Introductory material (continued 6)

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!

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.