Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest

Ingersoll's Lecture on "Orthodoxy"

Ladies and Gentlemen: It is utterly inconceivable that any man believing in the truth of the Christian religion could publicly deny it, because he who believes in that religion would believe that, by a public denial, he would peril the eternal salvation of his soul. It is conceivable, and without any great effort of the mind, that millions who don't believe in the Christian religion should openly say that they did. In a country where religion is supposed to be in power—where it has rewards for pretense, where it pays a premium upon hypocrisy, where it at least is willing to purchase silence—it is easily conceivable that millions pretend to believe what they do not. And yet I believe it has been charged against myself, not only that I was insincere, but that I took the side I am on for the sake of popularity; and the audience tonight goes far toward justifying the accusation.

It gives me immense pleasure to say to this immense audience that orthodox religion is dying out of the civilized world. It is a sick man. It has been attacked with two diseases—softening of the brain and ossification of the heart. It is a religion that no longer satisfies the intelligence of this county; a religion that no longer satisfies the brain; a religion against which the heart of every civilized man and woman protests. It is a religion that gives hope only to a few; a religion that puts a shadow upon the cradle; a religion that wraps the coffin in darkness and fills the future of mankind with flame and fear. It is a religion that I am going to do what little I can while I live to destroy; and in its place I want humanity, I want good-fellowship, I want a brain without a chain, I want a religion that every good heart will cheerfully applaud.

We must remember that this is a world of progress, a world of change. There is perpetual death and there is perpetual birth. By the grave of the old forever stands youth and joy; and, when an old religion dies, a better one is born. When we find out that an assertion is a falsehood, a shining truth takes its place, and we need not fear the destruction of the false. The more false we destroy the more room there will be for the true. There was a time when the astrologer sought to read in the stars the fate of men and nations. The astrologer has faded from the world, but the astronomer has taken his place. There was a time when the poor alchemist, bent and wrinkled and old, over his crucible, endeavored to find some secret by which he could change the baser metals into purest gold. The alchemist is gone; the chemist took his place; and, although he finds nothing to change metals into gold, he finds something that covers the earth with wealth. There was a time when the soothsayer and auger flourished, and after them came the parson and the priest; and the parson and priest must go. The preacher must go, and in his place must come the teacher—that real interpreter of nature. We are done with the supernatural. We are through with the miraculous and the wonderful. There was once a prophet who pretended to read in the book of the future. His place was taken by the philosopher, who reasons from cause to effect—a man who finds the facts by which he is surrounded and endeavors to reason from these premises, and to tell what in all probability will happen in the future. The prophet is gone, the philosopher is here. There was a time when man sought aid entirely from heaven—when he prayed to the deaf sky. There was a time when the world depended upon the supernaturalist. That time in Christendom has passed. We now depend upon the naturalist—not upon the disciple of faith, but upon the discoverer of facts—upon the demonstrator of truth. At last we are beginning to build upon a solid foundation, and just as we progress the supernatural must die.

Religion of the supernatural kind will fade from this world, and in its place we will have reason. In the place of the worship of something we know not of, will be the religion of mutual love and assistance—the great religion of reciprocity. Superstition must go. Science will remain. The church, however, dies a little hard. The brain of the world is not yet developed. There are intellectual diseases the same as diseases of the body. Intellectual mumps and measles still afflict mankind. Whenever the new comes, the old protests, and the old fights for its place as long as it has a particle of power. And we are now having the same warfare between superstition and science that there was between the stagecoach and the locomotive. But the stage-coach had to go. It had its day of glory and power, but it is gone. It went West. In a little while it will be driven into the Pacific, with the last Indian aboard. So we find that there is the same conflict between the different sects and the different schools, not only of philosophy, but of medicine. Recollect that everything except the demonstrated truth is liable to die. That is the order of nature. Words die. Every language has a cemetery. Every now and then a word dies and a tombstone is erected, and across it is written the word "obsolete." New words are continually being born. There is a cradle in which a word is rocked. A thought is molded to a sound, and the child-word is born. And then comes a time when the word gets old, and wrinkled, and expressionless, and is carried mournfully to the grave, and that is the end of it. So in the schools of medicine. You can remember, so can I, when the old alopathists reigned supreme. If there was anything the matter with a man, they let out his blood. Called to the bedside, they took him to the edge of eternity with medicine, and then practiced all their art to bring him back to life. One can hardly imagine how perfect a constitution it took a few years ago to stand the assault of a doctor. And long after it was found to be a mistake, hundreds and thousands of the old physicians clung to it, carried around with them, in one pocket, a bottle of jalap, and in the other a rusty lancet, sorry that they couldn't find some patient idiotic enough to allow the experiment to be made again.

So these schools, and these theories, and these religions die hard. What else can they do? Like the paintings of the old masters, they are kept alive because so much money has been invested in them. Think of the amount of money that has been invested in superstition! Think of the schools that have been founded for the more general diffusion of useless knowledge! Think of the colleges wherein men are taught that it is dangerous to think, and that they must never use their brains except in an act of faith! Think of the millions and billions of dollars that have been expended in churches, in temples and in cathedrals! Think of the thousands and thousands of men who depend for their living upon the ignorance of mankind! Think of those who grow rich on credulity and who fatten on faith! Do you suppose they are going to die without a struggle? They will die if they don't struggle. What are they to do? From the bottom of my heart I sympathize with the poor clergyman that has had all his common sense educated out of him, and is now to be thrown out upon the cold and uncharitable world. His prayers are not answered; he gets no help from on high, and the pews are beginning to criticize the pulpit. What is the man to do? If he suddenly change, he is gone. If he preaches what he really believes, he will get notice to quit. And yet if he and the congregation would come together and be perfectly honest, they would all admit they didn't believe anything of it.

Only a little while ago a couple of ladies were riding together from a revival in a carriage late at night, and one said to the other; as they rode along: "I am going to say something that will shock you, and I beg of you never to tell it to anybody else. I am going to tell it to you." "Well, What is it?" Says she: "I don't believe in the bible." The other replied: "Neither do I." I have often thought how splendid it would be if the ministers could but come together and say: "Now let us be honest. Let us tell each other, honor bright—like Dr. Currie did in the meeting here the other day—let us tell just what we believe." They tell a story that in the old time a lot of people, about twenty, were in Texas in a little hotel, and one fellow got up before the fire, put his hands behind him, and says he: "Boys, let us all tell our real names." If the ministers and the congregations would only tell their real thoughts they would find that they are nearly as bad as I am, and that they believe just about as little.

Now, I have been talking a great deal about the orthodox religion; and, after having delivered a lecture, I would meet some good, religious person, and he would say to me: "You don't tell it as we believe it." "Well, but I tell it as you have it written in your creed." "Oh, well," he says, "we don't mind that any more." "Well, why don't you change it?" "Oh, well," he says, "we understand it." Possibly the creed is in the best possible condition for them now. There is a tacit understanding that they don't believe it. There is a tacit understanding that they have got some way to get around it, that they read between the lines; and if they should meet now to form a creed, they might fail to agree; and the creed is now so that they can say as they please, except in public. Whenever they do so in public, the church, in self-defense, must try them; and I believe in trying every minister that doesn't preach the doctrine as he agrees to. I have not the slightest sympathy with a Presbyterian preacher who endeavors to preach infidelity from his pulpit and receive Presbyterian money. When he changes his views, he should step down and out like a man, and say: "I don't believe your doctrine, and I will not preach it. You must hire some bigger fool than I am."

