairs were white
+like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; and
+his feet like unto fine brass as if they burned in a furnace; and his
+voice as the sound of many waters.  And he had in his right hand seven
+stars; and out of his mouth went a sharp, two-edged sword; and his
+countenance was as the sun shining in his strength."
+
+Certainly, a large mouth, filled with white teeth, is preferable to one
+used as the scabbard of a sharp, two-edged sword.  Why should these
+gentlemen object to a god with big fiery eyeballs, when their own Deity
+has eyes like a flame of fire?
+
+Is it not a little late in the day to object to people because they
+sacrifice meat and other eatables to their god?  We all know that for
+thousands of years the "real" God was exceedingly fond of roasted meat;
+that He loved the savor of burning flesh, and delighted in the perfume
+of fresh, warm blood.
+
+The following account of the manner in which the "living God" desired
+that His people should sacrifice tends to show the degradation and
+religious blindness of the Chinese--:
+
+"Aaron therefore went unto the altar and slew the calf of the sin-
+offering which was for himself.  And the sons of Aaron brought the blood
+unto him.  And he dipped his fingers in the blood and put it upon the
+horns of the altar, and poured out the blood at the bottom of the altar;
+but the fat and the kidneys and the caul above the liver of the sin-
+offering he burnt upon the altar, as the Lord commanded Moses, and the
+flesh and the hide he burnt with fire without the camp.  And he slew the
+burnt offering.  And Aaron's sons presented unto him the blood which he
+sprinkled round about the altar....  And he brought the meat offering
+and took a handful thereof and burnt upon the altar..... He slew also
+the bullock and the ram for a sacrifice of peace offering, which was for
+the people.  And Aaron's sons presented unto him the blood which he
+sprinkled upon the altar, round about, and the fat of the bullock and of
+the ram, the rump and that which covereth the inwards, and the kidneys,
+and the caul above the liver, and they put the fat upon the breasts and
+he burnt the fat upon the altar.  And the breasts and the right shoulder
+Aaron waved for a wave-offering before the Lord, as Moses had
+commanded."
+
+If the Chinese only did something like this, we would know that they
+worshiped the "living" God.  The idea that the supreme head of the
+"American system of religion" can be placated with a little meat and
+"ordinary eatables," is simply preposterous.  He has always asked for
+blood, and has always asserted that without the shedding of blood there
+is no remission of sin.
+
+The world is also informed by these gentlemen that "the idolatry of the
+Chinese produces a demoralizing effect upon our American youth by
+bringing sacred things into disrespect, and making religion a theme of
+disgust and contempt."
+
+In San Francisco there are some three hundred thousand people. Is it
+possible that a few Chinese can bring "our holy religion" into disgust
+and contempt?  In that city there are fifty times as many churches as
+joss-houses.  Scores of sermons are uttered every week; religious books
+and papers are plentiful as leaves in autumn, and somewhat dryer;
+thousands of bibles are with in the reach of all.  And there, too, is
+the example of a Christian city.
+
+Why should we send missionaries to China if we cannot convert the
+heathen when they come here?  When missionaries go to a foreign land,
+the poor, benighted people have to take their word for the blessings
+showered upon a Christian people; but when the heathen come here, they
+can see for themselves.  What was simply a story becomes a demonstrated
+fact.  They come in contact with people who love their enemies.  They
+see that in a Christian land men tell the truth; that they will not
+take advantage of strangers; that they are just and patient; kind and
+tender; and have no prejudice on account of color, race, or religion;
+that they look upon mankind as brethren; that they speak of God as a
+universal Father, and are willing to work, and even to suffer, for the
+good, not only of their own countrymen, but of the heathen as well.  All
+this the Chinese see and know, and why they still cling to the religion
+of their country is to me a matter of amazement.
+
+We all know that the disciples of Jesus do unto others as they would
+that others should do unto them, and that those of Confucius do not unto
+others anything that they would not that others should do unto them.
+Surely, such peoples ought to live together in perfect peace.  Rising
+with the subject, growing heated with a kind of holy indignation, these
+Christian representatives of a Christian people most solemnly declare
+that anyone who is really endowed with a correct knowledge of our
+religious system which acknowledges the existence of a living God and an
+accountability to Him, and a future state of reward and punishment, who
+feels that he has an apology for this abominable pagan worship, is not a
+fit person to be ranked as a good citizen of the American union.  It is
+absurd to make any apology for its toleration.  It must be abolished,
+and the sooner the decree goes forth by the power of this government,
+the better it will be for the interests of this land.
+
+I take this the earliest opportunity to inform these gentlemen composing
+a majority of the committee that we have in the United States no
+"religious system;"  that this is a secular government. That it has no
+religious creed; that it does not believe nor disbelieve in a future
+state of reward and punishment; that it neither affirms nor denies the
+existence of a "living God;"  and that the only god, so far as this
+government is concerned; is the legally expressed will of a majority of
+the people.  Under our flag the Chinese have the same right to worship a
+wooden god that you have to worship any other.  The constitution
+protects equally the church of Jehovah and the house of Joss.  Whatever
+their relative positions may be in heaven, they stand upon a perfect
+equality in the United States.  This government is an infidel
+government.  We have a constitution with man put in and God left out;
+and it is the glory of this country that we have such a constitution.
+
+It may be surprising to you that I have an apology for pagan worship,
+yet I have.  And it is the same one that I have for the writers of this
+report.  I account for both by the word superstition.  Why should we
+object to their worshiping God as they please?  If the worship is
+improper, the protestation should come not from a committee of congress,
+but from God himself.  If He is satisfied, that is sufficient.
+
+Our religion can only be brought into contempt by the actions of those
+who profess to be governed by its teachings.  This report will do more
+in that direction than millions of Chinese could do by burning pieces of
+paper before a wooden image.  If you wish to impress the Chinese with
+the value of your religion, of what you are pleased to call "the
+American system," show them that Christians are better than heathens.
