IN 
 
 Chester Harvey Rowell 
 
INGERSOLLISM. 
 
INGERSOLLISM 
 
 FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 
 
 A LECTURE 
 
 > 
 
 DELIVERED IN 
 
 ASSOCIATION HALL, NEW YORK; MUSIC HALL, BOSTON; IN PHILA- 
 DELPHIA, CHICAGO, ST. LOUIS, AND IN OVER SIX HUN- 
 DRED OF THE PRINCIPAL LECTURE COURSES OF 
 THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE R. WENDLING. 
 
 There is more power for the public safety in the whispered utter- 
 ances of a God-fearing priest or preacher than in all your batteries 
 and iron-dads. 
 
 CHICAGO: 
 
 JANSEN, McCLURG & COMPANY. 
 1883. 
 
COPYRIGHT, 
 
 BY JANSEN, McCLURG & CO. 
 A.D. 1882. 
 
 KHISHT Sc MSOKAH.D 7\ 
 
DEDICATED 
 
 TO 
 
 JOSEPHINE E. WENDLING, 
 
 THE QUEEN OF MY HOME, 
 A PERFECT WIFE AND A PERFECT MOTHER. 
 
I am not a sad man. Spite of the experience of life some- 
 what bitter I am a cheerful, and joyous, and happy man. But 
 take away my consciousness of God ; let me believe there is no 
 Infinite God ; no infinite mind which thought the world into exist- 
 ence and thinks it into continuance ; no infinite Conscience which 
 everlastingly enacts the eternal laws of the universe ; no infinite 
 Affection which loves the world ; loves Abel and Cain loves the 
 drunkard's wife and the drunkard ; the Mayors and Aldermen who 
 made the drunkard ; which loves the victim of the tyrant, and 
 loves the tyrant ; loves the slave and his master ; loves the mur- 
 dered and the murderer ; the fugitive and the kidnapper ; that 
 there is no God who w r atches over the nation, but "forsaken 
 Israel wanders lone " ; that the sad people of Europe, Africa, 
 America, have no guardian then I should be sadder than Egyp- 
 tian night. Theodore Parker, 
 
The battle-ground of atheism is not in the field of natural 
 science ; meaning by that the study of material phenomena. The 
 argument from design to an intelligent contriver does not require 
 the knowledge of a Cuvier or Humboldt to make it satisfactory. 
 Every man carries about with him in his own organization a 
 syllogism which all the logic in the world can never mend. If his 
 skepticism will not melt away in such an ocean of evidence, it is 
 because it is insoluble. Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
 
 9 
 
r- There has never been a State of Atheists. If you wander over 
 the earth you may find cities without walls, without king, without 
 mint, without theatre or gymnasium, but you will never find a 
 city without God, without prayer, without oracle, without sacrifice. 
 Sooner may a city stand without foundations, than a State without 
 belief in the Gods. Plutarch. 
 
I have consulted our philosophers, I have perused their books, 
 I have examined their several opinions, I have found them all 
 proud, positive and dogmatical, even in their pretended skep- 
 ticism ; knowing everything, proving nothing, and ridiculing one 
 another. Rousseau. 
 
 13 
 
I have always been strongly in favor of secular education in the 
 sense of education without theology ; but I must confess I have 
 been no less seriously perplexed to know by what practical meas- 
 ures the religious feeling, which is the essential basis of conduct, 
 was to be kept up in the present utterly chaotic state of opinion on 
 these matters, without the use of the Bible. Huxley. 
 
 15 
 
I would fain ask a minute philosopher what good he proposes to 
 mankind by his doctrines? Will they make a man a better citizen 
 or father of a family? a more endearing husband, friend, or son? 
 Will they enlarge his public or private virtues, or correct any of 
 his frailties or vices? What is there either joyful or glorious in 
 such opinions? Do they either refresh or enlarge our thoughts? 
 Do they contribute to the happiness or raise the dignity of human 
 nature? The only good that I have ever heard pretended to is, 
 that they banish terrors and set the mind at ease. But whose 
 terrors do they banish? Those of impenitent criminals and male- 
 factors, and which, to the good of mankind, should be in perpetual 
 terror and alarm. Sir R. Steele : Tatler. 
 
 17 
 
NOTE 
 
 I PERMIT the publication of this lecture in book 
 form for the simple reason that by many people in 
 many parts of the country I have often been requested 
 to do so. 
 
 My own opinion is that certain qualities great ear- 
 nestness, for example which entered into the delivery of 
 the lecture, but cannot be exhibited on the printed page, 
 will largely account for the many commendatory words 
 the lecture has received. A good delivery (if you please) 
 of very poor matter sometimes blinds the judgment of a 
 very acute critic. I am not vain enough to believe for 
 a moment that the calm judgment of my critics will find 
 in the printed lecture grounds for the unusual praise 
 awarded to the lecture on the platform. 
 
 I am sure of but one thing about the matter : I am 
 right Ingersoll is wrong. My methods, my re-state- 
 ments of old arguments, my illustrations, my rhetoric, 
 may all be lamentably weak, but the ideas which I seek 
 to present are invincibly strong. 
 
 I hope the lecture will do good in this form. 
 
 19 
 
20 NOTE. 
 
 I have often been asked to tell the amount of the 
 largest fee I ever received for the delivery of a lecture. 
 I think the very largest reward any lecturer ever received 
 was the one I got not long since. Some one sent me r 
 one day after I had lectured in Pittsburgh, a copy of the 
 "Daily Commercial Gazette," of that city. The follow- 
 ing paragraph in the paper was marked : 
 
 OBITUARY. William Lewis, a young man of great promise, 
 died after a brief illness at his home in the Thirty-fifth ward, 
 Sabbath night, from an attack of pneumonia, which only lasted 
 a few days. His death is profoundly lamented by a large host 
 of young friends. His character was irreproachable. A singular 
 incident is noted in connection with the sad affair. The deceased, 
 though a young man of fine moral character, had honest doubts 
 as to the reality of the Christian faith, but he was a sincere and 
 candid seeker after light. He had read much on the subject, and 
 gave a hearing to both sides. On the Monday evening when 
 Hon. Geo. R. Wendling lectured, he, with some friends, came 
 over to hear that gentleman, and after the lecture said he had 
 become convinced of the truth of Christianity, and henceforth he 
 would pin his faith to that belief. His convictions on the subject 
 were clear, and during the few remaining days of his life he was 
 earnest, though modest, in expressing his new faith, and in 
 accepting it. 
 
 Now I am neither a preacher nor the son of a 
 .preacher. I do not even know whether I am orthodox 
 or not. I have never cared to know. I doubt if there 
 be much practical piety about me. But I have learned 
 that that paragraph is true ; and, being true, I call it the 
 greatest fee I ever received. 
 
NOTE. 21 
 
 If the gentlemen who compose the famous publishing 
 house which sets its imprint ' hereon can apprise me 
 some day of another such incident, I shall regard the 
 publication of the lecture in book form under their 
 auspices as "a success," despite its rnanifold faults and 
 
 blemishes. 
 
 G. R. W. 
 BLOOMINGTON, ILL. 
 
INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 FROM 
 
 A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 
 
 THE Decalogue the solitary autograph 
 of the Eternal is not a mistake. 
 
 On the plains of Sinai have perished icon- 
 oclasts without number, in the ineffectual at- 
 tempt to supplant that Decalogue with the 
 ever shifting dictates of Reason. 
 
 When Human Reason a bright and glo- 
 rious goddess shall add to that Decalogue 
 one line, or take one line from it, I will yield 
 to her the exclusive homage of my heart and 
 brain. 
 
 He of Nazareth, with His divine wisdom, 
 might say it, but Human Reason has tried in 
 
24 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 vain for five thousand years to say A new 
 commandment I give unto you. 
 
 Yet if Robert Ingersoll be right, every man 
 makes his own God, and aside from that we 
 cannot know that there is a God ; Christ was 
 at the best an enthusiast ; the Bible is a 
 curse ; religion a conscious or unconscious 
 sham ; a future reckoning a chimera ; and im- 
 mortality perhaps a fancy. 
 
 This is Ingersollism in its nude state, in its 
 primordial nakedness stripped of its gor- 
 geous and glowing raiment, its rhetorical 
 drapery. It is a very ancient thing, but the 
 magnificent and unique genius of its modern 
 sponsor entitles it to a modern and unique 
 name. 
 
 Before we go further allow me another pre- 
 liminary word. I have learned something in 
 the West of the private life of the gentleman 
 whose views I condemn, whose name fur- 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 2$ 
 
 nishes forth the title of this lecture. I not 
 only honor his abilities, but I also respect his 
 personal character. Thus at the beginning, 
 with these words of sincere and just compli- 
 ment, let us have done at once and forever 
 with all personalities. If any one has come 
 to listen to personal detraction of Robert 
 Ingersoll, he has come to be disappointed. If 
 any one comes to be amused, he too has come 
 to be disappointed, for I have come to speak 
 seriously upon very grave subjects. 
 
 Let me detain you at the threshold one 
 moment longer. You'and I will stand toward 
 each other upon a footing I much prefer, if 
 you will at once dismiss the impressions crea- 
 ted by the far too friendly and partial words 
 which have announced this lecture. Put aside 
 all thought of the graces, arts, and effects of 
 oratory. I pretend to nothing but a plain 
 and earnest discussion of the great questions 
 
26 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 which lie before us now, nor shall I in that 
 discussion sacrifice strength for novelty, by 
 ignoring arguments older than myself ar- 
 guments which have stood the tests of time. 
 I am here, not to challenge your criticism, 
 but to invoke your serious attention. 
 
 We go now to our theme. 
 
 I have defined, or rather I have summa- 
 rized, Ingersollism, fairly I think, without an 
 exaggerating tint or a shadow of misrepre- 
 sentation. In my judgment, these doctrines 
 called Ingersollism seriously affect our social 
 and political structures as well as our relig- 
 ious institutions. I conceive that the inevit- 
 able consequences, business and political, of 
 such teachings are of the gravest importance 
 to every citizen. I speak, therefore, as a citi- 
 zen, as a business man, as a lawyer, and, if 
 you please, as a politician discarding the 
 narrow meaning of that word ; and as such, 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 2J 
 
 would speak to men of every faith and call- 
 ing. I would speak as a " Man of the 
 World," as the churches say, and I would 
 address myself to men of the world, upon the 
 business, social, and political phases of the 
 teachings Ingersoll forces upon our attention. 
 I champion no creed nor sect. I place hu- 
 manity above all the creeds of the creed-build- 
 ers, and my country above all political and 
 religious partizanship. 
 
 Looking at the subject now from the point 
 of view we have taken, very practical thoughts 
 at once suggest themselves. There is an im- 
 portant question of political economy involved 
 in this whole religious controversy. I turn 
 from the pages of Adam Smith, Ricardo, and 
 Professor Bowen, and say that if the element- 
 ary teachings of political economy be true, 
 and Ingersoll and his followers be right, every 
 church spire in the land is a monument of 
 
28 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 financial stupidity, every pulpit a bad invest- 
 ment. We must go further still. We must 
 transform our places of worship into ware- 
 houses and workshops, stop every religious 
 press, put stocks of merchandise or steam en- 
 gines and spindles into all church buildings, 
 convert our priests into pedagogues, our theo- 
 logical students into students of medicine, and 
 our great preachers into politicians. Con- 
 sider the effect upon " the balance of trade," 
 our " table of exports," if these millions of 
 men and money be driven into channels of 
 productive industry. Take the footings of 
 our last census.* Sixty-three thousand church 
 edifices and twenty-one million five hundred 
 thousand church sittings in the United States! 
 Three hundred and fifty-four millions of dol- 
 lars invested in property devoted to the pur- 
 poses of religion! Five times as many men 
 
 *The Census of 1870. 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 29 
 
 consecrating their lives to the cause of religion 
 as may be found in our standing army! Con- 
 sider the details, infinite in number, variety, 
 and expense, from an international or quad- 
 rennial or ecumenical council, conference, or 
 synod, down to a mid-week prayer-meeting. 
 In your calculations, include the fact that 
 almost the entire number of our fifty millions 
 suspend all remunerative employment once a 
 week and sacrifice fifty-two days every year ! 
 Why, free trade, the remonetization of silver, 
 the resumption of specie payments, the con- 
 tinuance of the national banking system, and 
 our schemes for river and harbor improve- 
 ments, are all mere bagatelles when compared 
 with the practical question these facts in- 
 volve ! 
 