But I find that I get the creed very nearly right. Today there was put into my hands the new Congregational creed. I have just read it, and I thought I would call your attention to it tonight, to find whether the church has made any advance; to find whether it has been affected by the light of science; to find whether the sun of knowledge has risen in the heavens in vain; whether they are still the children of intellectual darkness; whether they still consider it necessary for you to believe something that you by no possibility, can understand, in order to be a winged angel forever. Now, let us see what their creed is. I will read a little of it. They commence by saying that they "believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven, and of earth, and of all things visible and invisible." I am perfectly willing that He should make the invisible, if they want Him to. They say, now, that there is this one personal God; that He is the maker of the universe, and its ruler. I again ask the old question: of what did He make it? If matter has not existed through eternity, then this God made it. Of what did He make it? What did He use for the purpose? There was nothing in the universe except this God. What had the God been doing for the eternity He had been living? He had made nothing—called nothing into existence; never had had an idea, because it is impossible to have an idea unless there is something to excite an idea. What had He been doing? Why doesn't the Congregational Church tell us? How do they know about this infinite being? And if He is infinite, how can they comprehend Him? What good is it to believe something that you don't understand—that you never can understand? In the old creeds they described this God as a being without body and parts or passions. Think of that! Something without body and parts or passions. I defy any man in the world to write a letter descriptive of nothing. You can not conceive of a finer word-painting of a vacuum than a something without body and parts or passions. And yet this God, without passions, is angry at the wicked every day; this God, without passions, is a jealous God, whose anger burneth to the lowest hell. This God, without passions, loves the whole human race, and this God, without passions, damns a large majority of the same. So, too, He is the ruler of the world, and I find here that we find His providence in the government of the nations. What nations? What evidence can you find, if you are absolutely honest and not frightened, in the history of nations, that this universe is presided over by an infinitely wise and good God? How do you account for Russia? How do you account for Siberia? How do you account for the fact that whole races of men toiled beneath the master's lash for ages without recompense and without reward? How do you account for the fact that babes were sold from the arms of mothers—arms that had been reached toward God in supplication? How do you account for it? How do you account for the existence of martyrs? How do you account for the fact that this God allows people to be burned simply for loving Him? How do you account for the fact that justice doesn't always triumph? How do you account for the fact that innocence is not a perfect shield? How do you account for the fact that the world has been filled with pain, and grief, and tears? How do you account for the fact that people have been swallowed by volcanoes, swept from the earth by storms, dying by famine, if there is above us a ruler who is infinitely good and infinitely powerful?

I don't say there is none. I don't know. As I have said before, this is the only planet I was ever on. I live in one of the rural districts of the universe. I know not about these things as much as the clergy. And if they know no more about the other world than they do about this, it is not worth mentioning. How do they answer all this? They say that God "permits it." What would you say to me if I stood by and saw a ruffian beat out the brains of a child, when I had full and perfect power to prevent it? You would say truthfully that I was as bad as the murderer. That is what you would say. Is it possible for this God to prevent it? Then, if He doesn't, He is a fiend; He is not good. But they say He "permits it." What for? So we may have freedom of choice. What for? So that God may find, I suppose, who are good and who are bad. Didn't He know that when He made us? Did He not know exactly just what He was making? Why should He make those whom He knew would be criminals? If I should make a machine that would walk your streets and commit murder, you would hang me. Why not? And if God made a man whom He knew would commit murder, then God is guilty of that murder. If God made a man, knowing he would beat his wife, that he would starve his children, that he would strew on either side of his path of life the wrecks of ruined homes, then, I say, the being who called that wretch into existence is directly responsible. And yet we are to find the providence of God in the history of nations. What little I have read shows me that when man has been helped, man had to do it; when the chains of slavery have been broken, they have been broken by man; when something bad has been done in the government of mankind, it is easy to trace it to man, and to fix the responsibility upon human beings. You will not look to the sky; you need throw neither praise nor blame; you can find the efficient causes nearer home—right here.

What is the next thing I find in this creed? "We believe that man was made in the image of God, that he might know, love and obey God, and enjoy Him for ever." I don't believe that anybody ever did love God, because nobody ever knew anything about Him. We love each other. We love something that we know. We love something that our experience tells us is good and great, and good and beautiful. We cannot by any possibility love the unknown. We can love truth, because truth adds to human happiness. We can love justice, because it preserves human joy. We can love charity. We can love every form of goodness that we know, or of which we can conceive, but we cannot love the infinitely unknown. And how can we be made in the image of something that has neither body and parts nor passions?

"That our first parents, by disobedience, fell under the condemnation of God, and that all men are so alienated from God that there is no salvation from the guilt and power of sin except through God's redeeming power." Is there an intelligent man or woman now in the world who believes in the Garden of Eden story? If there is, strike here (tapping his forehead) and you will hear an echo. Something is for rent. Does any human being now believe that God made man of dust and a woman of a rib, and put them in a garden, and put a tree in the middle of it? Wasn't there room outside of the garden to put His tree, if He didn't want people to eat His apple? If I didn't want a man to eat my fruit I would not put him in my orchard.

Does anybody now believe in the snake story? I pity any man or woman who, in this nineteenth century, believes in that childish fable. Why did they disobey? Why, they were tempted. Who by? The devil. Who made the devil? What did He make him for? Why didn't He tell Adam and Eve about this fellow? Why didn't he watch the devil instead of watching Adam and Eve? Instead of turning them out, why didn't He keep him from getting in? Why didn't He have His flood first and drown the devil, before He made man and woman?

And yet people who call themselves intelligent—professors in colleges and presidents of venerable institutions—teach children, and young men who ought to be children, that the Garden of Eden story is an absolute, historical fact! Well, I guess it will not be long until that will fade from the imagination of men. I defy any man to think of a more childish thing. This God waiting around there, knowing all the while what would happen, made them on purpose so it would happen; and then what does he do? Holds all of us responsible; and we were not there. Here is a representative before the constituency had been born. Before I am bound by a representative, I want a chance to vote for or against him; and if I had been there, and known all the circumstances, I should have voted against him. And yet, I am held responsible.

What did Adam do? I cannot see that it amounted to much anyway. A god that can create something out of nothing ought not to have complained of the loss of an apple. I can hardly have the patience to speak upon such a subject. Now, that absurdity gave birth to another—that, while we could be rightfully charged with the rascality of somebody else, we could also be credited with the virtues of somebody else; and the atonement is the absurdity which offsets the other absurdity of the fall of man. Let us leave them both out; it reads a great deal better with both of them out; it makes better sense.

Now, in consequence of that, everybody is alienated from God. How? Why? Oh, we are all depraved, you know; we all want to do wrong. Well, why? Is that because we are depraved? No. Why do we make so many mistakes? Because there is only one right way, and there is an almost infinite number of wrong ones; and as long as we are not perfect in our intellects we must make mistakes. There is no darkness but ignorance; and alienation, as they call it, from God, is simply a lack of intellect upon our part. Why were we not given better brains? That may account for the alienation. But the church teaches that every soul that finds its way to the shore of this world is against God—naturally hates God; that the little dimpled child in the cradle is simply a chunk of depravity. Everybody against God! It is a libel upon the human race; it is a libel upon all the men who have worked for wife and child; it is a libel upon all the wives who have suffered and labored, wept and worked for children; it is a libel upon all the men who have died for their country; it is a libel upon all who have fought for human liberty; it is a libel upon the human race. Leave out the history of the church, and there is nothing in this world to prove the depravity of man left.

Everybody that comes is against God. Every soul, they think, is like the wrecked Irishman. He was wrecked in the sea and drifted to an unknown island, and as he climbed up the shore he saw a man, and said to him, "Have you a government here?" The man said, "We have." "Well," said he, "I am agin it!" The church teaches us that that is the attitude of every soul in the universe of God. Ought a god to take any credit to himself for making depraved people? A god that cannot make a soul that is not totally depraved, I respectfully suggest, should retire from the business. And if a god has made us, knowing that we would be totally depraved, why should we go to the same being for repairs?

What is the next? "That all men are so alienated from God that there is no salvation from the guilt and power of his sin except through God's redeeming grace."