+Prove to them that what you are pleased to call the "living God" teaches
+higher and holier things, a grander and purer code of morals, than can
+be found upon pagan pages.  Excel these wretches in industry, in
+honesty, in reverence for parents, in cleanliness, in frugality, and
+above all by advocating the absolute liberty of human thought.
+
+Do not trample upon these people because they have different conception
+of things about which even this committee knows nothing.
+
+Give them the same privilege you enjoy of making a god after their own
+fashion, and let them describe him as they will.  Would you be willing
+to have them remain, if one of their race, thousands of years ago, had
+pretended to have seen God, and had written of Him as follows:  "There
+went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth; coals
+were kindled by it.... and he rode upon a cherub and did fly?"  Why
+should you object to these people on account of their religion?  Your
+objection has in it the spirit of hate and intolerance.  Of that spirit
+the inquisition was born.  That spirit lighted the fagot, made the
+thumbscrew, put chains upon the limbs, and lashes upon the backs of men.
+The same spirit bought and sold, captured and kidnapped human beings;
+sold babes, and justified all the horrors of slavery.  Congress has
+nothing to do with the religion of the people.  Its members are not
+responsible to God for the opinions of their constituents, and it may
+tend to the happiness of the constituents for me to state that they are
+in no way responsible for the religion of the members.  Religion is an
+individual not a national matter, and where the nation interferes with
+the right of conscience, the liberties of the people are devoured by the
+monster, superstition.
+
+If you wish to drive out the Chinese, do not make a pretext of religion.
+Do not pretend that you are trying to do God a favor. Injustice in His
+name is doubly detestable.  The assassin cannot sanctify his dagger by
+falling on his knees, and it does not help a falsehood if it be uttered
+as a prayer.  Religion, used to intensify the hatred of men toward men,
+under the pretense of pleasing God, has cursed this world.
+
+A portion of this most remarkable report is Intensely religious. There
+is in it almost the odor of sanctity; and when reading it, one is
+impressed with the living piety of its authors.  But on the twenty-fifth
+page, there are a few passages that must pain the hearts of true
+believers.  Leaving their religious views, the members immediately
+betake themselves to philosophy and prediction.  Listen:
+
+"The Chinese race and the American citizen, whether native-born or who
+is eligible to our naturalization laws and becomes a citizen, are in a
+state of antagonism.  They cannot, nor will not, ever meet upon common
+ground and occupy together the same so-called level.  This is
+impossible.  The pagan and the Christian travel different paths.  This
+one believes in a living God; that one in the type of monsters and
+worship of wood and stone.  Thus in the religion of the two races of
+men, they are as wide apart as the poles of the two hemispheres.  They
+cannot now, nor never [sic] will, approach the same religious altar.
+The Christian will not recede to barbarism, nor will the Chinese advance
+to the enlightened belt [wherever it is] of civilization.... He cannot
+be converted to those modern ideas of religious worship which have been
+accepted by Europe, and which crown the American system."
+
+Christians used to believe that through their religion all the nations
+of the earth were finally to be blest.  In accordance with that belief
+missionaries have been sent to every land, and untold wealth has been
+expended for what has been called the spread of the gospel.
+
+I am almost sure that I have read somewhere that "Christ died for all
+men," and that "God is no respecter persons."  It was once taught that
+it was the duty of Christians to tell to all people the "tidings of
+great joy."  I have never believed these things myself, but have always
+contended that an honest merchant was the best missionary.  Commerce
+makes friends, religion makes enemies; the one enriches, and the other
+impoverishes; the one thrives best where the truth is told, the other
+where falsehoods are believed.  For myself, I have but little confidence
+in any business, or enterprise, or investment, that promises dividends
+only after the death of the stockholders.
+
+But I am astonished that four Christian statesmen, four members of
+Congress in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, who seriously
+object to people on account of their religious convictions, should still
+assert that the very religion in which they believe--and the only
+religion established by the living God--head of the American system--is
+not adapted to the spiritual needs of one-third of the human race.  It
+is amazing that these four gentlemen have, in the defense of the
+Christian religion, announced the discovery that it is wholly inadequate
+for the civilization of mankind that the light of the cross can never
+penetrate the darkness of China; "that all the labors of the
+missionary, the example of the good, the exalted character of our
+civilization, make no impression upon the pagan life of the Chinese;"
+and that even the report of this committee will not tend to elevate,
+refine and Christianize the yellow heathen of the Pacific Coast.  In the
+name of religion these gentlemen have denied its power and mocked at the
+enthusiasm of its founder. Worse than this, they have predicted for the
+Chinese a future of ignorance and idolatry in this world, and, if the
+"American system"--of religion us true, hellfire in the next.
+
+For the benefit of these four philosophers and prophets, I will give a
+few extracts from the writings of Confucius that will in my judgment,
+compare favorably with the best passages of their report:
+
+"My doctrine is that man must be true to the principles of his nature,
+and the benevolent exercises of them toward others.
+
+"With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and with my bended arm
+for a pillow, I still have joy.
+
+"Riches and honor acquired by injustice are to me but floating clouds.
+
+"The man who, in view of gain, thinks of righteousness; who, in view of
+danger, forgets life, and who remembers an old agreement, however far
+back it extends, such a man may be reckoned a complete man.
+
+"Recompense injury with justice, and kindness with kindness."
+
+There is one Word which may serve as rule of practice for all one's
+life.  Reciprocity is that word.
+
+When the ancestors of the four Christian Congressmen were barbarians,
+when they lived in caves, gnawed bones, and worshiped dried snakes, the
+infamous Chinese were reading these sublime sentences of Confucius.
+When the forefathers of these Christian statesmen were hunting toads to
+get the jewels out of their heads to be used as charms, the wretched
+Chinese were calculating eclipses and measuring the circumference of the
+earth.  When the progenitors of these representatives of the "American
+system of religion" were burning women charged with nursing devils,
+these people, "incapable of being influenced by the exalted character of
+our civilization," were building asylums for the insane.