 I put this phase of Ingersollism before you 
 as bankers, merchants, tradesmen, professional 
 men, and laborers of all kinds, because the 
 
30 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 facts involved therein bear directly and most 
 powerfully upon your financial interests, and 
 because, having met more than one dishonest 
 man calling himself religious, many of us lend 
 willing ears to Ingersoll's destructive falla- 
 cies. Before I have done I shall more than 
 once recur to this financial and practical phase 
 of Ingersollism ; but let us now rise for a 
 while above the dollar view, and inquire if in 
 the domain of history, science, or reason, he 
 finds warrant for his teachings. Of this in- 
 quiry I fear you may perhaps become impa- 
 tient ; it may seem to you collateral, but in 
 truth we shall find it very pertinent and vital. 
 As lawyers, tradesmen, bankers, railroad 
 managers, and men of manual labor, all of 
 you have, I know full well, little time for 
 metaphysics and philosophy. Therefore, I 
 do not propose to undertake at this time a 
 philosophical inquiry into the existence of 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIE W. 3 I 
 
 God. I shall not inquire into the truth of 
 the Bible as a whole. I shall not reason in 
 theological formulae about the character of 
 Jesus Christ. I bring you no system of the- 
 ology. To different hands from mine must 
 those inquiries be assigned, and from another 
 standpoint than mine must those inquiries, 
 for the graver purposes of life, be approached. 
 Bear in mind then, if you please, that I do 
 not propose to myself the lofty task of fur- 
 nishing argument which shall solve the mighty 
 questions suggested by the words God and 
 Christ. Nevertheless, I conceive it to be im- 
 possible to rationally discuss the bearings of 
 Ingersoll's teachings upon our secular inter- 
 ests without first inquiring into Ingersoll's 
 doctrines concerning : 
 
 I. God. 
 
 II. Christ. 
 
 
 
 III. The Bible. 
 
32 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 That inquiry I propose to prosecute only 
 so far as shall enable me to assert, that as 
 between the solutions offered by Ingersoll 
 and his followers upon the one hand, and the 
 Church upon the other, men of affairs and 
 men who love their homes and their country 
 cannot hesitate. 
 
 The opening sentence of Ingersoll's lecture 
 on "The Gods" -a lecture containing every 
 semblance of argument that he has ever urged 
 against religion contains the pregnant soph- 
 ism of all his reasoning. He begins 'with the 
 abrupt and startling statement, " Each nation 
 has created a God." If that be true, then 
 indeed has this gentleman found ground for 
 sweeping arguments and fierce philippic. If 
 history shows that human nature sets up for 
 itself its own peculiar God, according to time 
 and circumstance, why, then the frightful 
 thought comes unbidden to the brain that we 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 33 
 
 may have done the same ! That thought Inger- 
 soll seizes upon and makes the central thought 
 of his every endeavor. In every conceivable 
 way; by hint and by jest; by innuendo and by 
 positive allegation; by direction and indirec- 
 tion; everywhere and at all times does he 
 seek to plant the 'belief that God is a creation 
 of the imagination. 
 
 And let me tell you, this one thought has 
 unsettled more of you than the census-taker 
 will ever discover. The pulpit is preaching 
 against what it calls Modern Infidelity; but 
 I say and many of you will not believe 
 me until you reflect upon it I say that the 
 need of the day is the destruction of Ancient 
 Atheism. Countless are the reasons why 
 men will not avow the full measure of their 
 doubts concerning the existence of an omnip- 
 otent and personal God ; nevertheless, those 
 doubts exist, and are greater foes to the 
 
34 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 progress of religion than any of the causes 
 more frequently assailed by the pulpit. I 
 would not presume to tell clergymen their 
 duty ; yet mingling more than they with men 
 of the world, I bring to them, from workshop 
 and from farm, from the bar, and from the 
 public places of every Venice where mer- 
 chants most do congregate, the message that 
 what most we need is the conviction that 
 there is a personal God. Strive to supply 
 that conviction, and seek to hedge it about 
 with unanswerable argument, and the Church 
 wins an invincible lodgment in the hearts of 
 all sincere men. Upon this point, where too 
 much is assumed every day by the pulpit 
 as granted, has Ingersoll, with consummate 
 ingenuity, struck, and said, " Each nation has 
 created a God." 
 
 Let us look at that statement as we would 
 at a proposition in law, politics, or trade. 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW, 35 
 
 Let us understand the words we use; for, as 
 thought expresses itself in words, a right 
 word is always as necessary as a right 
 thought. We know from the tricks of trade, 
 of legislation, and of politicians, that words 
 may be mountains or pitfalls. 
 
 "What do you read, my lord?" 
 
 inquired Polonius; and believe me, Hamlet 
 was more a profound philosopher than simu- 
 lated fool when he answered, 
 
 "Words, words, words." 
 
 Let us go to an arbiter accepted in all our 
 courts. We ask of Webster the meaning of 
 this wonderful word " God," and he tells us 
 that the word stands first for an object of 
 worship. This, however, he follows by defin- 
 ing the word to mean " the Supreme Being, 
 the eternal and infinite Spirit, the Creator 
 and Sovereign of the universe." Now turn 
 
 o 
 
 to the word " Idol," and we find the primary 
 
36 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 meaning of that word to be "an image or 
 representation of anything," and this he fol- 
 lows by further defining the word to mean 
 " an image of a divinity." Now, with these 
 definitions in mind, let us look again at the 
 bold statement, " Each nation has created a 
 God," and the argument must run thus : 
 Each nation has created an object of worship. 
 That we admit. What follows ? That each 
 nation has created an Eternal and Infinite 
 Spirit, a Creator and Sovereign of the uni- 
 verse ? Substitute the word " idol " or 
 " images representing a god," and the argu- 
 ment is historically true. Substitute the 
 words " Eternal and Infinite Spirit," and the 
 argument is historically false The fallacy 
 lies the very simple fallacy, when once 
 it is exposed in confounding the idea of 
 worshipping an Eternal and Infinite Spirit 
 of which no graven image can be made, with 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 37 
 
 ft 
 
 the idea of worshipping imaginary or created 
 beings capable of being symbolized by im- 
 ages. It is the fallacy of confounding idol- 
 atry or image-worship with the worship of 
 the Eternal and Infinite Spirit. English- 
 speaking peoples have named the Eternal 
 and Infinite Spirit GOD. But the poverty 
 of our language has compelled us to call the 
 objects of heathen worship gods. It is 
 remarkable it is anomalous but it is true, 
 that the word when used in the singular has 
 a meaning entirely dissociated from the 
 meaning which attaches to the plural. Our 
 conception of God, as defined by Webster, 
 excludes the conception of gods, and Inger- 
 soll, in speaking of gods, attempts to con- 
 found the two conceptions, and therein lies 
 his fallacy. Substitute, I repeat, the word 
 idols, or images representing a god, and his 
 argument is historically true ; substitute the 
 
3 8 INGER SOLLISM: 
 
 words Eternal and Infinite Spirit, and his 
 argument is historically false. Many nations 
 have created gods, and each nation different 
 gods ; but among all nations may be found 
 traces of the idea of the supreme God. 
 
 I affirm and in making this affirmation 
 I am not unmindful of the apparent excep- 
 tion noted by Sir John Lubbock I affirm 
 that among every people, in every quarter 
 of the habitable globe, there exists this day, 
 and has existed from the furthest reach 
 of history, the idea of one eternal and all- 
 powerful God. Among the Greeks the idea 
 was embodied in their Zeus, and in the 
 remotest period of Greek antiquity there 
 lingered a faith in one supreme God. Con- 
 fucius, five hundred years before the Chris- 
 tian era, addressed prayers to the mysterious 
 and unknown power, and the oldest of Chi- 
 nese books teach that there is one supreme 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 39 
 
 God. The Rig-Veda of ancient India speaks 
 of One who is God above gods. The Zend- 
 Avesta of Zoroaster, written, as all anti- 
 quaries agree, not less' than one thousand 
 years before the new era, recognizes one 
 Original and Infinite Being. The mythology 
 of ancient Egypt, with all its worship of 
 animals and idols, has for its central fact that 
 Osiris was the supreme God. In the religion 
 of the Teutonic and Scandinavian races may 
 be found their Odin, described in their Eddas 
 and Sagas as the very God of gods. In the 
 Pentateuch we learn that many centuries 
 before the new era, the Jews believed in and 
 worshipped Jehovah as the one ever-living 
 and all-powerful God. The North American 
 Indian has his one Great Spirit. Go where 
 you will, to Europe, Asia, America, Africa, 
 and to the islands of the sea, and all through 
 the ages there runs the idea of one eternal 
 
4<D INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 and all-powerful God. While each and all 
 of these nations have had many idols, many 
 images of worship, many of Ingersoll's gods,. 
 yet among them all, and over and above them 
 all, may be found traces of the idea of a 
 supreme God. This fact, this very important 
 historical fact, with which we necessarily 
 begin our discussion, cannot be doubted - 
 cannot be denied. It is as true as history 
 itself, and it is as prominent as any other 
 one fact in history. 
 
 Quitting the domain of history, Ingersoll 
 goes to metaphysics, and asserts that man 
 has no ideas, and can have none, except those 
 suggested by his surroundings. He tells us 
 that man cannot conceive of anything utterly 
 unlike what he has seen or felt. In a word, 
 he tells us that ideas and conceptions are 
 the reflections of things. 
 
 I shall not suggest here any of the difficul- 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 41 
 
 ties which the intuitional school of metaphy- 
 sicians oppose to the school that derive all 
 ideas from sensation the school from which 
 Ingersoll takes his statement. On the con- 
 trary, I grant the statement to be true. But 
 now, if the broad proposition be true that 
 man has no ideas except those suggested by 
 his surroundings, whence comes the idea, that 
 has run like a golden gleam through the ages, 
 of one Eternal and Omnipotent God ? 
 
 Whence comes it ? 
 
 By Ingersoll's own argument, by his own 
 philosophy, by his own metaphysics, there 
 must be such a God, else the idea would not 
 exist ! 
 
 And do you know that you cannot imagine 
 a thing to be which does not exist ? Make 
 the experiment. Behold ! gorgons, naiads, 
 and centaurs angels of light and imps of 
 darkness Asmodeus with dyed garments 
 
42 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 and Queen Mab and the Culprit Fay and 
 Caliban and the god Ahura Mazda, the Per- 
 sian fount of primeval light and fancies 
 without number, as wild and spectral and 
 grand as those of dreamland in a fevered 
 sleep, come and go and come again. But 
 stop! You are simply imagining new combi- 
 nations of old material! You have gone into 
 that marvellous work-shop, your brain, and 
 taken thence ideas which surroundings in the 
 past have suggested, experience accumulated, 
 and memory preserved, made novel combina- 
 tions, and you, like Ingersoll, stand ready to 
 proclaim yourself a Creator, when in fact 
 you are only a carpenter and joiner ! For, re- 
 solve now every one of your weirdest imagin- 
 ings into its component parts, and Brahma 
 the Golden and Vishnu the Sombre lie at 
 your feet classified into legs and arms and 
 heads and crescents, and necklaces of skulls. 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIE W. 43 
 
 Under this law every one of the high gods of 
 heathendom is resolved into its constituent 
 parts ; the Devil of mediaeval superstition 
 falls back into his original elements of hoofs 
 and horns, and his reputed home, the mediae- 
 val hell, fades away in vanishing clouds of 
 sulphurous smoke, or disappears forever in 
 the brilliant but evanescent and unreal flames 
 of a poet's Inferno. 
 
 But the conception, the thought, the idea 
 of one ever-living and all-powerful God, an 
 eternal and infinite Spirit, is not touched by 
 this law. That conception has no constituent 
 elements. It is a single concept. It is abso- 
 lute. It is a perfect type of unity. It stands 
 alone. It lies beyond the line of imagination. 
 It is of itself a revelation. Being an idea, 
 then, which has existed from the beginning in 
 the minds of men, it must, by Ingersoll's 
 logic, be the reflection of a fact. 
 