Reformation is not enough. If the man who steals becomes perfectly honest, that is not enough; if the man who hates his fellow-man changes and loves his fellowman, that is not enough; he must go through the mysterious thing called the second birth; he must be born again. That is not enough unless he has faith; he must believe something that he does not understand. Reformation is not enough; there must be what they call conversion. I deny it. According to the church, nothing so excites the wrath of God—nothing so corrugates the brows of Jehovah with revenge—as a man relying on his own good works. He must admit that he ought to be damned, and that of the two he prefers it, before God will consent to save him. I saw a man the other day, and he said to me, "I am a Unitarian Universalist; that is what I am." Said I, "What do you mean by that?" "Well," said he, "here is what I mean: the Unitarian thinks he is too good to be damned, and the Universalist thinks God is too good to damn him, and I believe them both."

What is the next thing in this great creed?

"We believe that the scriptures of the old and new testaments are the records of God's revelation of Himself in the work of redemption; that they are written by men, under the special guidance of the Holy Spirit, and that they constitute an authoritative standard by which religious teaching and human conduct are to be regulated and judged."

This is the creed of the Congregational Church; that is, it is the result of the high-joint commission appointed to draw up a creed for churches; and there we have the statement that the bible was written "by men, under the special guidance of the Holy Spirit." What part of the bible? All of it; all of it; and yet what is this old testament that was written by an infinitely good God? The being who wrote it did not know the shape of the world He had made. The being who wrote it knew nothing of human nature; He commands men to love Him, as if one could love upon command. The same God upheld the institution of human slavery; and the church says the bible that upholds that institution was written by men under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Then I disagree with the Holy Ghost upon that institution.

The church tells us that men, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, upheld the institution of polygamy—I deny it; that under the guidance of the Holy Ghost these men upheld wars of extermination and conquest—I deny it; that under the guidance of the Holy Ghost these men wrote that it was right for a man to destroy the life of his wife if she happened to differ with him on the subject of religion—I deny it. And yet that is the book now upheld in this creed of the Congregational Church. If the devil had written upon the subject of slavery, which side would he have taken? Let every minister answer, honor bright. If you knew the devil had written a little work on human slavery, in your judgment would he uphold slavery or denounce it? Would you regard it as any evidence that he ever wrote it if he upheld slavery? And yet, here you have a work upholding slavery, and you say that it was written by an infinitely good, wise and beneficent God! If the devil upheld polygamy would you be surprised? If the devil wanted to kill somebody for differing with him would you be surprised? If the devil told a man to kill his wife, would you be astonished? And yet, you say, that is exactly what the God of us all did. If there be a God, then that creed is blasphemy. That creed is a libel upon Him who sits upon heaven's throne. I want—if there be a God—I want Him to write in the book of his eternal remembrance that I denied these lies for Him.

I do not believe in a slave-holding God; I do not worship a polygamous Holy Ghost; I do not get upon my knees before any being who commands a husband to slay his wife because she expresses her honest thought.

Did it ever occur to you that if God wrote the old testament, and told the Jews to crucify or kill anybody that disagreed with them on religion, and that God afterward took upon Himself flesh and came to Jerusalem, and taught a different religion, and the Jews killed Him—did it ever occur to you that He reaped exactly what he had sown? Did it ever occur to you that He fell a victim to His own tyranny, and was destroyed by His own law! Of course I do not believe that any God ever was the author of the bible, or that any God was ever crucified, or that any God was ever killed or ever will be, but I want to ask you that question.

Take this old testament, then, with all its stories of murder and massacre; with all its foolish and cruel fables; with all its infamous doctrines; with its spirit of caste; with its spirit of hatred, and tell me whether it was written by a good God. Why, if you will read the maledictions and curses of that book, you would think that God, like Lear, had divided heaven among his daughters, and then, in the insanity of despair, had launched his curses upon the human race.

And yet, I must say—I must admit—that the old testament is better than the new. In the old testament, when God got a man dead, He let him alone. When He saw him quietly in his grave He was satisfied. The muscles relaxed, and a smile broke over the Divine face. But in the new testament the trouble commences just at death. In the new testament God is to wreak His revenge forever and ever. It was reserved for one who said, "Love your enemies," to tear asunder the veil between time and eternity and fix the horrified gaze of men upon the gulfs of eternal fire. The new testament is just as much worse than the old, as hell is worse than sleep; just as much worse as infinite cruelty is worse than annihilation; and yet, the new testament is pointed to as a gospel of love and peace.

But "more of that hereafter," as the ministers say.

"We believe that Jesus Christ came to establish among men the Kingdom of God, the reign of truth and love, of righteousness and peace."

Well, that may have been the object of Jesus Christ. I do not deny it. But what was the result? The Christian world has caused more war than all the rest of the world besides; all the cunning instruments of death have been devised by Christians; all the wonderful machinery by which the brains are blown out of a man, by which nations are conquered and subdued—all these machines have been born in Christian brains. And yet He came to bring peace, they say. But the testament says otherwise: "I came not to bring peace, but a sword." And the sword was brought. What are the Christian nations doing today in Europe? Is there a solitary Christian nation that will trust any other? How many millions of Christians are in the uniform of everlasting forgiveness, loving their enemies? There was an old Spaniard upon the bed of death, and he sent for a priest, and the priest told him that he would have to forgive his enemies before he died. He says, "I have not any." "What! no enemies?" "Not one," said the dying man, "I killed the last one three weeks ago."

How many millions of Christians are now armed and equipped to destroy their fellow-Christians? Who are the men in Europe crying out against war? Who wishes to have the nations disarmed? Is it the church? No; it is the men who do not believe in what they call this religion of peace. When there is a war, and when they make a few thousand widows and orphans, when they strew the plain with dead patriots, then Christians assemble in their churches and sing "Te Deum Laudamus" to God. Why? Because He has enabled a few of His children to kill some others of His children. This is the religion of peace—the religion that invented the Krupp gun, that will hurl a bullet weighing 2,000 pounds through twenty-four inches of solid steel. This is the religion of peace, that covers the sea with men-of-war, clad in mail, all in the name of universal forgiveness.

What effect had this religion upon the nations of the earth? What have the nations been fighting about? What was the Thirty Years' War in Europe for? What was the war in Holland for? Why was it that England persecuted Scotland? Why is it that England persecutes Ireland even unto this day? At the bottom of every one of these conflicts you will find a religious question. The religion of Jesus Christ, as preached by His church, causes war, bloodshed, hatred, and all uncharitableness; and why? Because they say a certain belief is necessary to salvation. They do not say, if you behave yourself pretty well you will get there; they do not say, if you pay your debts and love your wife, and love your children, and are good to your friends, and your neighbors, and your country, you will get there; that will do you no good; you have got to believe a certain thing. Oh, yes, no matter how bad you are, you can instantly be forgiven then; and no matter how good you are, if you fail to believe that, the moment you get to the day of judgment nothing is left but to damn you forever, and all the angels will shout "Hallelujah!"

What do they teach today? Every murderer goes to heaven; there is only one step from the gallows to God; only one jerk between the halter and heaven. That is taught by this same church. I believe there ought to be a law to prevent the slightest religious consolation being given to any man who has been guilty of murder. Let a Catholic understand that if he imbrues his hands in his brother's blood, he can have no extreme unction; let it be understood that he can have no forgiveness through the church; and let the Protestant understand that when he has committed that crime, the community will not pray him into heaven. Let him go with his victim. The victim, you know, dying in his sins, goes to hell, and the murderer has the happiness of seeing him there. And if heaven grows dull and monotonous, the murderer can again give life to the nerve of pleasure by watching the agony of his victim. I am opposed to that kind of forgiveness. And yet that is the religion of universal peace to everybody.

Now, what is the next thing that I wish to call your attention to?

"We believe in the ultimate prevalence of the Kingdom of Christ over all the earth."