+
+Neither should it be forgotten that, for thousands of years, the Chinese
+have honestly practiced the great principle known as civil service
+reform--a something that even the administration of Mr. Hayes has
+reached only through the proxy of promise.
+
+If we wish to prevent the immigration of the Chinese, let us reform our
+treaties with the vast empire from whence they came. For thousands of
+years the Chinese secluded themselves from the rest of the world.  They
+did not deem the Christian nations fit to associate with.  We forced
+ourselves upon them.  We called, not with cards, but with cannon.  The
+English battered down the door in the names of Opium and Christ.  This
+infamy was regarded as another triumph for the gospel.  At last, in
+self-defense, the Chinese allowed Christians to touch their shores.
+Their wise men, their philosophers protested, and prophesied that time
+would show that Christians could not be trusted.  This report proves
+that the wise men were not only philosophers, but prophets.
+
+Treat China as you would England.  Keep a treaty while it is in force.
+Change it if you will, according to the laws of nations, but on no
+account excuse a breach of national faith by pretending that we are
+dishonest for God's sake.
+
+
+
+
+
+Ingersoll's Letter, Is Suicide a Sin? (Colonel Ingersoll's First Letter)
+
+
+I do not know whether self-killing is on the increase or not.  If it is,
+then there must be, on the average, more trouble, more sorrow, more
+failure, and, consequently, more people are driven to despair.  In
+civilized life there is a great struggle, great competition, and many
+fall.  To fail in a great city is like being wrecked at sea.  In the
+country a man has friends.  He can get a little credit, a little help,
+but in the city it is different.  The man is lost in the multitude.  In
+the roar of the streets his cry is not heard.  Death becomes his only
+friend. Death promises release from want, from hunger and pain, and so
+the poor wretch lays down his burden, dashes it from his shoulders and
+falls asleep.
+
+To me all this seems very natural.  The wonder is that so many endure
+and suffer to the natural end, that so many nurse the spark of life in
+huts and prisons, keep it and guard it through years of misery and want;
+support it by beggary; by eating the crust found in the gutter, and to
+whom it only gives days of weariness and nights of fear and dread.  Why
+should the man, sitting amid the wreck of all he had, the loved ones
+dead, friends lost, seek to lengthen, to preserve his life?  What can
+the future have for him?
+
+Under many circumstances a man has the right to kill himself. When life
+is of no value to him, when he can be of no real assistance to others,
+why should a man continue?  When he is of no benefit, when he is a
+burden to those he loves, why should he remain?  The old idea was that
+"God" made us and placed us here for a purpose, and that it was our duty
+to remain until He called us.  The world is outgrowing this absurdity.
+What pleasure can it give "God" to see a man devoured by a cancer?  To
+see the quivering flesh slowly eaten?  To see the nerves throbbing with
+pain?  Is this a festival for "God"?  Why should the poor wretch stay
+and suffer?  A little morphine would give him sleep--the agony would be
+forgotten and he would pass unconsciously from happy dreams to painless
+death.
+
+If "God" determines all births and deaths, of what use is medicine, and
+why should doctors defy, with pills and powders, the decrees of "God"?
+No one, except a few insane, act now according to this childish
+superstition.  Why should a man, surrounded by flames, in the midst of a
+burning building, from which there is no escape, hesitate to put a
+bullet through his brain or a dagger in his heart?  Would it give "God"
+pleasure to see him burn?  When did the man lose the right of self-
+defense?
+
+So, when a man has committed some awful crime, why should he stay and
+ruin his family and friends?  Why should he add to the injury?  Why
+should he live, filling his days and nights, and the days and nights of
+others, with grief and pain, with agony and tears?
+
+Why should a man sentenced to imprisonment for life hesitate to still
+his heart?  The grave is better than the cell.  Sleep is sweeter than
+the ache of toil.  The dead have no masters.
+
+So the poor girl, betrayed and deserted, the door of home closed against
+her, the faces of friends averted, no hand that will help, no eye that
+will soften with pity, the future an abyss filled with monstrous shapes
+of dread and fear, her mind racked by fragments of thoughts like clouds
+broken by storm, pursued, surrounded by the serpents of remorse, flying
+from horrors too great to bear, rushes with joy through the welcome door
+of death.
+
+Undoubtedly there are many cases of perfectly justifiable suicide--cases
+in which not to end life would be a mistake, sometimes almost a crime.
+
+As to the necessity of death, each must decide for himself.  And if a
+man honestly decides that death is best--best for him and others--and
+acts upon the decision, why should he be blamed?
+
+Certainly the man who kills himself is not a physical coward.  He may
+have lacked moral courage, but not physical.  It may be said that some
+men fight duels because they are afraid to decline. They are between two
+fires--the chance of death and the certainty of dishonor, and they take
+the chance of death.  So the Christian martyrs were, according to their
+belief, between two fires--the flames of the fagot that could burn but
+for a few moments and the fires of God, that were eternal.  And they
+chose the flames of the fagot.
+
+Men who fear death to that degree that they will bear all the pains and
+pangs that nerves can feel rather than die, cannot afford to call the
+suicide a coward.  It does not seem to me that Brutus was a coward or
+that Seneca was.  Surely Anthony had nothing left to live for.  Cato was
+not a craven.  He acted on his judgment.  So with hundreds of others who
+felt that they had reached the end--that the journey was done, the
+voyage was over, and, so feeling, stopped.  It seems certain that the
+man who commits suicide, who "does the thing that stops all other deeds,
+that shackles accident and bolts up change," is not lacking in physical
+courage.
+
+If men had the courage they would not linger in prisons, in almshouses,
+in hospitals, they would not bear the pangs of incurable disease, the
+stains of dishonor, they would not live in filth and want, in poverty
+and hunger, neither would they wear the chain of slavery.  All this can
+be accounted for only by the fear of death or "of something after."