44 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 Again, he tells us that a belief in God 
 springs from fear and solicitude concerning 
 future events and a desire to placate the Un- 
 known. The stupendous error in this state- 
 ment is the indisputable fact that man, civil- 
 ized and uncivilized, learned and unlearned, 
 vicious and innocent yonder in the crowded 
 streets of the city, and there in the solitude 
 of the forest now and in all past ages- 
 turns in his darkest hours with trust and con- 
 fidence to that God, and unconsciously, intui- 
 tively, instinctively acknowledges His good- 
 ness, by always, in the moment of calamity, 
 invoking His aid. No! no! I tell you, in the 
 name of every truthful line the muse of his- 
 tory has yet inspired, that Atheism is the 
 primeval coward your genuine coward - 
 conceived in cowardice brought forth in 
 cowardice reared in cowardice and in the 
 unclean garb of Nihilism, Socialism and Com- 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 45 
 
 munism, swaggers through Europe and Amer- 
 ica to-day, a cowardly braggart! 
 
 Atheism, vaporing like Bessus, Pistol, or 
 Bobadil, and as belligerent as Sir Lucius 
 O 5 Trigger, grapples now and then, and over- 
 comes, some sickly child begotten of an un- 
 healthy orthodoxy, and forthwith proclaims 
 itself a giant. At other times it falls, here 
 and there, upon some discarded and defence-* 
 less tenet, left behind in the march of religious 
 growth and progress, and around it dances 
 the war-dance of a cowardly savage, and with 
 an air of bravado proclaims itself the puissant 
 and only foe of bigotry. Here, in the pres- 
 ence of scholars who have won distinction on 
 a hundred intellectual battle-fields, I appeal to 
 the history of intellectual development in 
 every age and in every land, and make the 
 explicit and direct charge that Atheism is the 
 coward of the centuries, white-headed and 
 
46 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 craven-hearted, skulking through the by-ways 
 of sophistry, and not daring to come into the 
 presence of even a merciful God. 
 
 Again, Ingersoll tells us that ignorance of 
 the causes of events and the phenomena of 
 nature impelled man to assign supernatural 
 causes. Hath not a little learning made 
 Atheism mad ? 
 
 Because an eclipse is now known to be no 
 miracle ; because the thunder is now known 
 to be not God's voice, and the errant light- 
 ning not His thunderbolt; because the sun in 
 truth does not rise, and the moon's phases 
 are not the effects of an unknown power ; 
 because pestilence is the direful penalty of 
 violating some law of nature and comes not 
 as the blighting curse of some black angel 
 sent to earth on a mission of woe; because 
 in many instances science has explained phe- 
 nomena which ignorance attributed to super- 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 47 
 
 natural causes, Atheism, forsooth, dispenses 
 with God waves aside the Almighty bows 
 out the Eternal One. 
 
 Come, then, and tell us the secret of the 
 great law of gravitation ; explain to us the 
 beating of the heart ; tell us what the princi- 
 ple of life is in animal or plant ; explain the 
 
 
 origin of protoplasm or monad ; whom or 
 
 what do those heavenly bodies obey which 
 complete their orbits " only after the lapse of 
 ages, and which reappear with unfailing pre- 
 cision at the point from which they started, 
 as if to present themselves to Him who sent 
 them on their way;" how comes it that races 
 of men and animals are conserved by a due 
 proportion of male and female births; whence 
 comes and what is, force, and what is thought, 
 and what is love, and what is conscience, and 
 where and what is the power that holds and 
 guides throughout countless aeons, sun, earth, 
 
48 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 and moon in their majestic courses ; and why 
 is it that one drop of water is still as wonder- 
 ful as all the seas, one leaf as all the forests, 
 and one grain of sand as all the stars ? 
 
 Here, then, is the Atheistic dilemma. As 
 knowledge increases, the vista of the un- 
 known enlarges, and thereby the very cause 
 assigned for an increase of scientific Atheism 
 becomes a more potent reason for a belief 
 in God. 
 
 But once again, he tells us that nature 
 is too ill-contrived an affair at best, suscep- 
 tible of too many improvements for it ever 
 to have come from the omnipotent hand 
 of an all-wise and all-merciful God. Our 
 brilliant Atheist would have made the earth 
 free from disease and pain no sorrow, no 
 suffering, no sickness, no enfeebled age, no 
 storm, nor famine, nor pestilence, nor death. 
 I ask the question here : Has Atheism any 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 49 
 
 infallible scheme of its own whereby these 
 evils, one or all, may be removed ? And 
 from the gloomy retreat of Fatalism there 
 comes the sullen answer: Nay we have 
 none. I ask another question : With all the 
 woe and suffering of earth, is there not more 
 of happiness than sorrow ? And again the 
 reluctant answes comes : Crime and wretch- 
 edness dwell only here and there. Once 
 more I ask : Is it not true that our blessings 
 are in a measure conditioned by our evils - 
 that without vice there could be no stern and 
 durable virtue in morals, and without a con- 
 flict with nature none of our glorious prog- 
 ress in science ? And even the philosophy of 
 Atheism must answer: All this is true. 
 Were it otherwise, nature itself would be 
 
 " Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null, 
 Dead perfection, no more." 
 4 
 
50 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 The Amoving why" of evil we may not 
 solve, but its existence strengthens not one 
 whit the arm of Atheism. 
 
 It may seem that cruelty goes unpunished, 
 virtue unrewarded, and injured innocence un- 
 requited ; but who can tell ? 
 
 What is the plan, of which we are parts, 
 and what shall be its final outcome ? We 
 know a little of this planet and of our times, 
 and have books we call histories ; but what 
 of the future and its reckoning ? And 
 this world we call ours it is but a star of 
 minor magnitude in the great firmament of 
 stars. Who, even the most casual and indif- 
 ferent reader, thinking of that future, can 
 look into yonder firmament and see the in- 
 finite hosts of worlds roll by, and not catch 
 a glimpse of the deep, deep meaning in the 
 words of that Wonderful One who claimed 
 kinship with God, and said, at eventide, and 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 51 
 
 perhaps pointing to the stars: "In my 
 Father's house are many mansions " ? 
 
 Enough now of these cavillings. Let us 
 go on to matter of more moment to us all. 
 
 In dealing with Ingersoll's eloquent de- 
 nials, with his brilliant banterings, with his 
 coruscating captiousness, we cannot but feel 
 that we are only skirting the borders of the 
 matter in hand, that we are parties to a 
 guerilla war on the frontier. Let us turn, 
 therefore, and go further, not forgetting^ that 
 we are now at length brought face to face 
 with a subject of awful significance. 
 
 It matters very little to us as business men, 
 I am sure, whether this or that creed, or this 
 or that article of faith, has. few or many doc- 
 trinal errors in it ; but our social, our busi- 
 ness, and our political life contain so many 
 hidden springs of action resting upon the 
 idea that there is one eternal and all-power- 
 
5 2 INGER SOLLISM: 
 
 ful God, that we would not ought not can 
 not do not rest until we feel that our feet 
 are upon a rock. It is not enough, then, that 
 we answer the cavils and sneers of Atheism. 
 Let us move, therefore, into a position where 
 we may invite attack a position which no 
 form of infidelity has ever yet successfully 
 assailed. 
 
 Two hundred years ago, Ralph Cudworth, 
 in his grand work " The True Intellectual 
 System of the Universe" -revived the an- 
 cient query : Were eyes made for the sake of 
 seeing, and were ears made for the sake of 
 hearing? But a day or two ago, as it were, 
 Joseph Cook, with all the power of a master 
 mind and tongue, brought scientific Atheism 
 face to face with that same question, and 
 defied a denial of its proof of God. Let me 
 convey to you, for purposes of my own, this 
 argument of Cudworth's and Cook's, divested 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 53 
 
 of its metaphysical and technical terms ; and 
 here let me ask for a single moment only 
 your close attention. 
 
 The idea or thought of sight preceded the 
 making of an eye. The idea or thought of 
 hearing preceded the making of an ear. 
 
 " How do you know that?" asks an audi- 
 tor. In the same way that I know that ques- 
 tion existed in your mind before you gave it 
 language. Your language is but the outer 
 coating of your doubt. The doubt rested in 
 your mind until your language came as a 
 vehicle to carry the doubt to me. So the 
 eye and the ear are but articulate expressions 
 of the two thoughts, sight and hearing. 
 
 Now Paley came, many years ago, and 
 said, as you have all often heard, " There can 
 be no design without a designer." And Soc- 
 rates said it, and Plato said it, two thousand 
 three hundred years ago, and the best intel- 
 
54 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 lects of the human race have said it in every 
 age. And it is true, true enough; but I am 
 not taking your time with a needless repeti- 
 tion of the celebrated "design argument." 
 There is something more than mere design 
 in eye and ear, in sight and hearing much 
 more. Sight and hearing are in and of them- 
 selves thoughts ; thoughts which had an ex- 
 istence in the mind of something or .some one 
 before ever ear and eye were made. Not 
 only can there be no design without a de- 
 signer, but there can be no thought without 
 a thinker. 
 
 There is design in the eye, it is true, but 
 there is thought in sight. There is design 
 in the ear, it is true, but there is thought in 
 hearing. There is thought in nature ; there 
 is thought in this boundless universe of ours ; 
 there is thought in history, as epoch slowly 
 succeeds epoch ; and all that thought is other 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 55 
 
 than our thought ; and thought other than 
 our own simply means a thinker other than 
 ourselves, for there can be no thought with- 
 out a thinker. 
 
 There is the logic of old, breaking anew 
 like a sun-burst upon this age of facts ! It is 
 invincible. Its very simplicity makes it in- 
 comparably grand. Before it, the laws of 
 evolution and development, of conservation 
 and correlation of forces, must take their 
 places as secondary causes. Let the human 
 eye be the consummation of countless ages 
 of growth and development, if you will ; yet 
 above that growth and development must 
 have stood a Thinker with the preconceived 
 idea or thought of sight. There is the logic 
 of the psalmist, the philosopher of old, and 
 the devout scientist of to-day. History and 
 reason must bow before it. I repeat, it is 
 invincible. Pleasurable as the task would be, 
 
5 6 INGER SOLLISM: 
 
 I need not dwell upon it. Elaboration can- 
 not strengthen it. It is but one of a million 
 of illustrations. Its full force will come upon 
 you in countless ways. Fix in your minds 
 and hold firmly, now and hereafter, the un- 
 deniable proposition that there can be no 
 thought other than our own unless there be 
 somewhere in the universe a thinker other 
 than ourselves, and surely and steadily you 
 move by the light of reason into the sublime 
 presence of the great Thinker of the universe 
 the wonderful, the omnipotent, the ineffa- 
 ble One whom the Christian world calls 
 GOD. 
 
 As rational men, we will go now out into 
 the world, each man to his own particular sta- 
 tion, carrying with him the consciousness of 
 one Eternal and Infinite Being. 
 
 Now, what are the moral attributes of that 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 57 
 
 Being ? We cannot pass from this branch of 
 our discussion just yet, for this question de- 
 mands an answer here, because man has a 
 moral nature ; because there is something in 
 every man which says : " I ought," and " I 
 ought not." Weave around this fact all the 
 casuistry you will, and tell me, if you choose, 
 with Hume, and Volney, and Voltaire, that 
 "I ought" in Constantinople simply means 
 " I ought not" in London; still the fact re- 
 mains that God made man with this omni- 
 present " I ought " implanted in his nature. 
 
 And this moral, like the intellectual part of 
 man, must have a teacher. Man must have 
 an ideal. That moral ideal will be found 
 when he finds the attributes of his God and 
 learns how he may grow toward them. 
 