What makes you? Do you judge from the manner in which you are getting along now? How many people are being born a year? About fifty millions. How many are you converting a year; really, truthfully? Five or six thousand. I think I have overestimated the number. Is orthodox Christianity on the increase? No. There are a hundred times as many unbelievers in orthodox Christianity as there were ten years ago. What are you doing in the missionary World? How long is it since you converted a Chinaman? A fine missionary religion, to send missionaries, with their bibles and tracts, to China, but if a Chinaman comes here, mob him, simply to show him the difference between the practical and theoretical workings of the Christian religion. How long since you have had a convert in India? In my judgment, never; there never has been an intelligent Hindoo converted from the time the first missionary put his foot upon that soil; and never, in my judgment, has an intelligent Chinaman been converted since the first missionary touched that shore. Where are they? We hear nothing of them, except in the reports. They get money from poor old ladies, trembling on the edge of the grave, and go and tell them stories how hungry the average Chinaman is for a copy of the new testament, and paint the sad condition of a gentleman in the interior of Africa, without the work of Dr. McCosh, longing for a copy of the Princeton Review. In my judgment, it is a book that would suit a savage. Thus money is scared from the dying and frightened from the old and feeble. About how long is it before this kingdom is to be established?

What is the next thing here? They all also believe in the resurrection of the dead, and in their confession of faith hereto attached I find they also believe in the resurrection of the body. Does anybody believe that, that has ever thought? Here is a man, for instance, that weighs 200 pounds, and gets sick and dies weighing 120; how much will he weigh in the morning of the resurrection? Here is a cannibal, who eats another man; and we know that the atoms that you eat go into your body and become a part of you. After the cannibal has eaten the missionary, and appropriated his atoms to himself, and then he dies, who will the atoms belong to in the morning of the resurrection in an action of replevin brought by the missionary against the cannibal? It has been demonstrated again and again that there is no creation in nature, and no destruction in nature. It has been demonstrated again and again that the atoms that are in us have been in millions of other beings; grown in the forest, in the grass, blossomed in the flowers, been in the metals; in other words, there are atoms in each one of us that have been in millions of others, and when we die these atoms return to the earth, and again spring in vegetation, taken up in the leaves of the trees, turned into wood. And yet we have a church, in the nineteenth century, getting up this doctrine, presided over by professors, by presidents of colleges, and by theologians, who tell us that they believe in the resurrection of the body.

They know better. There is not one so ignorant but what knows better.

And what is the next thing? "And in a final judgment." It will be a set day. All of us will be there, and the thousands, and millions, and billions, and trillions, and quadrillions that have died will be there. It will be the day of judgment, and the books will be opened and our case will be called. Does anybody believe in that now that has got the slightest sense? —one who knows enough to chew gum without a string?"

"The issues of which are everlasting punishment for the wicked and everlasting life for the redeemed. "That is the doctrine today of the Congregational church, and that is the doctrine that I oppose. That is the doctrine that I defy and deny.

But I must hasten on. Now this comes to us after all the discussion that has been, and we are told that this religion is finally to conquer this world. This is the same religion that failed to successfully meet the hordes of Mohammed. Mohammed wrested from the disciples of the cross the fairest part of Europe. It was known that he was an impostor. They knew he was because the people of Mecca said so, and they knew that Christ was not because the people of Jerusalem said he was. This impostor wrested from the disciples of Christ the fairest part of Europe, and that fact sowed the seeds of distrust and infidelity in the minds of the Christian world. And the next was an effort to rescue from the infidels the empty sepulchre of Christ. That commenced in the eleventh century and ended in 1291. Europe was almost depopulated. For every man owed a debt, the debt was discharged if he put a cross upon his breast and joined the Crusades. No matter what crime he had committed the doors of the prison were open for him to join the Crusades. And what was the result? They believed that God would give them victory over the infidel, and they carried in front of the first Crusade a goat and a goose, believing that both those animals had been blessed by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. And I may say that those same animals are in the lead today in the orthodox world. Until 1291 they endeavored to get that sepulchre, until finally the hosts of Christ were driven back, baffled, beaten, and demoralized—a poor, miserable religious rabble. They were driven back, and that fact sowed the seeds of distrust in Christendom. You know at that time the world believed in trial by battle—that God would take the side of right—and there had been a trial by battle between the Cross and Mohammed, and Mohammed had been victorious.

Well, what was the next? You know when Christianity came into power it destroyed every statue it could lay its ignorant hands upon. It defaced and obliterated every painting; it destroyed every beautiful building; it destroyed the manuscripts, both Greek and Latin; it destroyed all the history, all the poetry, all the philosophy it could find, and burned every library that it could reach with its torch. And the result was the night of the middle ages fell upon the human race. But by accident, by chance, by oversight, a few of the manuscripts escaped the fury of religious zeal; a few statues had been buried; and the result was, that these manuscripts became the seed, the fruit of which is our civilization of today. A few forms of beauty were dug from the earth that had protected them, and now the civilized world is filled with art, with painting, and with statuary, in spite of the rage of the early church.

What is the next blow that that this church received? The discovery of America. That is the next. The Holy Ghost, who inspired a man to write the bible, did not know of the existence of this continent, never dreamed of it; the result was that His bible never spoke of it. He did not dream that the earth is round. He believed it was flat, although He made it Himself, and at that time heaven was just up there beyond the clouds. There was where the gods lived, there was where the angels were, and it was against that heaven that Jacob's ladder was that the angels ascended and descended. It was to that heaven that Christ ascended after His resurrection. It was up there where the New Jerusalem was, with its streets of gold, and under this earth was perdition; there was where the devils lived; there was where a pit was dug for all unbelievers, and for men who had brains, and I say that for this reason: That just in proportion that you have brains, just in that proportion your chances for eternal joy are lessened, according to this religion. And just in proportion that you lack brains, your chances are increased. They believe, under there that they discovered America. They found that the earth is round. It was circumnavigated by Magellan. In 1519 that brave man set sail. The church told him: "The earth is flat, my friend; don't go off. You will go off the edge." Magellan said: "I have seen the shadow of the earth upon the moon, and I have more confidence in the shadow even than I have in the church." The ship went round. The earth was circumnavigated. Science passed its hand above it and beneath it, and where was the heaven, and where was the hell? Vanished forever! And they dwell now only in the religion of superstition. We found there was no place for Jacob's ladder to lean against; no place there for the gods and angels to live; no place there to empty the waters of the deluge; no place there to which Christ could have ascended; and the foundations of the New Jerusalem crumbled, and the towers and domes fell and became simply space—space sown with an infinite number of stars; not with New Jerusalems, but with constellations.

Then man began to grow great, and with that you know came astronomy. Now just see what they did in that. In 1473 Copernicus was born. In 1543 his great work. In 1616 the system of Copernicus was condemned by the pope, by the infallible Catholic church, and the church is about as near right upon that subject as upon any other. The system of Copernicus was denounced. And how long do you suppose the church fought that? Let me tell you. It was revoked by Pius VII. in the year of grace 1821. For 205 years after the death of Copernicus the church insisted that that system was false, and that the old idea was true. Astronomy is the first help that we ever received from heaven. Then came Kepler in 1609, and you may almost date the birth of science from the night that Kepler discovered his first law. That was the dawn of the day of intelligence—his first law, that the planets do not move in circles; his second law, that they described equal spaces in equal times; his third law, that there was a direct relation between weight and velocity. That man gave us a key to heaven. That man opened its infinite book, and we now read it, and he did more good than all the theologians that ever lived. I have not time to speak of the others—of Galileo, of Leonardo da Vinci, and of hundreds of others that I could mention.