+
+Seneca, knowing that Nero intended to take his life, had no fear. He
+knew that he could defeat the Emperor.  He knew that "at the bottom of
+every river, in the coil of every rope, on the point of every dagger,
+Liberty sat and smiled."  He knew that it was his own fault if he
+allowed himself to be tortured to death by his enemy.  He said, "There
+is this blessing, that while life has but one entrance, it has exits
+innumerable, and as I choose the house in which I live, the ship in
+which I will sail, so will I choose the time and manner of my death."
+To me this is not cowardly, but manly and noble.
+
+Under the Roman law persons found guilty, of certain offenses were not
+only destroyed, but their blood was polluted, and their children became
+outcasts.  If, however, they died before conviction, their children were
+saved.  Many committed suicide to save their babes.  Certainly they were
+not cowards.  Although guilty of great crimes, they had enough of honor,
+of manhood, left to save their innocent children.  This was not
+cowardice.
+
+Without doubt many suicides are caused by insanity.  Men lose their
+property.  The fear of the future over powers them.  Things lose
+proportion, they lose poise and balance, and in a flash, a gleam of
+frenzy, kill their selves.  The disappointed in love, broken in heart--
+the light fading from their lives--seek the refuge of death.  Those who
+take their lives in painful, barbarous ways--who mangle their throats
+with broken glass, dash themselves from towers and roofs, take poisons
+that torture like the rack--such persons must be insane.  But those who
+take the facts into account, who weigh the arguments for and against,
+and who decide that death is best--the only good--and then resort to
+reasonable means, may be, so far as I can see, in full possession of
+their minds.
+
+Life is not the same to all--to some a blessing, to some a curse, to
+some not much in any way.  Some leave it with unspeakable regret, some
+with the keenest joy, and some with indifference.
+
+Religion, or the decadence of religion, has a bearing upon the number of
+suicides.  The fear of "God," of judgment, of eternal pain will stay the
+hand, and people so believing will suffer here until relieved by natural
+death.  A belief in the eternal agony beyond the grave will cause such
+believers to suffer the pangs of this life.  When there is no fear of
+the future, when death is believed to be a dreamless sleep, men have
+less hesitation about ending their lives.  On the other hand, orthodox
+religion has driven millions to insanity.  It has caused parents to
+murder their children and many thousands to destroy themselves and
+others.
+
+It seems probable that all real, genuine orthodox believers who kill
+themselves must be insane, and to such a degree that their belief is
+forgotten, "God" and hell are out of their minds.  I am satisfied that
+many who commit suicide are insane, many are in the twilight or dusk of
+insanity, and many are perfectly sane.
+
+The law we have in this State making it a crime to attempt suicide is
+cruel and absurd and calculated to increase the number of successful
+suicides.  When a man has suffered so much, when he has been so
+persecuted and pursued by disaster that he seeks the rest and sleep of
+death, why should the State add to the sufferings of that man?  A man
+seeking death, knowing that he will be punished if he fails, will take
+extra pains and precautions to make death certain.
+
+This law was born of superstition, passed by thoughtlessness and
+enforced by ignorance and cruelty.
+
+When the house of life becomes a prison, when the horizon has shrunk and
+narrowed to a cell, and when the convict longs for the liberty of death,
+why should the effort to escape be regarded as a crime?
+
+Of course, I regard life from a natural point of view.  I do not take
+gods, heavens or hells into account.  My horizon is the known, and my
+estimate of life is based upon what I know of life here in this world.
+People should not suffer for the sake of supernatural beings or for
+other worlds or the hopes and fears of some future state.  Our joys, our
+sufferings and our duties are here.  The law of New York about the
+attempt to commit suicide and the law as to divorce are about equal.
+Both are idiotic. Law cannot prevent suicide.  Those who have lost all
+fear of death, care nothing for law and its penalties.  Death is
+liberty, absolute and eternal.
+
+We should remember that nothing happens but the natural.  Back of every
+suicide and every attempt to commit suicide is the natural and efficient
+cause.  Nothing happens by chance.  In this world the facts touch each
+other.  There is no space between--no room for chance.  Given a certain
+heart and brain, certain conditions, and suicide is the necessary
+result.  If we wish to prevent suicide we must change conditions.  We
+must, by education, by invention, by art, by civilization, add to the
+value of the average life.  We must cultivate the brain and heart--do
+away with false pride and false modesty.  We must become generous enough
+to help our fellows without degrading them.  We must make industry
+useful work of all kinds--honorable.  We must mingle a little affection
+with our charity--a little fellowship.  We should allow those who have
+sinned to really reform.  We should not think only of what the wicked
+have done, but we should think of what we have wanted to do.  People do
+not hate the sick.  Why should they despise the mentally weak--the
+diseased in brain?
+
+Our actions are the fruit, the result, of circumstances--of conditions--
+and we do as we must.  This great truth should till the heart with pity
+for the failures of our race.
+
+Sometimes I have wondered that Christians denounce the suicide; that in
+old times they buried him where the roads crossed, and drove a stake
+through his body.  They took his property from his children and gave it
+to the State.
+
+If Christians would only think, they would see the orthodox religion
+rests upon suicide--that man was redeemed by suicide, and that without
+suicide the whole world would have been lost.
+
+If Christ were God, then he had the power to protect himself from the
+Jews without hurting them.  But instead of using his power he allowed
+them to take his life.
+
+If a strong man should allow a few little children to hack him to death
+with knives when he could easily have brushed them aside, would we not
+say that he committed suicide?
+
+There is no escape.  If Christ were, in fact, God and allowed the Jews
+to kill Him, then He consented to His own death--refused, though
+perfectly able, to defend and protect Himself, and was, in fact, a
+suicide.
+
+We cannot reform the world by law or by superstition.  As long as there
+shall be pain and failure, want and sorrow, agony and crime, men and
+women will untie life's knot and seeks the peace of death.
+
+To the hopelessly imprisoned--to the dishonored and despised--to those
+who have failed, who have no future, no hope--to the abandoned, the
+broken-hearted, to those who are only remnants and fragments of men and
+women--how consoling, how enchanting is the thought of death!