 I am preaching no abstruse philosophy. I 
 simply proclaim human nature as God made 
 it. In art, in literature, in religion, in poll- 
 
58 INGERSOLLTSM: 
 
 tics, in business and in every-day life, men 
 grow toward their ideals. Every man, young 
 or old, has, consciously or unconsciously, his 
 ideal. A thousand things betoken it in child- 
 hood. Study your little ones for a passing 
 hour as they play about your hearth-stone, 
 and you will see that a thousand things be- 
 token, in children even, their ideals of man- 
 hood and womanhood. The school-room, 
 then, of the mental man, must have, some- 
 where and somehow, in society, a counterpart 
 for the moral man. A teacher, I say, and an 
 ideal, all must have. Why, eighteen hundred 
 years ago, Plutarch said that whenever we 
 begin an enterprise, or take possession of a 
 charge, or experience a calamity, we place 
 before our eyes the greatest men of our own 
 or of by-gone ages, and ask ourselves how 
 Plato, Epaminondas, or Lycurgus, would have 
 acted. And he adds that, looking into these 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 59 
 
 personages as into a faithful mirror, we may 
 remedy our defects in word or deed ; and 
 whenever any perplexity arises or any passion 
 disturbs the mind, the student of philosophy 
 pictures to himself some of those who have 
 been justly celebrated for their virtues, and 
 the recollection sustains his tottering steps 
 and prevents his fall. 
 
 Another thought just here : Lecky, in his 
 " History of Morals," regards it, and justly, I 
 think, as an axiomatic fact, that any moral 
 system for the government of society must 
 be capable of influencing natures which can 
 never rise to a heroic level. So it comes that 
 if Plutarch's philosopher needs an ideal, much 
 more must we, as plain men of business, as 
 men of every-day life, possess an ideal too. 
 Who, then, shall be our moral ideal, and 
 where shall we find our moral teacher ? A 
 plain practical question that I put to you in 
 
60 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 the interests of your homes and your chil- 
 dren, in the interest of society, in the interest 
 of our country, and not in the interest of any 
 sect under the broad dome of heaven ; and 
 I answer that question by saying that The 
 Book, and The Book alone, can furnish that 
 teacher, and The Book alone can supply that 
 ideal ; and by The Book I mean the aggregate 
 of religious teachings and influences embodied 
 in and derived from the Bible. 
 
 The one unifying element which permeates 
 all Christian sects and denominations is a 
 common faith in the moral and religious suffi- 
 ciency of the Bible ; and again do I say that 
 the Bible furnishes, and it alone, the Teacher 
 and the Ideal we seek. 
 
 Ingersoll and his followers say, " No ! " 
 Modern infidelity steps to the front, in this 
 the evening of the nineteenth century, and 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 6 I 
 
 cries, " No ! go to the Trinity of Reason, 
 Observation, and Experience." 
 
 Let us try this issue in Ingersoll's own 
 chosen forum the court of Experience. The 
 mighty question which greets us at the very 
 threshold, as plain practical men for we of 
 this Western world are plain practical men 
 the question, I say, which greets us at the 
 very threshold is : Whose experience, obser- 
 vation and reason shall guide us, who stand 
 in need of a teacher ? Plato's, the very king 
 of philosophers ? Why, he taught that wives 
 should be held in common, in order that their 
 children might be the more exclusively at- 
 tached to their country. He advocated sui- 
 cide in the presence of poverty or other great 
 calamity ; and in this, Seneca, Pliny, and other 
 schools of philosophy, agree. Take the an- 
 cient teachers, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and 
 all than whom, I take it, not even Robert 
 
62 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 Ingersoll himself, nor any of his disciples, is 
 a greater philosopher and concede all that 
 may be claimed for their philosophy and 
 learning, and grant that in the five hundred 
 years prior to the advent of the new era, 
 mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, mechan- 
 ics, and other sciences, achieved grand dis- 
 tinction, yet the indisputable fact remains 
 that in point of public and private morals 
 their times were as dark as the darkest of all 
 the ages. It is historically true, and every 
 classical scholar knows that even their god- 
 desses were odiously impure, and that the 
 most debasing of idolatrous rites and ceremo- 
 nies prevailed. 
 
 I am speaking history now. Look to every 
 point of the compass during the five hundred 
 years prior to the advent of the New Era, 
 among nations barbarous or polished, and a 
 black impenetrable mass of moral disorder 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 63 
 
 and ruin rises before our eyes. I repeat, I 
 am speaking history. Under the guidance of 
 philosophy, led by reason, observation, and 
 experience, revenge and rapine, fraud, theft, 
 suicide and cruelty, were patronized and coun- 
 tenanced by the masses, taught by philoso- 
 phers, and reprobated by none. Short-lived 
 epochs free from those vices may be found, 
 but they stand as prominent exceptions to an 
 almost universal rule. Moral misery, like a 
 black portentous cloud, overshadowed the 
 world with gloom. Why? In the presence 
 of all this learning and philosophy, why this 
 condition of public morals ? 
 
 These five hundred years are the golden 
 age, it seems to me, of the human mind, in 
 purely intellectual achievements. Our cen- 
 tury, it is true, outstrips all the centuries in 
 displays of inventive genius, in feats of utili- 
 ty. But ours is a mechanical age; that, an 
 
64 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 age of lofty speculation, of intellect in its 
 higher walks, of philosophy, art, and poetry. 
 That was the age that saw Socrates in the 
 streets oT Athens, heard Plato in his garden 
 near the Academy, and beheld in the Acropo- 
 lis the Olympian Jupiter fresh from the im- 
 mortal chisel of the master Phidias. It was 
 the age that gave us Euclid and his pupil 
 Archimedes that gave us Aristotle that 
 gave us Demosthenes. It was the age that 
 read history fresh from the unrivalled pen of 
 Thucydides, and applauded the wonderful 
 dramas of ^Eschylus. It was an age, indeed, 
 that saw in sculptured marble rarer forms of 
 grace and beauty and majestic power than 
 the world ever saw before or since ; that 
 heard strains of eloquence and poetry as 
 thrilling as ever fell on mortal ear ; that pon- 
 dered the grave problems of life with as 
 profound insight as unaided intellect has ever 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 65 
 
 shown ; and in every department of specula- 
 tive philosophy reached the very mountain 
 heights of human endeavor. 
 
 Again do I ask, why, in such an age as 
 that, do we find such a condition of public 
 morals ? 
 
 The answer is simple, direct, and unmis- 
 takably true : Because there was no univer- 
 sally recognized standard of moral truth ; 
 because there was no generally accepted code 
 of right; and because there was no order of 
 men to instruct the masses in morals. An- 
 cient Ingersollism held' undisputed sway, and 
 universal night brooded over land and sea. 
 
 Slowly, beautifully, like the coming of the 
 dawn, like the soft approach of the sunrise, 
 comes from Judea a new philosophy. Here 
 let us pause a moment. 
 
 We have gone out into our business 
 world gone with man to his counting-room, 
 
66 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 and workshop, and farm left him to his 
 struggle with life and nature, conscious only 
 of God, and looking around and above for 
 an ideal, and troubled by the perplexing 
 altercations of the omnipresent " I ought " 
 and " I .ought not." Let us still leave him 
 there, and go back through the ages, and, 
 retracing our steps, discover if we can the 
 secret of our modern civilization, and learn 
 if we may where man shall find the Ideal 
 One. 
 
 There is a book in two volumes called the 
 Bible. It claims to be authentic. Admit 
 that claim for the present for a few mo- 
 ments only. The older volume closes with 
 a prophecy ; the new opens with a fulfilment 
 and culminates with a revelation. The older 
 volume fills one with the feeling that a mar- 
 vellous but undisclosed element underlies the 
 movement of the book. Generations come 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW, 67 
 
 and go, but seem to tend in one direction. 
 There seems to be a life below the surface/ 
 and in the words of an unknown writer : 
 " Through the prophetic veil there glows the 
 image of a man, stranger to every one, yet 
 friendly to all." And a marvellous image it 
 is! so indistinct, and yet so positive; gen- 
 tle, yet carrying awful power ; very near, yet 
 distant as the unseen God ; and a strange 
 spell binds the reader, until, having closed 
 the prophecies, he opens the next volume, 
 and in the opening chapter finds the Past 
 assembled forty-two generations, convened 
 as witnesses to attest a birth and comes to 
 the Star, the Virgin, and the Child ! 
 
 Shall we stop now to question the incom- 
 prehensible ? Remember, we are moving in 
 the presence of the Infinite, and to deny the 
 possibility of an Incarnation is to deny the 
 omnipotence of the Omnipotent ! 
 
68 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 The story moves rapidly on. The angelic 
 Annunciation, the Manger, the homage of 
 the Wise Men all pass before us like a 
 panorama. Then come the sword of Herod, 
 the flight, the retirement for thirty years, 
 interrupted only by a reappearance at the 
 age of twelve ; then come the Baptism, the 
 Temptation, the Sermon on the Mount ; 
 then come miracles and parables and say- 
 ings a new philosophy the calling of fol- 
 lowers a tumult among people and rulers 
 the betrayal the trial the crucifixion 
 -the resurrection the ascension. Three 
 years more have passed ; the Pentecost and 
 the Church soon follow, and be that story 
 true or false the mightiest revolution 
 known among men is begun, for the Being 
 whose strange career we have gazed upon 
 shall become the Christ of civilized humanity! 
 Now, what has this singular narration to 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 69 
 
 do with you and your interests as business 
 men ? Let us pursue our argument yet a 
 while, and we shall see. 
 
 I do not stop now to argue that the prin- 
 cipal of these events as historical realities 
 actually occurred. The German and the 
 French rationalistic schools of infidelity made 
 all-important concessions here fifteen years 
 ago, and an intelligent minister or priest shall 
 convince you of it in a single sermon. I do 
 not claim that any one or more of these 
 events sustain any doctrine peculiar to some 
 Christian sect. Enough and more than 
 enough of such discourses are always at your 
 hands. I shall not enter upon an argument 
 to prove that these events fulfil a prophecy. 
 Every Bible student is armed here from top 
 to toe, and every congregation can set for- 
 ward scores of such who shall give you in an 
 hour overwhelming proofs. 
 
70 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 All this, however, is aside from, or at best 
 incidental to, my purpose. But one fact we 
 cannot overlook a tremendous fact: this 
 Christ no matter now what He may be, no 
 matter now who He may be, no matter now 
 whether this book we have found be inspired 
 or uninspired this Christ holds ^lp His life 
 as the Model Life. He claims to be the Ideal 
 Man. His unparalleled audacity if I may 
 use the expression is such that he actually 
 stands up before the entire world and chal- 
 lenges criticism. 
 
 His two fundamental laws arrest and com- 
 mand our attention : 
 
 No man can escape his own record. 
 
 Every man must face some kind of a 
 judgment. 
 
 Laws irrevocable, and absolutely true in 
 business, politics, morals, and every-day life. 
 
 With such a life, then, for an example, and 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. *J\ 
 
 with such laws for a foundation, the Church 
 passes into the arena of history, offers 
 Christ's 'life as an ideal for all humanity, and 
 Christ's teachings as a universal code of 
 morals. Now comes the test, the infallible 
 test of time time, into whose crucible all 
 impostures must go, and out of which none 
 have ever yet come unharmed. 
 
 Mark the procession of the centuries ! 
 Nero is Emperor of Rome now, and the 
 century closes with Trajan wearing the im- 
 perial crown. The next century finds Marcus 
 Aurelius on the banks of the Danube ; the 
 next, and Diocletian is Emperor ; and the 
 next is ushered in by Constantine the Great, 
 and closing sees the Empire divided. An- 
 other century, and Attila invades Italy, and 
 Rome is plundered by the Vandals and is 
 recaptured by Belisarius in the next. Then 
 comes the century that sees Mohammed's 
 
72 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 glory, flight, and death, and another that 
 closes with Charlemagne preparing for his 
 coronation as Emperor of the West. The 
 next century brings to Alfred the Great the 
 imperial robes of Britain, and the next finds 
 the house of Capet on the throne of France. 
 A thousand years have passed ! Harold is 
 King of England now, the battle of Hastings 
 is fought, and William the Conqueror has 
 come. Another century, and Ireland is sub- 
 dued, and King John and his barons rule 
 England. Another passes, and the Ottoman 
 Empire appears. Another opens with Bruce 
 crowned King of Scotland ; Bannockburn is 
 fought, and Bruce has died. The next cen- 
 tury sees Henry the Fourth King of Eng- 
 land, and in the next the battle of Agincourt 
 is fought; Joan of Arc dies at the stake; 
 Martin Luther is born ; America is discov- 
 ered ; modern history is begun ; the light of 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 
 
 73 
 
 universal intelligence is breaking ; the cen- 
 turies lose their distinctness, and we begin 
 to measure time by eras of progress and 
 epochs of thought, until at last there pass 
 before us the wonders of the nineteenth 
 century and there, there in the very midst 
 of its glory and culture, in the midst of its 
 millions of purposes and plans, in the midst 
 of its engines and telegraphs and systems 
 and palaces and philosophies, we find there 
 has come through all the blood and tears and 
 tyrannies of centuries, " marching with slow 
 and stately tread across the realms " and 
 across the ages, the Man-God the God- 
 Man the Christ of modern Christianity; 
 and with a gentleness unutterable and a 
 majesty unspeakable, is winning the heart 
 and moulding the character of the man whom 
 we left with naught for a guide but the 
 consciousness of one Eternal and Infinite 
 
74 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 Being yea, winning his heart and moulding 
 his character here in this Western world of 
 ours, by teaching him the two simple lessons 
 of the Fatherhood of God and the Universal 
 Brotherhood of Man. 
 
