WHAT A MAN MAY BE AND BE A CHRISTIAN IN THE ESTIMATION OF COL. INGERSOLL.
Reading edition
We find the following in the Colonel's speech, which was delivered at Rockford, Ill., on Tuesday, October 5, 1880. We publish it in order to show the utter fallacy of the infidel's claim that Christianity is necessarily in conflict with education; that Christians are necessarily bigots, narrow-minded men, dangerous to the liberty of man, woman and child. Read it, ye fault-finding skeptics and infidels, and save your claims against the Christian religion if you can. Correllate it with the hollow utterances of Colonel Ingersoll, which are so often repeated by him in other addresses directed wholly against Christianity, if you can. Here it is:
"I have known him (Garfield) for years. I know him as well as I know any other man, and I tell you he has more brains, more education, wider and more splendid views than any other man who has been nominated for the Presidency by any party since I was born. Some people say to me: 'How can you vote for Garfield when he is a Christian and was a preacher?' I tell them: 'I have two reasons: One is, I am not a bigot, and the other is, General Garfield is not a bigot. He does not agree with me; I do not agree with him on thousands of things; but on the great luminous principle that every man must give to every other man every right that he claims for himself we do absolutely agree.' [Italics mine.—Ed.] I would despise myself if I would vote against a man in politics simply because we differed about what is known as religion. I will vote for a liberal Catholic, a liberal Presbyterian, a liberal Methodist, a liberal anything ten thousand times quicker than I would vote for an illiberal free-thinker. I believe in the right. I believe in doing to other people in these matters as I would like them to do to me. General Garfield is an honest man every way; intellectual every way. He is a poor man; he is rich in honor, in integrity he is wealthy, and in brains he is a millionaire. * * * He is a great, good, broad, kind, tender man, and he will do, if elected President, what he believes to be right."
SUM OF POSSIBILITIES.
1. It is possible for an honest man to be the best educated man in the nation, and at the same time be a Christian.
2. It is possible for the millionaire in brains to be the best educated man in the nation, and at the same time be a Christian.
3. It is possible for a man to be a Christian, and not be a bigot.
4. It is possible for a man to be a Christian, and an advocate of the great luminous principle that every man must give to every other man every right that he claims for himself.
5. It is possible for a man to be a Christian and be a liberal man.
6. It is possible for a man to be honest every way, and be a Christian.
7. It is possible for a man to be a Christian, and be every way an intellectual man.
8. It is possible for a man to be a Christian, and be rich in honor.
9. It is possible for a man to be a Christian, and be wealthy in integrity.
10. It is possible for a man to be a Christian, and be a great man.
11. It is possible for a man to be a Christian, and be a good man.
12. It is possible for a man to be a Christian, and be a broad, kind, tender man.
13. It is possible for a man to be a Christian, and have wider and more splendid views than any other man.
And Colonel Ingersoll says he knows all this to be so. Now what shall we think of the utterances of lesser lights in infidelity since we have the living fact before us that Christianity is in perfect harmony with the very highest education; with the widest and most splendid views; with honesty every way; with greatness; with goodness; with integrity; with honor; with kindness and tenderness; with the great luminous principle that a man must give to every other man every right that he claims for himself? And it is also in perfect harmony with a great and liberal heart.
We have hope that Colonel Ingersoll will yet find his way into the temple of truth, which reveals the glory and grandeur of the perfect harmony that exists between Christianity and all that is truly great and good—since he has pronounced the word "Eureka."