+
+And even to the most fortunate death at last is a welcome deliverer.
+Death is as natural and as merciful as life.  When we have journeyed
+long--when we are weary--when we wish for the twilight, for the dusk,
+for the cool kisses of the night--when the senses are dull--when the
+pulse is faint and low--when the mists gather on the mirror of memory--
+when the past is almost forgotten, the present hardly perceived--when
+the future has but empty hands--death is as welcome as a strain of
+music.
+
+After all, death is not so terrible as joyless life.  Next to eternal
+happiness is to sleep in the soft clasp of the cool earth, disturbed by
+no dream, by no thought, by no pain, by no fear, unconscious of all and
+forever.
+
+The wonder is that so many live, that in spite of rags and want, in
+spite of tenement and gutter, of filth and pain, they limp and stagger
+and crawl beneath their burdens to the natural end.  The wonder is that
+so few of the miserable are brave enough to die--that so many are
+terrified by the "something after death"--by the specters and phantoms
+of superstition.
+
+Most people are in love with life.  How they cling to it in the arctic
+snows--how they struggle in the waves and currents of the sea--how they
+linger in famine--how they fight disaster and despair!  On the crumbling
+edge of death they keep the flag flying and go down at last full of hope
+and courage.
+
+But many have not such natures.  They cannot bear defeat.  They are
+disheartened by disaster.  They lie down on the field of conflict and
+give the earth their blood.
+
+They are our unfortunate brothers and sisters.  We should not curse or
+blame--we should pity.  On their pallid faces our tears should fall.
+
+One of the best men I ever knew, with an affectionate wife, a charming
+and loving daughter, committed suicide.  He was a man of generous
+impulses.  His heart was loving and tender.  He was conscientious, and
+so sensitive that he blamed himself for having done what at the time he
+thought wise and best.  He was the victim of his virtues.  Let us be
+merciful in our judgments.
+
+All we can say is that the good and the bad, the loving and the
+malignant, the conscientious and the vicious, the educated and the
+ignorant, actuated by many motives, urged and pushed by circumstances
+and conditions sometimes in the calm of judgment, sometimes in passion's
+storm and stress, sometimes in whirl and tempest of insanity--raise
+their hands against themselves and desperately put out the light of
+life.
+
+Those who attempt suicide should not be punished.  If they are insane
+they should, if possible be restored to reason; if sane, they should be
+reasoned with, calmed and assisted.
+
+
+
+
+
+Ingersoll's Letter, The Right to One's Life Colonel Ingersoll's Eloquent
+Reply to His Critics
+
+
+In the article written by me about suicide the ground was taken that
+"under many circumstances a man has the right to kill himself."
+
+This has been attacked with great fury by clergymen, editors and the
+writers of letters.  These people contend that the right of self-
+destruction does not and can not exist.  They insist that life is the
+gift of God, and that He only has the right to end the days of men;
+that it is our duty to beat the sorrows that He sends with grateful
+patience.  Some have denounced suicide as the worst of crimes--worse
+than the murder of another.
+
+The first question, then, is:
+
+Has a man under any circumstances the right to kill himself?
+
+A man is being slowly devoured by a cancer--his agony is intense--his
+suffering all that nerves can feel.  His life is slowly being taken.  Is
+this the work of the good God?  Did the compassionate God create the
+cancer so that it might feed on the quivering flesh of this victim?
+
+This man, suffering agonies beyond the imagination to conceive, is of no
+use to himself.  His life is but a succession of pangs. He is of no use
+to his wife, his children, his friends or society.  Day after day he is
+rendered unconscious by drugs that numb the nerves and put the brain to
+sleep.  Has he the right to render himself unconscious?  Is it proper
+for him to take refuge in sleep?
+
+If there be a good God I cannot believe that He takes pleasure in the
+sufferings of men--that He gloats over the agonies of His children.  If
+there be a good God, He will, to the extent of His power, lessen the
+evils of life.
+
+So I insist that the man being eaten by the cancer--a burden to himself
+and others, useless in every way--has the right to end his pain and pass
+through happy sleep to dreamless rest.
+
+But those who have answered me would say to this man:    "It is your
+duty to be devoured.  The good God wishes you to suffer. Your life is
+the gift of God.  You hold it in trust, and you have no right to end it.
+The cancer is the creation of God and it is your duty to furnish it with
+food."
+
+Take another case:  A man is on a burning ship; the crew and the rest
+of the passengers have escaped--gone in the lifeboats--and he is left
+alone.  In the wide horizon there is no sail, no sign of help.  He
+cannot swim.  If he leaps into the sea he drowns, if he remains on the
+ship he burns.  In any event he can live but a few moments.
+
+Those who have answered me, those who insist that under no circumstances
+a man has the right to take his life, would say to this man on the deck,
+"Remain where you are.  It is the desire of your loving, heavenly father
+that you be clothed in flame--that you slowly roast--that your eyes be
+scorched to blindness and that you die insane with pain.  Your life is
+not your own, only the agony is yours."
+
+I would say to this man:  "Do as you wish.  If you prefer drowning to
+burning, leap into the sea.  Between inevitable evils you have the right
+of choice.  You can help no one, not even God, by allowing yourself to
+be burned, and you can injure no one, not even God, by choosing the
+easier death."
+
+Let us suppose another case.
+
+A man has been captured by savages in central Africa.  He is about to be
+tortured to death.  His captors are going to thrust splinters of pure
+into his flesh and then set them on fire.  He watches them as they make
+the preparations.  He knows what they are about to do and what he is
+about to suffer.  There is no hope of rescue, of help.  He has a vial of
+poison.  He knows that he can take it and in one moment pass beyond
+their power, leaving to them only the dead body.
+
+Is this man under obligation to keep his life because God gave it until
+the savages by torture take it?  Are the savages the agents of the good
+God?  Are they the servants of the infinite?  Is it the duty of this man
+to allow them to wrap his body in a garment of flame?  Has he no right
+to defend himself?  Is it the will of God that he die by torture?  What
+would any man of ordinary intelligence do in a case like this?  Is there
+room for discussion?