 Think of it !-- Eighteen hundred years of 
 relentless criticism, and there lives not this 
 day upon the face of the globe an honest and 
 intelligent sceptic who dare lay his finger 
 upon a single point in the character of the 
 Ideal Man and deny that it is absolute moral 
 perfection. 
 
 A question now and then we pass to 
 another branch of our discussion. Is this a 
 mere man this Ideal One and what is 
 there in His religion and His alone that 
 adapts itself to men of all nations, despite 
 the laws of climate and of race ? Climatic 
 influences, customs and circumstances, it is 
 said, shape religions and beliefs and this 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 75 
 
 broad generalization of modern philosophy 
 has shaken the faith of many an inquiring 
 mind, as I frankly confess to you it for years 
 shook mine. A man is a Mohammedan, we 
 are told, simply because he is born in Tur- 
 key; he is a worshipper of Buddha, or a fol- 
 lower of Confucius, because he is born in 
 India, China or Japan ; and he is a Christian, 
 simply and only because he is born in Eng- 
 land or North America. This broad gener- 
 alization of modern philosophy to-day shakes 
 the faith of many candid and inquiring men. 
 Now concede to this law all that Buckle and 
 Draper have claimed for it for it is from 
 Buckle and Draper that modern infidelity 
 has derived its arguments upon this point - 
 concede to it all these authors have claimed 
 for it, and by it you may perhaps be able to 
 explain why the south of Europe should be 
 Roman Catholic, while the north became 
 
76 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 Protestant, and of that which became Prot- 
 estant, Switzerland and the west of Europe 
 became Calvinistic, while most of Germany, 
 Sweden, Denmark and Norway became Lu- 
 theran. By some such natural law, it may 
 perhaps not be difficult to tell why the Gene- 
 van school of Calvinism became the model 
 for France, Holland, Scotland, part of Eng- 
 land, and consequently for North America. 
 By an exposition of the laws which make the 
 temperament a guide to the mental charac- 
 teristics, you may perhaps be able to explain 
 why men of sanguine temperament may be 
 Methodists, or severe and thoughtful men be 
 Presbyterians ; those of an analytic turn of 
 mind go to the Baptist theology ; the syn- 
 thetic to the Episcopalian ; and thus go on 
 and point out the mental or other peculiari- 
 ties of each great denomination. But tell me, 
 I beg, by what natural law do you explain it ; 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 77 
 
 tell me why it is that all the creeds of Chris- 
 tendom, and all the civilized nations of the 
 earth, unite in accepting the Ideal Man of 
 Christianity, despite the laws of climate and 
 of race ? I will attempt to answer the ques- 
 tion from the standpoint of a man of the 
 world. 
 
 When we ask why His can be the only uni- 
 versal religion, I look to all other religions 
 and I see written in each, one word that re- 
 veals the cause. It is a word more hateful 
 than that word superstition, on which modern 
 infidels concentrate their wrath more hate- 
 ful than the word bigotry more hateful than 
 the word cruelty more hateful than the 
 word oppression for it is the word that 
 sums them all, superstition, bigotry, cruelty, 
 and oppression, and that word is CASTE. 
 
 Go to China, to India, to Turkey, or to Per- 
 sia, and in each nation religion becomes the 
 
78 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 synonym of Caste. There % man is taught 
 that there is much in God for the worshipper 
 to adore ; here, the worshipper is taught that 
 there is something in man, in every man, 
 worthy the attention of God himself. There, 
 man is taught that there are inequalities 
 among men ; here, men are taught that all 
 are equal before the Infinite. 
 
 In my judgment as a politician, looking at 
 the matter purely from the standpoint of 
 political philosophy, the commanding feature 
 of Christ's philosophy is that no man, however 
 rich or however poor, however wise or how- 
 ever ignorant, is to be despised ; and if the 
 wise and the rich hate the ignorant and the 
 poor, or the ignorant and the poor hate the 
 wise and the rich, the hater stands condemned. 
 
 To my mind, the grand central thought of 
 Christianity is that every living soul of every 
 race, of every clime, of every creed, of every 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. Jg 
 
 condition, of every color every living soul 
 - is worth a kingdom ! 
 
 I can read between the lines on every page 
 of the four biographies of the Nazarene, that 
 the great heart of the Infinite would willingly 
 suffer an age of agony for the sake of the 
 humblest man or woman in all the world. 
 
 Who can measure the effect upon society 
 of this doctrine ? Who can estimate its 
 power for good ? Why, more of charity and 
 benevolence, and more of social and intellect- 
 ual progress, may be found in that one pecul- 
 iar feature of Christianity than in all other 
 systems and philosophies combined. And 
 here I challenge Infidelity to name an era or 
 a school in which this doctrine was taught as 
 a duty prior to the advent of the Ideal Man. 
 I grant you that the very poor, in different 
 ages prior to the new era, had their physical 
 necessities cared for ; but no system ever be- 
 
8O INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 fore ran the whole gamut of social gradation, 
 from the highest note down to the lowest, 
 and pronounced them all divine. I say all; for 
 midway between poverty and wealth surges 
 the great ocean of humanity, over whose 
 troubled waters still walks the Ideal Man, 
 and as of old says, " Peace, be still." 
 
 Now take the fact that the Author of 
 Christianity put this unparalleled estimate 
 upon human nature, and put it, too, upon a 
 human nature capable of fastening his body 
 like a malefactor's to a wooden cross, and 
 you have the peculiar thought in the Chris- 
 tian system which gives it a distinctive and 
 universal genius. 
 
 Now to our other question Is the Author 
 and Exponent of this wonderful system 
 merely a man? I need not tell you that such 
 a question a question that has filled whole 
 libraries and engaged the life-long labors of 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 8 1 
 
 thousands of earth's greatest scholars can- 
 not be answered, and the answer placed be- 
 yond cavil, in a single lecture nor in a single 
 volume. Go, therefore, in this passing hour 
 and avail yourself of the conclusions of 
 another, but nevertheless conclusions which 
 your judgment shall respect when to-morrow 
 you bring them to the test of reason and re- 
 jection. As the lawyers say, let us submit 
 the question to an expert. And why not ? 
 Property and life itself hang every day in our 
 courts upon such testimony. But where shall 
 we find one so competent and yet so disinter- 
 ested that the highest intellects in the infidel 
 world will admit him to the witness-stand ? 
 where one who has gone into many countries, 
 read with care the histories of all nations, in- 
 vestigated all religions, and studied and un- 
 derstood, as no other man, the secret springs 
 of human action? where one who brought 
 
82 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 to the investigation of social laws and cus- 
 toms a genius which the whole world shall 
 recognize, a genius free from bias in favor of 
 any creed or sect, and who shall testify with 
 a spirit absolutely disinterested ? Such a 
 one we have, and he bears the greatest of 
 all names in modern history : the name of 
 Napoleon ! Let me remind you now that in 
 Napoleon's lifetime Volney had lived, Hume 
 had lived, Holbach and Rousseau had lived, 
 Voltaire had lived, and Paine wrote his "Age 
 of Reason " and had lived in Paris ten years 
 before Napoleon became Emperor of the 
 French. The philosophies of all these men 
 passed before him in review. In brief, let me 
 remind you that Napoleon lived in an infidel 
 age, when literature breathed the spirit of 
 infidelity, and when legislation, art, and cus- 
 toms, all bore the impress of the master minds 
 of infidelity. 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 83 
 
 His wonderful career had closed, and at St. 
 Helena no cause for dissimulation remained. 
 An ambitious, cruel, heartless, wicked man, 
 this Napoleon had been ; a tyrant, a despot, 
 a scourge, the enemy of his race, if you will ; 
 but with it all, he possessed an intellect as 
 penetrating and profound as ever human 
 being was gifted with. Conclusions stamped 
 with ^ the approval of his great mind are 
 themselves arguments. But listen to the 
 testimony, and hear not only the conclusions 
 but the arguments of that mind. Indulge 
 me, then, for a single moment, while I merely 
 repeat the words that fell from him. Turn- 
 ing from a reverie, he said to his favorite 
 general and companion : 
 
 " I know men, Bertrand, and I tell you that 
 Jesus Christ is not a man. Superficial minds 
 see a resemblance between Christ and the 
 gods of other religions. That resemblance 
 
84 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 does not exist. * * * Paganism was never 
 accepted as truth by the wise men of Greece, 
 by Socrates, Pythagoras, Plato, Anaxagoras, 
 nor Pericles; but upon the other side, the 
 loftiest intellects have had a living faith in 
 the doctrines of the Gospel, not only Bos- 
 suet and Fenelon, who were preachers, but 
 Descartes and Newton, Leibnitz and Pascal, 
 Corneille and Racine, Charlemagne and 
 Louis XIV. Paganism is the work of 
 man. What do their gods know more than 
 other mortals these priests of India or of 
 Memphis this Confucius, this Mohammed ? 
 Absolutely nothing. * * * Are these gods 
 and these religions to be compared with 
 Christianity? As for me, I say No! I 
 summon the entire Olympus of the gods to 
 my tribunal. I Napoleon judge the gods. 
 The gods 'of China and of India, of Athens 
 and of Rome, have nothing which can over- 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 85 
 
 awe me. * * * I see in Lycurgus, Numa, 
 and Mohammed, only legislators who sought 
 the best solution of the social problem. I 
 see nothing which reveals divinity. I recog- 
 nize the gods and these great men as beings 
 like myself. They performed a lofty part in 
 their times, as I have done. There are many 
 resemblances between them and myself, foi- 
 bles and errors, allying them to me and to 
 humanity. It is not so with Christ. Every- 
 thing in Him astonishes me. His spirit over- 
 awes me and His will confounds me. He is a 
 being by himself. His birth and the history 
 of His life, the profundity of His doctrine, 
 which grapples with the mightiest difficulties, 
 and is of those difficulties the most admira- 
 ble solution, His Gospel, His apparition, His 
 empire, everything is to me a prodigy, an 
 insoluble mystery, a mystery which is there 
 before my eyes, a mystery which I neither 
 
86 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 can deny nor explain. * * * One can abso- 
 lutely find nowhere but in Him alone the 
 imitation or the example of His life. The 
 nearer I approach, the more carefully I ex- 
 amine, everything is above me, everything 
 remains grand, of a grandeur which over- 
 powers. * * * I search in vain in history 
 to find a parallel to Jesus Christ, or anything 
 which can approach the Gospel. Neither his- 
 tory nor humanity nor the ages can offer me 
 anything with which I am able to compare 
 it or explain it. The more I consider that 
 Gospel the more I am assured that there is 
 nothing there which is not beyond the march 
 of events and above the human mind. Who 
 but God could produce that style of perfec- 
 tion, equally exclusive and original ? 
 In every other existence but that of Christ, 
 how many imperfections ! Where is the 
 character which has not yielded, vanquished 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 87 
 
 by obstacles ? Where is the individual who 
 has never been governed by circumstances 
 or places, who has never succumbed to the 
 influence of the times, who has never com- 
 pounded with any customs or passions ? 
 From the first day to the last, He is the 
 same, always the same, majestic and simple, 
 infinitely firm and infinitely gentle. * * * 
 Christ speaks, and at once generations be- 
 come His by stricter, closer ties than those 
 of blood. I have so inspired multitudes that 
 they would die for me. But after all, my 
 presence was necessary. * Such is 
 
 Christianity, the only religion which destroys 
 sectional prejudice, the only one which is 
 purely spiritual, in fine the only one which 
 assigns to all, without distinction, for a true 
 country, the bosom of the Creator, God. 
 Christ proved that He was the Son of the 
 Eternal by His disregard of Time. All His 
 
INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 doctrines signify one and the same thing, 
 ETERNITY. * * * Behold the destiny near 
 at hand of him who has been called the great 
 Napoleon ! What an abyss between my mis- 
 ery and the eternal reign of Christ, which is 
 proclaimed, loved, adored, and which is ex- 
 tending over all the earth ! Is this to die ? 
 Is it not rather to live? The death of Christ! 
 It is the death of a God. * * * Bertrand, 
 if you do not perceive that Jesus Christ is 
 God, very well then I did wrong to make 
 you a general." 
 
