Introductory material (continued 4)

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.*

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.

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.*

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."