+
+If the man took the poison, shortened his life a few moments, escaped
+the tortures of the savages, is it possible that he would in another
+world be tortured forever by an infinite savage?
+
+Suppose another case.  In the good old days, when the inquisition
+flourished, when men loved their enemies and murdered their friends,
+many frightful and ingenious ways were devised to touch the nerves of
+pain.
+
+Those who loved God, who had been "born twice," would take a fellow-man
+who had been convicted of heresy, "lay him upon the floor of a dungeon,
+secure his arms and legs with chains, fasten trim to the earth so that
+he could not move, put an iron vessel, the opening downward, on his
+stomach, place in the vessel several rats, then tie it securely to his
+body.  Then these worshipers of God would wait until the rats, seeking
+food and liberty, would gnaw through the body of the victim.
+
+Now, if a man about to be subjected to this torture had within his hand
+a dagger, would it excite the wrath of the "good God," if with one quick
+stroke he found the protection of death?
+
+To this question there can be but one answer.
+
+In the cases I have supposed it seems to me that each person would have
+the right to destroy himself.  It does not seem possible that the man
+was under obligation to be devoured by a cancer; to remain upon the
+ship and perish in flame; to throw away the poison and be tortured to
+death by savages; to drop the dagger and endure the "mercies" of the
+church.
+
+If, in the cases I have supposed, men would have the right to take their
+lives, then I was right when I said that "under many circumstances a man
+has a right to kill himself."
+
+Second, I denied that persons who killed themselves were physical
+cowards.  They may lack moral courage; they may exaggerate their
+misfortunes, lose the sense of proportion, but the man who plunges the
+dagger in his heart, who sends the bullet through his brain, who leaps
+from some roof and dashes himself against the stones beneath, is not and
+cannot be a physical coward.
+
+The basis of cowardice is the fear of injury or the fear of death, and
+when that fear is not only gone, but in its place is the desire to die,
+no matter by what means, it is impossible that cowardice should exist.
+The suicide wants the very thing that a coward fears.  He seeks the very
+thing that cowardice endeavors to escape.
+
+So the man, forced to a choice of evils, choosing the less is not a
+coward, but a reasonable man.  It must be admitted that the suicide is
+honest with himself.  He is to bear the injury, if it be one.  Certainly
+there is no hypocrisy, and just as certainly there is no physical
+cowardice.
+
+Is the man who takes morphine rather than be eaten to death by a cancer
+a coward?
+
+Is the man who leaps into the sea rather than be burned a coward? Is the
+man that takes poison rather than be tortured to death by savages or
+"Christians" a coward?
+
+Third, I also took the position that some suicides were sane; that they
+acted on their best judgment, and that they were in full possession of
+their minds.
+
+Now, if, under some circumstances, a man has the right to take his life,
+and if, under such circumstances, he does take his life, then it cannot
+be said that he was insane.
+
+Most of the persons who have tried to answer me have taken the ground
+that suicide is not only a crime, but some of them have said that it is
+the greatest of crimes.  Now, if it be a crime, then the suicide must
+have been sane.  So all persons who denounce the suicide as a criminal
+admit that he was sane.  Under the law, an insane person is incapable of
+committing a crime. All the clergymen who have answered me, and who have
+passionately asserted that suicide is a crime, have by that assertion
+admitted that those who killed themselves were sane.
+
+They agree with me, and not only admit, but assert that "some who have
+committed suicide were sane and in the full possession of their minds."
+
+It seems to me that these three propositions have been demonstrated to
+be true:  First, that under some circumstances a man has the right to
+take his life; second, that the man who commits suicide is not a
+physical coward; and, third, that some who have committed suicide were
+at the time sane and in full possession of their minds.
+
+Fourth, I insisted, and still insist, that suicide was and is the
+foundation of the Christian religion.
+
+I still insist that if Christ were God He had the power to protect
+Himself without injuring His assailants--that having that power it was
+His duty to use it, and that failing to use it He consented to His own
+death and was guilty of suicide.  To this the clergy answer that it was
+self-sacrifice for the redemption of man, that He made an atonement for
+the sins of believers. These ideas about redemption and atonement are
+born of a belief in the  "fall of man," on account of the sins of our
+"first parents," and of the declaration that "without the shedding of
+blood there is no remission of sin."  The foundation has crumbled.  No
+intelligent person now believes in the "fall of man"--that our first
+parents were perfect, and that their descendants grew worse and worse,
+at least until the coming of Christ.
+
+Intelligent men now believe that ages and ages before the dawn of
+history man was a poor, naked, cruel, ignorant and degraded savage,
+whose language consisted of a few sounds of terror, of hatred and
+delight; that he devoured his fellow-man, having all the vices, but not
+all the virtues of the beasts; that the journey from the den to the
+home, the palace, has been long and painful, through many centuries of
+suffering, of cruelty and war; through many ages of discovery,
+invention, self-sacrifice and thought.
+
+Redemption and atonement are left without a fact on which to rest.  The
+idea that an infinite God, creator of all worlds, came to this grain of
+sand, learned the trade of a carpenter, discussed with Pharisees and
+scribes, and allowed a few infuriated Hebrews to put Him to death that
+He might atone for the sins of men and redeem a few believers from the
+consequences of His own wrath, can find no lodgment in a good and
+natural brain.
+
+In no mythology can anything more monstrously Unbelievable be found.
+
+But if Christ were a man and attacked the religion of His times because
+it was cruel and absurd; if He endeavored to found a religion of
+kindness, of good deeds, to take the place of heartlessness and
+ceremony, and if, rather than to deny what He believed to be right and
+true; He suffered death, then He was a noble man--a benefactor of His
+race.  But if He were God there was no need of this.  The Jews did not
+wish to kill God.  If He had only made himself known, all knees would
+have touched the ground.  If He were God it required no heroism to die.