 Scoffer and sceptic may rise now and de- 
 nounce the ambition and countless crimes of 
 this witness. But his discernment, his pene- 
 tration, his judgment, his knowledge of men 
 and motives, his genius, they dare not deny. 
 There, then, upon that platform and upon 
 that, a short time ago in Washington City, 
 still later in Chicago, and to-morrow else- 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW 89 
 
 where, is Ingersoll sneering at the religion 
 of Christ. Yonder at St. Helena, solemnly 
 confessing Christ to be above humanity, 
 calmly sits the prodigy of earth, autocrat of 
 autocrats, genius incarnate, the intellectual 
 wonder of the world; and let Ingersoll and 
 his followers profit by the comparison. 
 
 Permit me here a brief digression. Many 
 of you are familiar with the arguments of 
 Strauss and Renan and others of the school 
 those writers represent. Admitting that 
 Jesus Christ existed, they allege, however, 
 that there is so much of myth and legend 
 and tradition surrounding His life and inter- 
 mingled with His teachings, that Christianity 
 is at best a mythical, legendary, and tradi- 
 tional affair. Admitting further that Christ 
 was a good man, yet they tell us He was 
 invested by His enthusiastic followers with 
 attributes He did not possess. We are fur- 
 
go INGER SOLLISM : 
 
 ther told that there is much in Christianity 
 that is not new; that the Immaculate Con- 
 ception is an idea hundreds of years older 
 than the Christian religion ; that Krishna, 
 several centuries before Christ, was born of 
 a virgin; that the doctrine of the Trinity is 
 older than Christianity ; and that scattered 
 here and there through the older religions 
 of the world are other fragments of Christian 
 doctrines and beliefs. Much of all this is 
 true, and upon these truths Rationalism rears 
 an argument to the effect that Christianity 
 is simply an aggregation a crystallization 
 around Christ of the fragments scattered 
 
 o 
 
 through older religions; that it is largely 
 mythical and legendary in its origin, and 
 will not bear the analysis of advanced and 
 critical scholarship. 
 
 At one time this reasoning set me adrift 
 for awhile, and profounder men than I have 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 91 
 
 had the same experience. I allude to this 
 phase of infidelity, not to enter upon a refuta- 
 tion of it, but to give you an example of the 
 logic it employs, and by that example to illus- 
 trate the value of such reasoning. 
 
 If there be any truth in the old Pythago- 
 rean doctrine of the transmigration of souls, 
 let us imagine that the spirit of Ernst Renan 
 shall pass into sqme historian who three or 
 five hundred years hence will sit down to 
 write the history of our country and especially 
 of these later times. He begins by saying 
 we are now a nation of two hundred millions 
 of people ; about the middle of the nineteenth 
 century we were only forty millions ; now we 
 have a grand federation of one hundred states, 
 then we had only thirty-eight ; then the re- 
 public was just emerging from its infancy, 
 now it surpasses in grandeur the fondest 
 dreams of its earlier statesmen. What caused 
 
9 2 INGER SOLLISM : 
 
 this wondrous growth, this marvellous devel- 
 opment ? Some of our people once believed 
 and, indeed, the story is current still that 
 in those days an institution known as human 
 slavery existed in America, an institution 
 under which human beings were owned and 
 bartered as cattle, and that under its blight- 
 ing influences the growth of our nation was 
 retarded and social progress held in check. 
 Further the story runs, that between the years 
 1860 and 1870 a man named Abraham Lin- 
 coln was raised up by the people of the North 
 and made their leader ; that by his side, as 
 aid and counsellor, was a man named Hanni- 
 bal Hamlin ; that these men called around 
 them the people of twenty-eight states, and 
 went forth and made war upon the people of 
 the other states, won great victories, and 
 wiped from the face of the land the stain of 
 slavery. Thereupon the upward and onward 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 93 
 
 progress of our nation immediately became 
 wonderful in rapidity, until at last we have 
 grown beyond all that ever patriot hoped for. 
 This is the story ; but we are not satisfied 
 with it. It will not bear analysis. Later 
 investigation convinces us that it is simply an 
 aggregation of fragmentary truths scattered 
 through history. That such a person as Lin- 
 coln existed may be true, but we feel war- 
 ranted in saying that his enthusiastic admirers 
 have invested him with qualities he did not 
 possess. Let us look at this tradition in the 
 light of critical scholarship. Abraham Lin- 
 coln ! Why, the very first syllables of his name 
 - Abra furnish a clue to the mythical or 
 legendary character of the whole story. The 
 word Abram in the original means mighty 
 father, but was frequently used to signify 
 benefactor. A ray of light falls on the legen- 
 dary nature of the story; Abram benefactor. 
 
94 INGERSOLLISM : 
 
 Let us go a step further. We have recently 
 discovered that in those times, among all 
 English-speaking people, the word Ham stood 
 synonymous with the word slave, and that 
 slaves were frequently called the sons of 
 Ham. We at once perceive that the mythi- 
 cal or symbolic significance of the name Abra- 
 ham is greatly enhanced by the remarkable 
 discovery that Abraham means Abra, bene- 
 factor ; Ham slave : benefactor of the slave. 
 Now this significant fact must cast a doubt 
 upon the story in the mind of every critical 
 scholar. But still further. Hannibal Ham- 
 lin ! We positively deny the existence of 
 any such person. We find no authentic trace 
 of him before that war, and his career ended 
 when that war closed. He drops out of the 
 story as suddenly as he enters it. A moment's 
 analysis will convince the most sceptical. His 
 name furnishes conclusive proof. The first 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 95 
 
 syllable of his name, Ham, is the last syllable 
 of Abraham, and the second syllable of his 
 name, lin, is the first syllable of Lincoln ; so 
 we discover that the name Hamlin is taken 
 bodily out of the middle of the name Abraham 
 Lincoln, and the people believe his given 
 name was Hannibal because those times were 
 war times, and the story is a war legend, and 
 Hannibal had been known for many centuries 
 as a great warrior ! Can any critical scholar 
 now doubt the mythical origin of the story ? 
 But still further: It is said that those two 
 men led the people of twenty-eight states. 
 Count the letters in the name, Abraham 
 Lincoln ; there are fourteen. Count the 
 letters in the name, Hannibal Hamlin ; there 
 are fourteen. Combine the two and there 
 are twenty-eight ! Who believes that this 
 is mere accident, and that the twenty-eight 
 letters are not designed to stand for the 
 
96 1NGERSOLLISM : 
 
 twenty-eight states that waged the war, and 
 who can fail to see in this, traces of that 
 ancient superstition which attributed magical 
 power to the relation which numbers bore to 
 names and events ? 
 
 Thus dissecting this story, we find it doubt- 
 ful, mythical, traditional, legendary, and, as 
 free-thinkers, as rational independent investi- 
 gators, we reject it, doubt if slavery ever 
 existed, believe the war a myth, and deny 
 that Lincoln and Hamlin ever lived ! 
 
 This ludicrous analysis is, I submit, as 
 good an argument as Renan's against Chris- 
 tianity ; and our remote descendants shall, 
 if they be bold free-thinkers, capable of inde- 
 pendent thought, and brave enough to spurn 
 the teachings of priest and preacher, consign 
 to the limbo of exploded superstitions the 
 story of the war for freedom ; and one of the 
 grand names of the age the name of 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW, gj 
 
 Lincoln, a name we had believed immortal 
 shall be quietly dismissed with a scholarly 
 and intellectual sneer. 
 
 I now assert that we have found enough 
 of argument to justify us in holding true 
 two fundamental beliefs : 
 
 First God exists. 
 - Second Christ is a God-given ideal. 
 
 From these two facts, a third must logi- 
 cally issue. If Christ be God-given, so much 
 of that book we found and called the Bible 
 as faithfully records his works and truthfully 
 reports his sayings must be true. There can 
 be no escape from this conclusion. I reverse 
 the ordinary process of reasoning, and sum 
 the argument up in what to my mind is now 
 an unanswerable sentence, and say what- 
 ever is true of a God-given Christ must be 
 God-given truth. That much of the Bible is 
 
9 8 INGERSOLLISM : 
 
 enough. Now let theologians say how much 
 that excludes, or let them say that it includes 
 it all it matters not to me; I say that so 
 much of that book as bears upon the Ideal 
 Man, and so much of that book as the Ideal 
 Man has set the seal of his approval on, we 
 may safely accept as a moral teacher. 
 
 The great want in the heart and brain of 
 many thinking men, when they come to the 
 Bible, is antecedent ground for belief in its 
 truthfulness. I argue, therefore, not from 
 the Bible to Christ, but from Christ to the 
 Bible. I do not believe in Christ because of 
 the Bible, but I believe in the Bible because 
 of Christ. 
 
 Remembering that his maxims and teach- 
 ings, when faithfully applied, invariably solve 
 every moral problem of life, and contem- 
 plating the acknowledged fact that those 
 same teachings, when viewed simply as an 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIE W. 99 
 
 ethical and philosophical system, exhibit wis- 
 dom far beyond any known among men, I am 
 compelled to say, He indeed is the infallible 
 Teacher. 
 
 The infallibility of Christ is a broader and 
 stronger argument for the Book than all the 
 theories of inspiration that men have yet 
 devised. The seal of His approval is, even 
 on rationalistic ground, a sufficient warrant 
 for our acceptance of that Book. Such sur- 
 passing wisdom as His cannot be mistaken- 
 such surpassing purity and love cannot de- 
 ceive us. The impress of His royal signet 
 has placed the writings of Moses and all the 
 prophets where they cannot fall until He, the 
 Christ, Himself has fallen. 
 
 So we come at last to God, Christ, and the 
 Bible, and as rational men have reason for 
 the faith that is in us. 
 
I OO INGERSOLLISM ; 
 
 Now what interest have we who come from 
 counting-room and store-room, from legisla- 
 tive halls and boards of trade, and from the 
 various industrial walks of life, what interest 
 have we in the aggregate of religious teach- 
 ings and influences to which I have already 
 referred as embodied in and derived from the 
 Bible ? I do not mean an interest so far as 
 they bear upon what is called " Salvation," 
 but I have come to the practical view, and I 
 mean an interest so far as our immediate 
 objects are concerned. 
 
 What are those objects ? I think they 
 may be comprehended in three things : 
 
 I. As citizens, a stable and pure govern- 
 ment. 
 
 II. As business men, the acquisition of 
 property. 
 
 III. As social beings, happy homes. 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. IQI 
 
 We can best determine the bearing of the 
 church upon these three great objects of life 
 by considering the legitimate results of Inger- 
 sollism. Government, Property, and Home 
 shall now constitute our trinity, the business 
 man's trinity, neither element self-existent, all 
 co-dependent ; and when properly combined 
 and each properly adjusted in all its relations 
 to the other, we may call the result Civiliza- 
 tion. In this trinity may be foimd all the 
 elements of business, society, and politics. 
 
 Let us now take the Ingersoll creed, 
 " Happiness in this life," for our creed too. 
 Unquestionably the most happiness is de- 
 rived from the highest civilization, and the 
 highest civilization is obtained only when 
 Government, Property, and Home are each 
 and all conserved. In the name, then, of this 
 trinity I have come to arraign and denounce 
 Ingersoll's teachings as a crime against gov- 
 
I O 2 INGERSOLLISM : 
 
 ernment and law ; as a crime against com- 
 merce and trade ; as a crime against 
 civilization ; and, in one word, as a crime 
 against humanity. 
 