The next thing that gave this church a blow was statistics. Away went special providence. We found by taking statistics that we could tell the average length of human life; that this human life did not depend upon infinite caprice; that it depended upon conditions, circumstances, laws and facts, and that those conditions, circumstances, and facts were ever active. And now you will see the man who depends entirely upon special providence gets his life insured. He has more confidence even in one of these companies than he has in the whole Trinity. We found by statistics that there were just so many crimes on an average committed; just so many crimes of one kind and so many of another; just so many suicides, so many deaths by drowning; just so many accidents on an average; just so many men marrying women, for instance, older than themselves; just so many murders of a particular kind; just the same number of accidents; and I say tonight statistics utterly demolish the idea of special providence. Only the other day a gentleman was telling me of a case of special providence. He knew it. He had been the subject of it. Yes, sir! A few years ago he was about to go on a ship when he was detained; he didn't go, and the ship was lost and all on board. Yes! I said, "Do you think the fellows that were drowned believed in special providence?" Think of the infinite egotism of such a doctrine. Here is a man that fails to go upon a ship with 500 passengers, and they go down to the bottom of the sea—fathers, mothers, children, and loving husbands, and wives waiting upon the shores of expectation. Here is one poor little wretch that didn't happen to go! And he thinks that God, the infinite being, interfered in his poor little withered behalf and let the rest all go. That is special providence!

You know we have a custom every year of issuing a proclamation of thanksgiving. We say to God, "Although You have afflicted all the other countries, although You have sent war, and desolation, and famine on everybody else, we have been such good children that you have been kind to us, and we hope you will keep on." It don't make a bit of difference whether we have good times or not—not a bit; the thanksgiving is always exactly the same. I remember a few years ago a governor of Iowa got out a proclamation of that kind. He went on to tell how thankful the people were, how prosperous the State had been; and there was a young fellow in the State who got out another proclamation, saying: "Fearing that the Lord might be misled by official correspondence," he went on to say that the governor's proclamation was entirely false; that the State was not prosperous; that the crops had been an almost entire failure; that nearly every farm in the state was mortgaged; that if the Lord did not believe him, all he asked was He would send some angel in whom he had confidence to look the matter over for himself.

Of course I have not time to recount the enemies of the church. Every fact is an enemy of superstition. Every fact is a heretic. Every demonstration is an infidel. Everything that ever happened testified against the supernatural. I have only spoken of a few of the blows that shattered the shield and shivered the lance of superstition. Here is another one—the doctrine of Charles Darwin. This century will be called Darwin's century, one of the greatest men who ever touched this globe. He has explained more of the phenomena of life than all of the religious teachers. Write the name of Charles Darwin there (on the one hand) and the name of every theologian that ever lived there (on the other hand), and from that name has come more light to the world than from all those. His doctrine of evolution, his doctrine of the survival of the fittest, his doctrine of the origin of species, has removed in every thinking mind the last vestige of orthodox Christianity. He has not only stated, but he has demonstrated, that the inspired writer knew nothing of this world, nothing of the origin of man, nothing of geology, nothing of astronomy, nothing of nature; that the bible is a book written by ignorance—by the instigation of fear! Think of the man who replied to him. Only a few years ago there was no parson too ignorant to successfully answer Charles Darwin; and the more ignorant he was the more cheerfully he undertook the task. He was held up to the ridicule, the scorn, and the contempt of the Christian world, and yet when he died England was proud to put his dust with that of her noblest and her grandest.

Charles Darwin conquered the intellectual world, and the doctrine of evolution is now an accepted fact. His light has broken in on some of the early clergy, and the greatest man who today occupies the pulpit is a believer in the evolution theory of Charles Darwin—and that is Henry Ward Beecher—a man of more brains than the entire clergy of that entire church put together. And yet we are told in this little creed that orthodox religion is about to conquer the world. It will be driven to the wilds of Africa. It must go to some savage country; it has lost its hold upon civilization, and I tell you it is unfortunate to have a religion that cannot be accepted by the intellect of a nation. It is unfortunate to have a religion against which every good and noble heart protests. Let us have a good one or none. O! my pity has been excited by seeing these ministers endeavor to warp and twist the passages of scripture to fit some demonstration in science. These pious evasions! These solemn pretenses! When they are caught in one way they give a different meaning to the words and say the world was not made in seven days. They say "good whiles"—epochs. And in this same confession here of faith and creeds they believe the Lord's day is holy—every seventh day. Suppose you lived near the north pole, where the day is three months long. Then which day will you keep? Suppose you could get to the north pole, you could prevent Sunday from ever overtaking you. You could walk around the other way faster than the world could revolve. How would you keep Sunday then? Suppose we ever invent any thing that can go 1,000 miles an hour? We can just chase Sunday clear around the globe. Is there anything that can be more perfectly absurd than that a space of time can be holy! You might as well talk about a pious vacuum. These pious evasions. I heard the other night of an old man. He was not very well educated, you know, and he got into the notion that he must have reading of the bible and have family worship; and there was a bad boy in the family—a pretty smart boy—and they were reading the bible by course, and in the fifteenth chapter of Corinthians is this passage: "Behold, brethren, I show you a mystery; we shall not all die, but we shall be changed." And this boy rubbed out the "c" in the "changed." So next night the old man got on his specs and got down his bible and said: "Behold, brethren, I show you a mystery; we shall not all die, but we shall be hanged." The old lady said, "Father, I don't think it reads that way." He says, "Who is reading this?" "Yes, mother, it says be hanged, and, more than that, I see the sense of it. Pride is the besetting sin of the human heart, and if there is anything calculated to take the pride out of a man it is hanging."

I keep going back to this book; I keep going back to the miracles, to the prophecies, to the fables, and people ask me, if I take away the bible, what are we going to do? How can we get along without the revelation that no one understands? What are we going to do if we have no bible to quarrel about? What are we to do without hell? What are we going to do with our enemies? What are we going to do with the people we love but don't like? They tell me that there never would have been any civilization if it had not been for this bible. Um! The Jews had a bible; the Romans had not. Which had the greater and the grander government? Let us be honest. Which of those nations produced the greatest poets, the greatest soldiers, the greatest orators, the greatest statesmen, the greatest sculptors? Rome had no bible. God cared nothing for the Roman Empire. He let the men come up by chance. His time was taken up by the Jewish people. And yet Rome conquered the world, and even conquered God's chosen people. The people that had the bible were defeated by the people who had not. How was it possible for Lucretius to get along without the bible? How did the great and glorious of that empire? And what shall we say of Greece? No bible. Compare Athens with Jerusalem. From Athens comes the beauty and intellectual grace of the world. Compare the mythology of Greece with the mythology of Judea. One covering the earth with beauty, and the other filling heaven with hatred and injustice. The Hindoos had no bible; they had been forsaken by the creator, and yet they became the greatest metaphysicians of the world. Egypt had no bible. Compare even Egypt with Judea. What are we to do without the bible? What became of the Jews who had no bible; their temple was destroyed and their city was taken; and, as I said before, they never found real prosperity until their God deserted them. Do without the bible?