+He knew that what we call death is but the opening of the gates of
+eternal life.  If He were God, there was no self-sacrifice.  He had no
+need to suffer pain.  He could have changed the crucifixion to a joy.
+
+Even the editors of religious weeklies see that there is no escape from
+these conclusions--from these arguments--and so, instead of attacking
+the arguments, they attack the man who makes them.
+
+Fifth, I denounced the law of New York that makes an attempt to commit
+suicide a crime.
+
+It seems to me that one who has suffered so much that he passionately
+longs for death should be pitied, instead of punished--helped rather
+than imprisoned.
+
+A despairing woman who had vainly sought for leave to toil, a woman
+without home, without friends, without bread, with clasped hands, with
+tear-filled eyes, with broken words of prayer, in the darkness of night
+leaps from the dock, hoping, longing for the tearless sleep of death.
+She is rescued by a kind, courageous man, handed over to the
+authorities, indicted, tried, convicted, clothed in a convict's garb and
+locked in a felon's cell.
+
+To me this law seems barbarous and absurd, a law that only savages would
+enforce.
+
+Sixth, in this discussion a curious thing has happened.  For several
+centuries the clergy have declared that while infidelity is a very good
+thing to live by, it is a bad support, a wretched consolation, in the
+hour of death.  They have, in spite of the truth, declared that all the
+great unbelievers died trembling with fear, asking God for mercy,
+surrounded by fiends, in the torments of despair.  Think of the
+thousands and thousands of clergymen who have described the last agonies
+of Voltaire, who died as peacefully as a happy child smilingly passes
+from play to slumber; the final anguish of Hume, who fell into his last
+sleep as serenely as a river, running between green and shaded banks,
+reaches the sea; the despair of Thomas Paine, one of the bravest, one
+of the noblest men, who met the night of death untroubled as a star that
+meets the morning.
+
+At the same time these ministers admitted that the average murderer
+could meet death on the scaffold with perfect serenity, and could
+smilingly ask the people who had gathered to see him killed meet him in
+heaven.
+
+But the honest man who had expressed his honest thoughts against the
+creed of the church in power could not die in peace.  God would see to
+it that his last moments should be filled with the insanity of fear--
+that with his last breath he should utter the shriek of remorse, the cry
+for pardon.
+
+This has all changed, and now the clergy, in their sermons answering me,
+declare that the atheists, the free-thinkers, have no fear of death--
+that to avoid some little annoyance, a passing inconvenience, they
+gladly and cheerfully put out the light of life.  It is now said that
+infidels believe that death is the end--that it is a dreamless sleep--
+that it is without pain--that therefore they have no fear, care nothing
+for gods or heavens or hells, nothing for the threats of the pulpit,
+nothing for the day of judgment, and that when life becomes a burden
+they carelessly throw it down.
+
+The infidels are so afraid of death that they commit suicide. This
+certainly is a great change, and I congratulate myself on having forced
+the clergy to contradict themselves.
+
+Seventh, the clergy take the position that the atheist, the unbeliever,
+has no standard of morality--that he can have no real conception of
+right and wrong.  They are of the opinion that it is impossible for one
+to be moral or good unless he believes in some being far above himself.
+
+In this connection we might ask how God can be moral or good unless he
+believes in some being superior to himself.
+
+What is morality?  It is the best thing to do under the circumstances.
+What is the best thing to do under the circumstances?  That which will
+increase the sum of human happiness--or lessen it the least.  Happiness,
+in its highest, noblest form, is the only good; that which increases or
+preserves or creates happiness is moral--that which decreases it, or
+puts it in peril, is immoral.
+
+It is not hard for an atheist--for an unbeliever--to keep his hands out
+of the fire.  He knows that burning his hands will not increase his
+well-being, and he is moral enough to keep them out of the flames.
+
+So it may be said that each man acts according to his intelligence--so
+far as what he considers his own good is concerned.  Sometimes he is
+swayed by passion, by prejudice, by ignorance, but when he is really
+intelligent, master of himself, he does what he believes is best for
+him.  If he is intelligent enough he knows that what is really good for
+him is good for others--for all the world.
+
+It is impossible for me to see why any belief in the supernatural is
+necessary to have a keen perception of right and wrong.  Every man who
+has the capacity to suffer and enjoy, and has imagination enough to give
+the same capacity to others, has within himself the natural basis of all
+morality.   The idea of morality was born here, in this world, of the
+experience, the intelligence of mankind.  Morality is not of
+supernatural origin.  It did not fall from the clouds, and it needs no
+belief in the supernatural, no supernatural promises or threats, no
+supernatural heavens or hells to give it force and life.  Subjects who
+are governed by the threats and promises of a king are merely slaves.
+They are not governed by the ideal, by noble views of right and wrong.
+They are obedient cowards, controlled by fear, or beggars governed by
+rewards, by alms.
+
+Right and wrong exist in the nature of things.  Murder was just as
+criminal before as after the promulgation of the ten commandments.
+
+Eighth, many of the clergy, some editors and some writers of letters who
+have answered me have said that suicide is the worst of crimes, that a
+man had better murder somebody else than himself.  One clergyman gives
+as a reason for this statement that the suicide dies in an act of sin,
+and therefore he had better kill another person.  Probably he would
+commit a less crime if he would murder his wife or mother.
+
+I do not see that it is any worse to die than to live in sin.  To say
+that it is not as wicked to murder another as yourself seems absurd.
+The man about to kill himself wishes to die.  Why is it better for him
+to kill another man, who wishes to live?
+
+To my mind it seems clear that you had better injure yourself than
+another.  Better be a spendthrift than thief.  Better throw away your
+own money than steal the money of another.  Better kill yourself if you
+wish to die than murder one whose life is full of joy.
+
+The clergy tell us that God is everywhere, and that it is one of the
+greatest possible crimes to rush into His presence.  It is wonderful how
+much they know about God and how little about their fellow-men.
+Wonderful the amount of their information about other worlds and how
+limited their knowledge is of this.