 Now take human nature as it is and in 
 this way alone may we deal with social 
 problems take human nature as it is, and 
 can you conceive of free government and 
 civil law existing among, say fifty millions 
 of people, who have none of the restraints of 
 religious teaching and influence about them ? 
 Remember, it is not alone to compel your 
 profound philosopher to be just, that civil 
 government, and civil law with all its com- 
 plex variations, are instituted. Socrates, 
 Aristotle, and Solon may need neither civil 
 government nor civil law ; but the ever per- 
 plexing question which haunts your wise 
 statesman and your honest politician is, What 
 of the millions ? 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 103 
 
 The scholar in his easy chair may specu- 
 late and reason away all religion, and yet go 
 out into the world and perhaps for a time be 
 an honest and just man. The intuitive 
 decision of bright and thorough-edged intel- 
 lect may part error from crime, and the silver 
 flow of a subtle-paced counsel may make safe 
 citizens of Plato, Voltaire, and Ingersoll. 
 But what of the hewer of wood, whose life 
 is a struggle for bread, raiment, and shelter, 
 for himself, his wife, and his little ones ? We 
 often speak of the hewer of wood but when 
 we think of him in relation to time and 
 opportunity for acquiring any other than the 
 simple creed of Bible-taught morality, how 
 many of us become hewers of wood me- 
 chanics, farmers, merchants, tradesmen, pro- 
 fessional men, and all the toilers of the 
 thousand other laborious callings known 
 among men ? What shall I say of the mill- 
 
INGERSOLLISM . 
 
 ions the people that surging, boundless 
 ocean of humanity we call the masses? In- 
 deed, my sceptical friend, the impenetrable 
 wall of an iron necessity shuts off from the 
 millions much of the Infidel's creed reason, 
 observation, and experience. Ninety out of 
 every hundred men, nay, more, pass almost 
 every waking hour in a struggle for bread. 
 "Thou shalt " and "Thou shalt not" may be 
 laws to which the deductive method of Aris- 
 totle or the inductive method of Bacon may 
 bring your philosopher for rules of action, 
 but what knowledge of those rules can be 
 acquired through philosophic reasoning by 
 those of us who are bound to the ever- 
 revolving wheel of unceasing toil ? 
 
 Will your philosophers come and teach us ? 
 A doubtful proposition but grant it. Ah, 
 in so doing you simply substitute one order 
 of priests for another a philosophic in lieu 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 1 05 
 
 of a theologic priesthood ; and your hated 
 order of priest and preacher will still remain ! 
 And what if some man who in the opinion of 
 the masses is wiser than your philosopher 
 shall some day come and say the new priest- 
 hood are hypocrites and sponges all ? Who 
 shall say him nay ? Where is your arbiter ? 
 Let us destroy the Bible and annihilate among 
 men all consciousness of God, and I will grant 
 you we may do well enough, we and our chil- 
 dren, and perhaps our children's children. 
 The moral impetus given by Christianity to 
 civilization might, and doubtless would, be 
 projected on into the next fifty or seventy-five 
 years. But what then? Grant that our philos- 
 ophers will hold their self-taught code of 
 morals ; but remember that the millions, your 
 children and your children's children, will 
 have no God no Bible no Religion. 
 And right here let us have no self-decep- 
 
1 06 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 tion. The millions were hewers of wood yes- 
 terday, as many millions are hewers of wood 
 to-day, and as many millions more will be 
 hewers of wood to-morrow. Genius and learn- 
 ing and talents are not inheritable, and wealth 
 rarely reaches its second generation. While 
 storm and flood and pestilence shall come 
 and go, while improvidence and disease and 
 calamity in all its myriad forms beset the 
 paths of the human race, the millions will 
 still be hewers of wood. The children prat- 
 tling now around the knee of philosopher and 
 millionaire will go down into the depths to 
 struggle up again or die as toilers. It is one 
 of the saddest facts in human history. Build 
 as you will, accumulate as you may, struggle 
 as only strong and true men can struggle for 
 those they hold dear, yet to this complexion 
 it must come at last ; there are but one or 
 two coffins, one or two little grass-covered 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 1 07 
 
 mounds of earth, between luxury and toil. 
 Call it fate, call it God's curse in Eden, call 
 it what you will : it is an inexorable fact. 
 
 And let us not deceive ourselves in another 
 view. Let not the increase of national wealth, 
 the growth of colleges and schools, and the 
 progress of scientific thought, flatter us with 
 the fancy that while all these change labor in 
 kind they change it also in degree. Grant 
 that eight-hour laws, steam engines, and tele- 
 graphs, may shorten a day's labor ; yet all the 
 more intense does that labor become, and all 
 the more of rest must follow. 
 
 Then once more I ask you, what of the 
 millions what of the people what of your 
 children's children, with no consciousness of 
 God, and robbed by infidelity of the simple 
 but sublime creed of Bible-taught morality ? 
 
 Do you ask me now for an application of 
 all this to the question of civil government ? 
 
1 08 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 Then I ask you, does not all history teach 
 you that " Thou shalt " and " Thou shalt not " 
 are laws written in the hearts of the people 
 long before they are ever written on the 
 pages of our statute books ? Do you not 
 know that if those laws were not in the hearts 
 of the people not alone in the hearts of 
 your philosophers, but in the hearts of the 
 people they would not be on the pages of 
 our statutes, and when they are erased from 
 the hearts of the people they will be erased 
 from the statutes ? Remember that all legis- 
 lation, be the government free or despotic, is 
 in its last results the will of the people. Here 
 an election announces that will ; yonder it 
 requires a revolution ; but in the end, in all 
 governments, the voice of the law is the voice 
 of the people. Oh, the power, the terrible 
 power, of the people ! Before the people, 
 thrones and empires are baubles, and govern- 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 109 
 
 ments and armies are pigmies and playthings. 
 Arouse the people, and the warnings of phi- 
 losophers are heeded as little as the notes of 
 the strange birds that fly before the tempest 
 are heeded by the storm king ! I appeal to 
 you as the champion of no sect, the repre- 
 sentative of no denomination, the exponent 
 of no creed but as a business man, as a 
 citizen, and I believe as a patriot ; and in the 
 name of all history I implore you to remem- 
 ber that the only power that can restrain and 
 safely guide ourselves and the millions is the 
 unseen but mighty power of " THUS SAITH 
 THE LORD GOD ALMIGHTY." 
 
 While universal infidelity must work ruin 
 to all civil government, yet it is peculiarly 
 true of a republic, where the relations of the 
 people to the government are so direct and 
 immediate. Here universal infidelity means 
 in its first results an armed centralization. 
 
HO INGERSOLLISM. 
 
 Why ? Because a people without a God must 
 have a bayonet. Social order with Atheism 
 is a paradox, unless grounded on Catling guns 
 and repeating rifles. Remove the restraints 
 of religion, and you must immediately 
 strengthen the arm of the civil power for 
 your own protection. The church is to-day 
 the great conservator of the peace. There is 
 more power for the public safety in the whis- 
 pered utterances of a God-fearing priest or 
 preacher than in all your batteries and iron- 
 clads. 
 
 I repeat, universal infidelity means central- 
 ization, centralization means despotism, des- 
 potism means ultimate revolution ; and once 
 let revolution come, and let there be in the 
 minds of fifty millions of people no God, and 
 -well, the French people saw such a sight 
 once, and though it is near a hundred years 
 ago, civilization shudders as it recalls the 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. \ \ \ 
 
 time when Ingersollism ruled France. Inger- 
 soll may be, in truth is and as an Illinoisan 
 I have said it East and West with pride a 
 patriot ; but Ingersollism is high treason to 
 all civil government, and high treason to all 
 civil law. 
 
 Consider now the second element in our 
 trinity Property. 
 
 The very highest point that Infidelity can 
 reach here is the time-worn maxim, " Honesty 
 is the best policy." That maxim, it is true, 
 is the result of observation and experience, 
 and may indeed be confirmed by a process 
 of philosophic reasoning. But what concep- 
 tion of honesty shall the man have, young or 
 old, whose observation and experience are 
 not wide enough to teach him that honesty 
 is the best policy ? I ask you as business 
 men, is it that maxim, or is it the training 
 and influence, remote or direct, of Bible- 
 
I I 2 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 taught fathers and mothers, that give you 
 to-day a trustworthy class of young employes, 
 clerks, salesmen, messengers and all ? Which 
 commands your confidence to-day, a young 
 man's character founded on philosophy based 
 upon his reason, observation, and experience, 
 or a young man's character based upon a con- 
 science ? Infidelity, then, is a crime against 
 business and against trade. 
 
 Ingersoll annihilates conscience. Jf Her- 
 bert Spencer, with all his ethical data, fails to 
 find a sure foundation for conscience, what 
 foundation is left among the sweeping nega- 
 tions of Ingersollism ? Commerce without 
 conscience is a vampire. Gambling is a fine 
 art with conscience left out. Conscience 
 makes bank stock marketable. Confidence 
 and conscience are synonyms in the world of 
 trade. Infidel philosophy may originate a 
 few wise maxims, but it can never give 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIE W. 113 
 
 energy, form, and vitality to that soul of 
 business an honest conscience. 
 
 And once more, you who come from count- 
 ing-room and store-room, remember just here 
 the millions upon whose broad shoulders rest 
 your countless enterprises, and whose strong 
 arms produce and exchange all your objects 
 of trade. Take away from them the thought 
 -that you and they stand equal in the sight 
 of God, a thought given to them alone by 
 Christianity ; take away from yourselves the 
 thought that they are your equals in the 
 sight of God ; take away from them the feel- 
 ing of brotherhood, a feeling given to them 
 alone by the Ideal One ; leave to the toiling 
 millions naught but a toiler's life and a toil- 
 er's grave, with no reckoning beyond, where 
 the uneven things of this most uneven 
 world may at last be set even ; go forth 
 with Ingersoll and write upon the gates of 
 
I 1 4 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 your cities, " There is no God," and proclaim 
 from the walls that " Death is an eternal 
 sleep ;" in a word, kill, burn out, annihilate 
 conscience, all the way down to the nether- 
 most stratum of humanity, and woe woe 
 betide your comprehensive schemes of enter- 
 prise, and woe betide your every accumula- 
 tion of wealth ! Where is the power in this 
 land of ours that shall then stay that beetle- 
 browed hag, infidelity's twin sister in every 
 age and in every land, infidelity's twin sister 
 to-day in St. Louis, Chicago, Cincinnati, and 
 New York, where it may not be all a dream 
 under her foul incantations there is gath- 
 ering a storm that may some day rend the 
 earth beneath your feet like an earthquake- 
 infidelity's twin sister upon every page of 
 human history the commune ? Is there no 
 significance for American business men in 
 the fact that but a little while ago a few 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. \ 15 
 
 thousand honest but misguided laborers, 
 incited in some of our principal cities by 
 French, German, and American infidel com- 
 munists, made every business man in the 
 land cry out for a stronger government ? I 
 do not say that every infidel is a commu- 
 nist; but I do say, and say it deliberately, 
 that from the British line to the waters 
 of the gulf, from ocean to ocean, in every 
 city of our land, the avowed communistic 
 leaders as a class are Godless infidels. By 
 the light of Pittsburgh's conflagration I can 
 see Ingersoll's legend, " Religion is supersti- 
 tion," floating in the night over the heads of 
 a frenzied mob. 
 
 And now consider the third element in our 
 trinity Home. 
 
 Government and law, and commerce and 
 trade, are seemingly distinct from the idea 
 
I 1 6 INGERSOLLISM: 
 
 of Home ; and yet all lines leading from all 
 that we have said centre in Home. Recol- 
 lect that the Ingersoll creed, " Happiness in 
 this life," is our creed too. Yes, we dig 
 canals, hew down forests, overset our prai- 
 ries, build cities, operate railroads, network 
 with telegraph wire the continent, and with 
 an Atlantic cable turn the ocean depths into 
 a whispering gallery for the nations all that 
 we may be happy. But who ? What we? 
 Infidelity says the strong and self-reliant. 
 It must of necessity say the strong and self- 
 reliant. Infidelity, in proclaiming happiness, 
 has no word of comfort for a weak old man 
 or an aged woman. 
 