Now I come again to the new testament. There are a few things in there, I give you my word, I cannot believe. I cannot—I cannot believe in the miraculous origin of Jesus Christ. I believe He was the son of Joseph and Mary; that Joseph and Mary had been duly and legally married; that He was the legitimate offspring of that marriage, and nobody ever believed the contrary until He had been dead 150 years. Neither Matthew, Mark nor Luke ever dreamed that He was of divine origin. He did not say to either Matthew, Mark or Luke, or to any one in their hearing, that He was the son of God, or that He was miraculously conceived. He did not say it. The angel Gabriel, who, they say, brought the news, never wrote a word upon the subject. His mother never wrote a word upon the subject. His father never wrote a word upon the subject. We are lacking in the matter of witnesses. I would not believe it now! I cannot believe it then. I would not believe people I know, much less would I believe people I don't know. I say that at that time Matthew, Mark and Luke believed that He was the son of Joseph and Mary. And why? They say He descended from the blood of David, and in order to show that He was of the blood of David they gave the genealogy of Joseph. And if Joseph was not his father, why not give the genealogy of Pontius Pilate or Herod? Could they, by giving the genealogy of Joseph, show that He was of the blood of David if Joseph was in no way related to David; and yet that is the position into which the Christian world is now driven. It says the son of Joseph, and then interpolated the words "as was supposed." Why, then, do they give a supposed genealogy. It will not do. And that is a thing that cannot in any way, by any human testimony, be established; and if it is important for us to know that He was the Son of God, I say then that it devolves upon God to give us evidence. Let Him write it across the face of the heavens, in every language of mankind. If it is necessary for us to believe it, let it grow on every leaf next year. No man should be damned for not believing unless the evidence is overwhelming. And he ought not to be made to depend upon say-so. He should have it directly for himself. A man says God told him so and so, and he tells me, and I haven't anyone's word but that fellow's. He may have been deceived. If God has a message for me He ought to tell it to me, and not somebody that has been dead 4,000 or 5,000 years, and in another language; God may have changed His mind on many things; He has on slavery at least, and polygamy; and yet His church now wants to go out here and destroy polygamy in Utah with a sword. Why don't they send missionaries there with copies of the old testament? By reading the lives of Abraham, and Isaac, and Lot, and a few other fellows that ought to have been in the penitentiary, they can soften their hearts.

Now, there is another miracle I do not believe. I want to speak about it as we would about any ordinary transaction in the world. In the first place, I do not believe that any miracle was ever performed, and if there was, you can't prove it. Why? Because it is altogether more reasonable that the people lied about it than that it happened. And why? Because, according to human experience, we know that people will not always tell the truth, and we never saw a miracle, and we have got to be governed by our experience, and if we go by our experience, it is in favor that the thing never happened; that the man is mistaken. Now, I want you to remember it. Here is a man that comes into Jerusalem, and the first thing he does he cures the blind. He lets the light of day visit the darkness of blindness. The eyes are opened and the whole world is again pictured upon the brain. Another man is clothed with leprosy. He touches him, and the disease falls from him, and he stands pure, and clean, and whole. Another man is deformed, wrinkled, bent. He touches him and throws upon him again the garment of youth. A man is in his grave, and He says, "Come forth!" and he again walks in life, feeling his heart throb and beat, and his blood going joyously through his veins. They say that happened. I don't know. There is one wonderful thing about the dead people that were raised—we don't hear of them any more. What became of them? Why, if there was a man in this town that had been raised from the dead, I would go to see him tonight. I would say, "Where were you when you got the notice to come back? What kind of country is it? What kind of opening there for a young man? How did you like it?" But nobody ever paid the slightest attention to them there. They didn't even excite interest when they died the second time. Nobody said, "Why, that man isn't afraid. He has been there." Not a word. They pass away quietly. You see I don't believe it. There is something wrong somewhere about that business. And then there is another trouble in my mind. Now, you know I may suffer eternal punishment for all this.

Here is a man that does all these things, and thereupon they crucify Him. Now, then, let us be honest. Suppose a man came into Chicago and he should meet a funeral procession, and he should say, "Who is dead?" and they should say, "The son of a widow; her only support," and he should say to the procession, "Halt!" And to the undertaker, "Take out that coffin, unscrew that lid." "Young man, I say unto thee, arise!" And the latter should step from the coffin, and in one moment after hold his mother in his arms. Suppose he should go to your cemetery and should find some woman holding a little child in each hand, while the tears fell upon a new-made grave, and he should say to her, "Who lies buried here?" and she should reply, "My husband," and he should say, "I say unto thee, oh grave, give up thy dead," and the husband should rise and in a moment after have his lips upon his wife's, and the little children with their arms around his neck. Suppose that it is so. Do you think that the people of Chicago would kill him? Do you think any one would wish to crucify him? Do you not rather believe that every one who had a loved one out in that cemetery would go to him, even upon their knees, and beg him and implore him to give back their dead? Do you believe that any man was ever crucified who was the master of death? Let me tell you tonight if there shall ever appear on this earth the master, the monarch of death, all human knees will touch the earth; he will not be crucified, he will not be touched. All the living who fear death; all the living who have lost a loved one will stand and cling to him. And yet we are told that this worker of miracles, this worker of wonders, this man who could clothe the dead in the throbbing flesh of life, was crucified by the Jewish people. It was never dreamed that he did a miracle until 100 years after he was dead.

There is another miracle I do not believe, I cannot believe it, and that is the resurrection. And why? If it was the fact, if the dead got out of the grave, why did He not show himself to his enemies? Why did He not again visit Pontius Pilate? Why did He not call upon Caiaphas, the high priest? Why did He not make another triumphal entry into Jerusalem? Why did He not again enter the temple and dispute with the doctors? Why didn't He say to the multitude: "Here are the wounds in My feet, and in My hands, and in My side. I am the one you endeavored to kill, but Death is My slave." Why didn't He? Simply because the thing never happened. I cannot believe it. But recollect, it makes no difference with its teachings. They are exactly as good whether He wrought miracles or not. Twice two are four; that needs no miracle. Twice two are five—a miracle would not help that. Christ's teachings are worth their effect upon the human race. It makes no difference about miracle or about wonder, but you must remember in that day every one believed in miracles. Nobody had any standing as a teacher, a philosopher, a governor, or a king, about whom there was not a something miraculous. The earth was then covered with the sons and daughters of the gods and goddesses. That was believed in Greece, in Rome, in Egypt, in Hindustan; everybody, nearly, believed in such things.

Then there is another miracle that I cannot believe in, and that is the ascension—the bodily ascension of Jesus Christ. Where was He going? Since the telescope has been pointed at the stars, where was He going? The New Jerusalem is not there. The abode of the gods is not there. Where was He going? Which way did He go? That depends upon the time of day that He left. If He left in the night He went exactly the opposite way from what He would in the day. Who saw this miracle? They say the disciples. Let us see what they say about it. Matthew did not think it was worth mentioning. He doesn't speak of it at all. On the contrary, he says that the last words of Christ were: "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." That is what he says. Mark, he saw it. "So, then, after the Lord had spoken unto them He was received up into heaven and sat on the right hand of God." That is all he has to say about the most wonderful thing that ever blessed human vision—about a miracle great enough to have stuffed credulity to bursting; and yet we have one poor, little meagre verse. So, then, after He had quit speaking, He was caught up and sat on the right hand of God. How does he know He was on the right hand? Did he see Him after He had sat down? Luke says: "And it came to pass while He blessed them He was parted from them and was carried up into heaven." But John does not mention it. He gives as His last words this address to Peter: "Follow thou Me." Of course He did not say that as He ascended. In the Acts we have another account. A conversation is given not spoken of in any of the others, and we find there two men clad in white apparel, who said: "Men of Galilee, why stand ye here gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus that was taken up into heaven shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go up into Heaven." Matthew didn't see that; Mark forgot it; Luke didn't think it was worth mentioning, and John didn't believe it; and yet upon that evidence we are led to believe that the most miraculous of all miracles actually occurred. I cannot believe it.