+
+There may or may not be an infinite being.  I neither affirm nor deny.
+I am honest enough to say that I do not know.  I am candid enough to
+admit that the question is beyond the limitations of my mind.  Yet I
+think I know as much on that subject as any human being knows or ever
+knew, and that is--nothing.
+
+I do not say that there is not another world, another life; neither do I
+say that there is.  I say that I do not know.  It seems to me that every
+sane and honest man must say the same. But if there is an infinitely
+good God and another world, then the infinitely good God will be just as
+good to us in that world as he is in this.  If this infinitely good God
+loves His children in this world, He will love them in another.  If He
+loves a man when he is alive, He will not hate him the instant he is
+dead. If we are the children of an infinitely wise and powerful God, He
+knew exactly what we would do--the temptations that we could and could
+not withstand--knew exactly the effect that everything would have upon
+us, knew under what circumstances we would take our lives--and produced
+such circumstances himself.  It is perfectly apparent that there are
+many people incapable by nature of bearing the burdens of life,
+incapable or preserving their mental poise in stress and strain of
+disaster, disease and loss, and who by failure, by misfortune and want,
+are driven to despair and insanity, in whose darkened minds there comes
+like a flash of lightning in the night, the thought of death, a thought
+so strong, so vivid, that all fear is lost, all ties broken, all duties,
+all obligations, all hopes forgotten, and naught remains except a fierce
+and wild desire to die.  Thousands and thousands become moody,
+melancholy, brood upon loss of money, of position, of friends, until
+reason abdicates, and frenzy takes possession of the soul.  If there be
+an infinitely wise and powerful God, all this was known to Him from the
+beginning, and He so created things, established relations, put in
+operation causes and effects that all that has happened was the
+necessary result of his own acts.
+
+Ninth, nearly all who have tried to answer what I said have been
+exceeding careful to misquote me, and then answer something that I never
+uttered.  They have declared that I have advised people who were in
+trouble, somewhat annoyed, to kill themselves; that I have told men who
+have lost their money, who had failed in business, who were not good in
+health, to kill themselves at once, without taking into consideration
+any duty that they owed to wives, children, friends, or society.
+
+No man has a right to leave his wife to fight the battle alone if he is
+able to help.  No man has a right to desert his children if he can
+possibly be of use.  As long as he can add to the comfort of those he
+loves, as long as he can stand between wife and misery, between child
+and want, as long as he can be of use, it is his duty to remain.
+
+I believe in the cheerful view, in looking at the sunny side of things,
+in bearing with fortitude the evils of life, in struggling against
+adversity, in finding the fuel of laughter even in disaster, in having
+confidence in tomorrow, in finding the pearl of joy among the flints and
+shards, and in changing by the alchemy of patience even evil things to
+good.  I believe in the gospel of cheerfulness, of courage and good-
+nature.
+
+Of the future I have no fear.  My fate is the fate of the world, of all
+that live.  My anxieties are about this life, this world. About the
+phantoms called gods and their impossible hells, I have no care, no
+fear.
+
+The existence of God I neither affirm nor deny.  I wait.  The
+immortality of the soul I neither affirm nor deny.  I hope, hope for all
+of the children of men.  I have never denied the existence of another
+world, nor the immortality of the soul.  For many years I have said that
+the idea of immortality, that like a sea has ebbed and flowed in the
+human heart, with its countless waves of hope and fear beating against
+the shores and rocks of time and fate, was not born of any book, nor of
+any creed, nor of any religion.  It was born of human affection, and it
+will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of doubt and
+darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death.
+
+What I deny is the immortality of pain, the eternity of torture.
+
+After all, the instinct of self-preservation is strong.  People do not
+kill themselves on the advice of friends or enemies.  All wish to be
+happy, to enjoy life; all wish for food and roof and raiment, for
+friends, and as long as life gives joy the idea of self-destruction
+never enters the human mind.
+
+The oppressors, the tyrants, those who trample on the rights of others,
+the robbers of the poor, those who put wages below the living point, the
+ministers who make people insane by preaching the dogma of eternal pain;
+these are the men who drive the weak, the suffering and the helpless
+down to death.
+
+It will not do to say that "God" has appointed a time for each to die.
+Of this there is, and there can be, no evidence.  There is no evidence
+that any god takes any interest in the affairs of men--that any sides
+with the right or helps the weak, protects the innocent or rescues the
+oppressed.  Even the clergy admit that their God, through all ages, has
+allowed his friends, his worshipers, to be imprisoned, tortured and
+murdered by His enemies.  Such is the protection of God.  Billions of
+prayers have been uttered; has one been answered?  Who sends plague,
+pestilence and famine?  Who bids the earthquake devour and the volcano
+to overwhelm?
+
+Tenth, again I say that it is wonderful to me that so many men, so many
+women endure and carry their burdens to the natural end; that so many,
+in spite of "age, ache and penury," guard with trembling hands the spark
+of life; that prisoners for life toil and suffer to the last; that the
+helpless wretches in poor-houses and asylums cling to life; that the
+exiles in Siberia, loaded with chains, scarred with the knout, live on;
+that the incurables, whose every breath is a pang, and for whom the
+future has only pain, should fear the merciful touch and clasp of death.
+
+It is but a few steps at most from the cradle to the grave; a short
+journey.  The suicide hastens, shortens the path, loses the afternoon,
+the twilight, the dusk of life's day; loses what he does not want, what
+he cannot bear.  In the tempest of despair, in the blind fury of madness
+or in the calm of thought and choice the beleaguered soul finds the
+serenity of death.
+
+Let us leave the dead where nature leaves them.  We know nothing of any
+realm that lies beyond the horizon of the known, beyond the end of life.
+Let us be honest with ourselves and others. Let us pity the suffering,
+the despairing, the men and women hunted and pursued by grief and shame,
+by misery and want, by chance and fate until their only friend is death.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lectures of Col. R.G. Ingersoll -
+Latest, by Col. Robert Green Ingersoll
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