 Infidelity would stagger like a drunkard 
 if chosen for a pall-bearer. It would stam- 
 mer like a witless inmate of an asylum if 
 asked to frame an epitaph for a baby's grave. 
 
 For neither childhood nor motherhood, for 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. \ ij 
 
 neither the marriage altar nor the cradle, for 
 neither old age nor the death bed, has Infi- 
 delity one word in its vaunted creed of " Hap- 
 piness." Hence I say Infidelity can claim to 
 furnish " Happiness " only to the strong and 
 self-reliant and yet that claim is as false as 
 a new-coined lie ! 
 
 Why, not one man in a thousand has 
 wrought for his own happiness alone. His 
 household be it composed of wife and child 
 or of mother or sister, in some form or other, 
 be the roof-tree his own or a borrowed tree 
 the household is the pivot around which turns 
 the whole existence of civilized man. Upon 
 the household altar he lays his accumula- 
 tions, and the happiness of the household is 
 the direct object of civilized man. Through 
 its happiness he seeks his. A nation of 
 happy homes is the brightest dream of states- 
 manship. 
 
I I 8 INGERSOLLISM : 
 
 Am I indulging in sentiment, or am I not 
 stating a plain every-day fact, when I tell you 
 that your happiness depends in a full degree 
 upon the happiness of mother, wife, sister, 
 child, household ? Let us dwell a moment on 
 those words, Home and Household. They rep- 
 resent and encircle nearly all there is of life to 
 much more than half the civilized world. 
 Look behind the veil which that word Home 
 lets fall every morning between our business 
 world and the household, and we see cluster- 
 ing about the hearthstones of rich and poor, 
 many faithful wives and mothers and cradles ; 
 many millions of ungrown men and women, 
 unused as yet to the world and its devious 
 ways ; millions worn by labor and disease ; and 
 millions more chilled by the snow-drifts of age, 
 waiting for the end of life. Of such are our 
 households, and for these households civilized 
 man goes forth at morn and returns at night. 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. \ 19 
 
 Now, bear in mind the question that infi- 
 delity presents is not, Shall we give to these 
 households of ours the hopes, promises, and 
 influences of religion? but the question infi- 
 delity presents here, in the afternoon of the 
 nineteenth century, is, Shall we take away 
 from our homes, from our ungrown millions, 
 from our aged and helpless ones, the promises 
 and influences of religion? Ingersoll says- 
 Aye, aye ; let fall upon every household in 
 the land, upon every child lisping its first 
 prayer, upon every marriage altar, upon every 
 death bed, and upon all the hallowed associa- 
 tions of Home, let fall the black pall of Athe- 
 ism ! and I say, he surely does not compre- 
 hend the effect of his teachings upon human 
 happiness, or his cruelty is unutterable and 
 his malevolence unspeakable. This one phase 
 of Ingersollism is enough to array against it 
 all the forces of civilized society. When I 
 
I 2 O INGERSOLLISM ; 
 
 think of the bearings his teachings have upon 
 our hearthstone life, and then reflect that it is 
 a man with cultured brain and generous and 
 sympathetic heart who in the name of human 
 happiness proclaims these teachings, I cannot 
 but conclude that either he plays a part, trips 
 in his speech, or is upon this subject stark 
 mad. 
 
 Take one of a thousand things we think of 
 when we imagine that his teachings are, in 
 order to make us happier, installed at our 
 homes in lieu of religion's hopes and prom- 
 ises. Take the hour and to every house- 
 hold such hours must come when the 
 shadow of death lies upon the hearthstone. 
 In that hour, go home, business man, seat 
 yourself beside the coffin that holds your treas- 
 ure perchance a treasure that a day or two 
 before hung lovingly about your knees and 
 sung childish songs, or perchance a treasure 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIE IV. 121 
 
 that through most of a lifetime had been not 
 only bone and flesh of your bone and flesh, 
 but heart of your very heart seat yourself 
 beside the coffin that holds that treasure, read 
 Ingersoll's lectures there, and be comforted ! 
 If you think Ingersollism means happiness 
 for your household, go and gather that house- 
 hold about a new-made grave that holds the 
 family jewel, and invoke the aid of Ingersoll- 
 ism then ! Why, that tenderness of feeling 
 upon which the household is based, which 
 makes the household a possibility, and with- 
 out which the household could not exist as a 
 factor in society, must be eradicated from the 
 human heart, or Ingersollism forever remain 
 the most monstrous of parodies, the grimmest 
 of sarcasms, when named as a rule of happi- 
 ness in the household. 
 
 These considerations waiving a thousand 
 others make it unnecessary for us to fur- 
 
I 2 2 INGERSOLLISM : 
 
 ther pursue the relations of Ingersollism to 
 the household. 
 
 And now, then, as rational men we have 
 glanced at the foundation thought upon which 
 all religion rests, the existence of God ; as 
 moral men we have seen the God-given 
 ideal and God-given book ; as citizens we 
 have seen that religion is one of the surest 
 props of civil government and civil law ; as 
 business men we have seen that we cannot 
 dispense with its influence ; and as social be- 
 ings we have found it a household blessing. 
 The question, therefore, with which I began 
 Ought we, upon the score of political econ- 
 omy, to keep up the church? is answered 
 now by another and a greater question: How 
 can we, as citizens and as business men, afford 
 to dispense with the power and the influence 
 of the church ? To this, every citizen and 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW, 123 
 
 business man must answer : We cannot afford 
 to lose the church. 
 
 I have said to you that we so often find 
 vice wrapped in the garb of religion that we 
 are coming to lend willing ears to attacks 
 upon Christianity. This leads me to remark 
 two things of Ingersoll, both of which con- 
 spire, in my judgment, to make his advent 
 into this field a public blessing. First, he 
 forces the issue between Infidelity and Reli- 
 gion. There is something vague and intangi- 
 ble in the underground movements of our 
 dilettante moralists and sceptical scientists. 
 But here is a foeman who comes squarely up 
 to the work in his bold assaults upon Reli- 
 gion. As a man of the world, he assails the 
 cherished beliefs of millions ; and men of the 
 world will come to the combat he invites. 
 The result may be looked for without fear or 
 
I 2 4 INGERSOLLISM : 
 
 trembling. The truth will triumph, and in 
 the end be mightier in withstanding a new 
 assault, mightier in winning a new victory, 
 and mightier in gaining new allies. 
 
 The second and greater good he will in- 
 directly accomplish will be in preparing the 
 way for arraying against hypocrisy in the 
 church all the better elements of society. 
 It cannot be denied that the performances of 
 so many professed Christians fall so far below 
 their pretensions to superior morality that 
 they thereby furnish to infidelity its most 
 effective though most illogical weapons. A 
 kiss and a betrayal is an old story in the 
 history of Christianity. It is none the less 
 true to-day than it was eighteen hundred 
 years ago. Hypocrisy in the church is the 
 Judas Iscariotism of the age. We have seen 
 how intimately all our interests are inter- 
 woven with the maintenance of true religion. 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW, 125 
 
 It follows that our interests lie in the encour- 
 agement of the boldest and most effective 
 denunciation of that hypocrisy. Let that 
 hypocrisy be lashed through the world with a 
 whip of scorpions ; let it be scourged with 
 the contempt of every honest man ; let it be 
 pointed at with the finger of scorn in every 
 assemblage of men. I doubt not that crusade 
 is coming. What will be the result ? Its 
 logical end must be the checking of infidelity. 
 While it is one thing to denounce hypocrisy 
 in the interest of infidelity, and another to 
 denounce it in the interest of Christianity, 
 yet in the end the result must be the same 
 the discomfiture of infidelity. 
 
 I am no dreamer here. I look ahead, but 
 not with my eye fixed upon some Utopian 
 condition of society in which hypocrisy and 
 the church will be completely and forever 
 divorced ; but I do look for a time when* the 
 
I 2 6 INGERSOLLISM : 
 
 influences of Christianity which now pervade 
 the civilized world and make honest and just 
 men out of many who do not kneel at the 
 altar of the church, shall, in the interest of 
 that church, be arrayed against the Judas 
 Iscariots of the nineteenth century. Such a 
 crusade, I repeat, will prove a lasting good, 
 and such a crusade, I repeat, will prove the 
 defeat of infidelity. To my mind, hypocrisy 
 in the church means infidelity in the church. 
 I do not say that infidels outside the church 
 are hypocrites, but I do say that your delib- 
 erate hypocrite inside the church is an infidel. 
 I paraphrase the text, and say it is as true 
 to-day as when first it was uttered, that the 
 man who says he loves his church, and yet 
 hates or cheats his brother, is a liar. Hold 
 fast to the thought, then, when the apostles 
 of infidelity come into your midst and de- 
 nounce the bad men inside the church hold 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. I2/ 
 
 fast to the thought that hypocrisy in the 
 church means infidelity in the church, and 
 then let all the people say God-speed Inger- 
 soll in scourging his own disciples ! 
 
 Every precept of reason drives us irresisti- 
 bly to the conclusion that the man who 
 deliberately uses Christianity for no 4 other 
 purpose than as a cloak for evil deeds is 
 necessarily an unbeliever in disguise. Let 
 the war go on, then, until public sentiment 
 shall brand as worse than a thief the infidel 
 who steals the livery of Christianity, and 
 Ingersoll's secret worshippers be dragged by 
 the force of public opinion from the sacred 
 altars they disgrace. It is idle to attempt to 
 palliate the charge of hypocrisy, and it is just 
 as idle to fear that the charge will in the end 
 cripple the church. Our men of affairs will 
 discern the false from the true, and their own 
 interests will prevent their spurning the 
 
I 2 8 INGERSOLLISM ; 
 
 genuine because of the counterfeit. Infidel- 
 ity cannot prevail. It destroys the best 
 standard of truth and right in the moral 
 world. 
 
 Pfave you ever thought of it a good man 
 is to-day, in your midst, a good man only as 
 he approaches the standard of Bible-taught 
 morality ! Grant that an infidel may be a 
 good man too and many of them are exem- 
 plary citizens yet it can come about, it 
 does come about, only by his approaching in 
 action a standard which he repudiates in 
 words. 
 
 Ingersoll personally and Ingersoll theo- 
 retically are two beings as wide apart as 
 civilization and barbarism. The world may 
 well believe the former to be a good citizen, 
 but it knows the latter to be a bad citizen. 
 One of the most notorious outlaws known in 
 the criminal annals of the West, Frank 
 
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 129 
 
 Rande, stood not long since at the bars of 
 his cell in St. Louis, the very impersonation 
 of every crime in the calendar, and, with the 
 air of a braggart,' said to preachers, priests, 
 and policemen, to throngs of men and women, 
 " I am a Bob Ingersoll man "; and every man 
 and woman in the land believed him. Had 
 this or any other criminal declared himself a 
 religious man, every infidel in the land would 
 have declared the man a hypocrite and his 
 assertion false. It is no answer to tell us 
 that perhaps in the cell adjoining his lay a 
 man who for five-and-twenty years was prom- 
 inent in the church, and was at last detected 
 in a series of gigantic thefts and forgeries ; 
 for let him but step to his prison door and 
 say, " I am a Christian man," and all the 
 civilized world cries out, " That man is a 
 liar ! " 
 
 Remember always that that moral sense 
 
 9 
 
1 30 INGERSOLLISM. 
 
 which enables you to discriminate between a 
 good man who calls himself a Christian and a 
 bad man who calls himself a Christian is a 
 moral sense fostered and enlightened by 
 Christianity itself, and so far as you possess 
 that moral sense you possess an inestimable 
 blessing. It is the spirit of patriotism which 
 enables you to say who was the, patriot, the 
 immortal Washington or Benedict Arnold. 
 As citizens loving the country bequeathed to 
 us by the men and spirit of '76, as business 
 men striving for success by honorable en- 
 deavor, as men who love home and house- 
 hold, no matter whether we be in the church 
 or out, we cannot afford to let the infidelity 
 of Ingersoll supplant Christianity. 
 
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