I may be mistaken; but the church is now trying to parry, and when they come to the little miracles of the new testament all they say is: "Christ didn't cast out devils; these men had fits." He cured fits. Then I read in another place about the fits talking. Christ held a dialogue with the fits, and the fits told Him his name, and the fits at that time were in a crazy man. And the fits made a contract that they would go out of the man provided they would be permitted to go into swine. How can fits that attack a man take up a residence in swine? The church must not give up the devil. He is the right bower. No devil, no hell; no hell, no preacher; no fire, no insurance. I read another miracle—that this devil took Christ and put him on the pinnacle of a temple. Was that fits, too? Why is not the theological world honest? Why do they not come up and admit what they know the book means? They have not the courage. Now, their next doctrine is the absolute necessity of belief. That depends upon this: Can a man believe as he wants to? Can you? Can anybody? Does belief depend at all upon the evidence? I think it does somewhat in some cases. How is it that when a jury is sworn to try a case, hearing all the evidence—hearing both sides, hearing the charge of the judge, hearing the law, and upon their oaths, are equally divided, six for the plaintiff and six for the defendant? It is because evidence does not have the same effect upon all people. Why? Our brains are not alike—not the same shape; we have not the same intelligence or the same experience, the same sense. And yet I am held accountable for my belief. I must believe in the Trinity—three times one is one, once one is three—and my soul is to be eternally damned for failing to guess an arithmetical conundrum. And that is the poison part of Christianity—that salvation depends upon belief—that is the poison part, and until that dogma is discarded religion will be nothing but superstition. No man can control his belief. If I hear certain evidence I will believe a certain thing. If I fail to hear it I may never believe it. If it is adapted to my mind I may accept it; if it is not, I reject it. And what am I to go by? My brain. That is the only light I have from nature, and if there be a God, it is the only torch that this God has given me by which to find my way through the darkness and the night called life. I do not depend upon hearsay for that. I do not have to take the word of any other man, nor get upon my knees before a book. Here, in the temple of the mind, I go and consult the God—that is to say, my reason—and the oracle speaks to me, and I obey the oracle. What should I obey? Another man's oracle? Shall I take another man's word and not what he thinks, but what God said to him?

I would not know a god if I should see one. I have said before, and I say again, the brain thinks in spite of me, and I am not responsible for my thought. No more can I control the beating of my heart, the expansion and contraction of my lungs for a moment; no more can I stop the blood that flows through the rivers of the veins. And yet I am held responsible for my belief. Then why does not the God give me the evidence? They say He has. In what? In an inspired book. But I do not understand it as they do. Must I be false to my understanding? They say: "When you come to die you will be sorry you did not." Will I be sorry when I come to die that I did not live a hypocrite? Will I be sorry I did not say I was a Christian when I was not? Will the fact that I was honest put a thorn in the pillow of death? God cannot forgive me for that. They say when He was in Jerusalem, He forgave His murderers. Now He won't forgive an honest man for differing with Him on the subject of the Trinity. They say that God says to me, "Forgive your enemies." I say, "All right, I do;" but he says, "I will damn mine." God should be consistent. If He wants me to forgive my enemies, He should forgive His. I am asked to forgive enemies who can hurt me. God is only asked to forgive enemies who cannot hurt Him. He certainly ought to be as generous as He asks us to be. And I want no God to forgive me unless I do forgive others. All I ask, if that be true, is that this God should live according to His own doctrine. If I am to forgive my enemies I ask Him to forgive His. That is justice, that is right. Here are these millions today who say: "We are to be saved by belief, by faith; but what are we to believe?"

In St. Louis last Sunday I read an interview with a Christian minister—one who is now holding a revival. They call him the boy preacher—a name that he has borne for fifty or sixty years. The question was whether in these revivals, when they were trying to rescue souls from eternal torture, they would allow colored people to occupy seats with white people, and that revivalist, preaching the unsearchable richness of Christ, said he would not allow the colored people to sit with white people; they must go to the back of the church. The same people go and sit right next to them in heaven, swap harps with them, and yet this man, believing as he says he does, that if he did not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ he would eternally perish, was not willing that the colored man should sit by a white man while he heard the gospel of everlasting peace. He was not willing that the colored man should get into the lifeboat of Christ, although those white men might be totally depraved, and if they had justice done them, according to his doctrine. would be eternally damned—and yet he has the impudence to put on airs, although he ought to be eternally damned, and go and sit by the colored man. His doctrine of religion, the color line, has not my respect. I believe in the religion of humanity, and it is far better to love our fellow-men than to love God, because we can help them, and we cannot help Him. You had better do what you can than to be always pretending to do what you cannot.

Now I come to the last part of the bible—this creed—and that is, eternal punishment, and I have concluded; and I have said I will never deliver a lecture that I do not give the full benefit of its name. That part of the Congregational creed would disgrace the lowest savage that crouches and crawls in the jungles of Africa. The man who now, in the nineteenth century, preaches the doctrine of eternal punishment, the doctrine of eternal hell, has lived in vain. Think of that doctrine! The eternity of punishment! Why, I find in that same creed that Christ is finally going to triumph in this world and establish His kingdom; but if their doctrine is true, He will never triumph in the other world. He will have billions in hell forever. In this world we never will be perfectly civilized as long as a gallows casts its shadow upon the earth. As long as there is a penitentiary, behind the walls of which a human being is immured, we are not a civilized people. We will never be perfectly civilized until we do away with crime and criminals. And yet, according to this Christian religion, God is to have an eternal penitentiary; He is to be an everlasting jailor, an everlasting turnkey, a warden of an infinite dungeon, and He is going to keep prisoners there, not for the purpose of reforming them—because they are never going to get any better, only getting worse—just for the purpose of punishing them. And what for? For something they did in this world; born in ignorance, educated it may be in poverty, and yet responsible through the countless ages of eternity. No man can think of a greater horror; no man can think of a greater absurdity. For the growth of that doctrine, ignorance was soil and fear was rain. That doctrine came from the fanged mouths of wild beasts, and yet it is the "glad tidings of great joy."

"God so loved the world" He is going to damn most everybody, and, if this Christian religion be true, some of the greatest, and grandest, and best who ever lived upon this earth, are suffering its torments tonight. It don't appear to make much difference, however, with this church. They go right on enjoying themselves as well as ever. If their doctrine is true, Benjamin Franklin, one of the wisest, and best of men, who did so much to give us here a free government, is suffering the tyranny of God tonight, while he endeavored to establish freedom among men. If the churches were honest, their preachers would tell their hearts, "Benjamin Franklin is in hell, and we warn any and all the youth not to imitate Benjamin Franklin. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, with its self-evident truths, has been damned these many years." That is what all the ministers ought to have the courage to say. Talk as you believe. Stand by your creed or change it. I want to impress it upon your mind, because the thing I wish to do in this world is to put out the fires of hell I want to keep at it just as long as there is one little coal red in the bottomless pit. As long as the ashes are warm, I shall denounce this infamous doctrine.

I want you to know that the men who founded this great and glorious government are there. The most of the men who fought in the Revolutionary War and wrested from the clutch of Great Britain this continent; have been rewarded by the eternal wrath of God. The old Revolutionary soldiers are in hell by the thousands. Let the preachers have the courage to say so. The men who fought in 1812, and gave to the United States the freedom of the seas, nearly all of them have been damned since 1815—all that were killed. The greatest of heroes, they are there. The greatest of poets, the greatest scientists, the men who have made the world beautiful and grand, they are all, I tell you, among the damned, if this creed is true. Humboldt, who shed light, and who added to the intellectual wealth of mankind, Goethe, and Schiller, and Lessing, who almost created the German language—all gone! All suffering the wrath of God tonight, and every time an angel thinks of one of those men he gives his harp an extra twang.

La Place, who read the heaven like an open book—he is there. Robert Burns, the poet of human love—he is there because he wrote the "Prayer of Holy Willie;" because he fastened upon the cross the Presbyterian creed, and made a lingering crucifixion. And yet that man added to the tenderness of human heart. Dickens, who put a shield of pity before the flesh of childhood God is getting even with him. Our own Ralph Waldo Emerson, although he had a thousand opportunities to hear Methodist clergymen, scorned the means of grace, and the Holy Ghost is delighted that he is in hell tonight.

Longfellow refined hundreds and thousands of homes, but he did not believe in the miraculous origin of the Savior. No, sir; he doubted the report of Gabriel. He loved his fellow-men; he did what he could to free the slaves; he did what he could to make mankind happy; but God was just waiting for him. He had His constable right there. Thomas Paine, the author of the "Rights of Man," offering his life in both hemispheres for the freedom of the human race, and one of the founders of the Republic—it has often seemed to me that if we could get God's attention long enough to point Him to the American flag, He would let him out. Compte, the author of the "Positive Philosophy," who loved his fellow-men to that degree that he made of humanity a God, who wrote his great work in poverty, with his face covered with tears—they are getting their revenge on him now. Voltaire, who abolished torture in France; who did more for human liberty than any other man, living or dead; who was the assassin of superstition, and whose dagger still rusts in the heart of Catholicism—all the priests who have been translated have their happiness increased by looking at Voltaire. Glorious country where the principal occupation is watching the miseries of the lost. Geordani Bruno, Benedict Spinoza, Diderot, the encyclopedist, who endeavored to get all knowledge in a small compass so that he could put the peasant on an equality with the prince intellectually; the man who wished to sow all over the world the seeds of knowledge; who loved to labor for mankind. While the priests wanted to burn, he did all he could to put out the fire—he has been lost long, long ago. His cry for water has, become so common that his voice is now recognized through all the realms of hell, and they say to one another, "That is Diderot." David Hume, the philosopher, he is there with the rest.

Beethoven, the Shakespeare of music, he has been lost, and Wagner, the master of melody, and who has made the air of this world rich forever, he is there, and they have better music in hell than in heaven.

Shelley, whose soul, like his own skylark, was a winged joy—he has been damned for many, many years; and Shakespeare, the greatest of the human race, who has done more to elevate mankind than all the priests who ever lived and died—he is there; and all the founders of Inquisitions, the builders of dungeons, the makers of chains, the inventors of instruments of torture, tearers, and burners, and branders of human flesh, stealers of babes and sellers of husbands, and wives, and children, the drawers of the swords, of persecution, and they who kept the horizon lurid with the fagot's flame for a thousand years—they are in heaven tonight. Well, I wish heaven joy of such company.

And that is the doctrine with which we are polluting the souls of children. That is the doctrine that puts a fiend by their dying bed and a prophesy of hell over every cradle. That is "glad tidings of great joy." Only a little while ago, when the great flood came upon the Ohio, sent by him who is ruling in the world and paying particular attention to the affairs of nations, just in the gray of the morning they saw a house floating down, and on its top a human being; and a few men went out to the rescue in a little boat, and they found there a mother, a woman, and they wanted to rescue her, and she said: "No, I am going to stay where I am. I have three dead babes in this house." Think of a love so limitless, stronger and deeper than despair and death, and yet the Christian religion says that if that woman did not happen to believe in their creed, God would send that mother's soul to eternal fire. If there is another world, and if in heaven they wear hats, when such a woman climbs up the opposite bank of the Jordan, Christ should lift His to her.

That is the trouble I had with this Christian religion—its infinite heartlessness; and I cannot tell them too often that during our last war Christians who knew that if they were shot they would go right to heaven, went and hired wicked men to take their places, perfectly willing the men should go to hell, provided they could stay at home. You see they are not honest in it; they do not believe it, or, as the people say, "They don't sense it;" they have not religion enough to conceive what it is they believe and what a terrific falsehood they assert. And I beg of every one who hears me tonight, I beg, I implore, I beseech you never give another dollar to build a church in which that lie is preached. Never give another cent to send a missionary with his mouth stuffed with that falsehood to a foreign land. Why, they say, the heathen will go to heaven anyway if you let them alone; what is the use of sending them to hell by enlightening them. Let them alone. The idea of going and telling a man a thing that if he does not believe he will be damned, when the chances are ten to one that he won't believe it. Don't tell him, and as quick as he gets to the other world and finds it necessary to believe, he will say "yes." Give him a chance.

My objection to the Christian religion is that it destroys human love, and tells you and me that the love of your dear-ones is not necessary in this world to make a heaven in the next. No matter about your wife, your children, your brother, your sister—no matter about all the affections of the human heart—when you get there you will be alone with the angels. I don't know whether I would like the angels. I don't know whether the angels would like me. I would rather stand by the folks who have loved me and whom I know; and I can conceive of no heaven without the love of this earth. That is the trouble with the Christian religion; leave your father, leave your mother, leave your wife, leave your children, leave everything and follow Jesus Christ. I will not. I will stay with the folks. I will not sacrifice on the altar of a selfish fear all the grandest and noblest promptings of my heart. You do away with human love, and what are we without it? What would we be in another world, and what would we be here without it? Can any one conceive of music without human love? Human love builds every home—human love is the author of all the beauty in this world. Love paints every picture, and chisels every statue; love, I tell you, builds every fireside. What would heaven be without love? And yet that is what we are promised—a heaven with your wife lost, your mother lost, some of your children gone. And you expect to be made happy by falling in with some angel.

Such a religion is demoralizing; and how are you to get there? On the efforts of another. You are to be perpetually a heavenly pauper, and you will have to admit through all eternity that you never would have got here if you hadn't got frightened. "I am here," you will say, "I have these wings, I have this musical instrument, because I was scared." What a glorious world; and then think of it! No reformation in the next world—not the slightest. If you die in Arkansas that is the end of you. At the end you will be told that being born in Arkansas you had a fair chance. Think of telling a boy in the next world, who lived and died in Delaware, that he had a fair show! Can anything be more infamous? All on an equality—the rich and the poor, those with parents loving them, those with every opportunity for education, on an equality with the poor, the abject, and the ignorant—and the little ray called life, this little moment with a shadow and a tear, this little space between your mother's arms and the grave, that balances an entire eternity. And God can do nothing for you when you get there. A little Methodist preacher can do no more for the soul here than its creator can when you get there. The soul goes to heaven, where there is nothing but good society; no bad examples; and they are all there, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and yet they can do nothing for that poor unfortunate except to damn him. Is there any sense in that? Why should this be a period of probation? It says in the bible, I believe, "Now is the accepted time." When does that mean? That means whenever the passage is pronounced. Now is the accepted time. It will be the same tomorrow, won't it? And just as appropriate then as today, and if appropriate at any time, appropriate through all eternity. What I say is this: There is no world—there can be no world—in which every human being will not have an opportunity of doing right. That is my objection to this Christian religion, and if the love of earth is not the love of heaven, if those who love us here are to be separated there, then I want eternal sleep. Give me a good cold grave rather than the furnace of Jehovah's wrath. Gabriel, don't blow! Let me alone! If, when the grave bursts, I am not to meet faces that have been my sunshine in this life, let me sleep on. Rather than that the doctrine of endless punishment should be tried, I would like to see the fabric of our civilization crumble and fall to unmeaning chaos and to formless dust, where oblivion broods and where even memory forgets. I would rather a Samson of some unprisoned force, released by chance, should so wreck and strain the mighty world that man in stress and strain of want and fear should shudderingly crawl back to savage and barbaric night. I would rather that every planet would in its orbit wheel a barren star rather than that the Christian religion should be true.

I think it is better to love your children than to love God, a thousand times better, because you can help them, and I am inclined to think that God can get along without you. I believe in the religion of the family. I believe that the roof-tree is sacred from the smallest fibre held in the soft, moist clasp of the earth to the little blossom on the topmost bough that gives its fragrance to the happy air. The family where virtue dwells with love is like a lily with a heart of fire—the fairest flower in all this world. And I tell you God cannot afford to damn a man in the next world who has made a happy family in this. God cannot afford to cast over the battlements of heaven the man who has built a happy home here. God cannot afford to be unpitying to a human heart capable of pity. God cannot clothe with fire the man who has clothed the naked here; and God cannot send to eternal pain a man who has done something toward improving the condition of his fellow-man. If he can, I had rather go to hell than to heaven and keep the company of such a God.

They tell me the next terrible thing I do is to take away the hope of immortality. I do not, I would not, I could not. Immortality was first dreamed of by human love, and yet the church is going to take human love out of immortality. We love it; therefore we wish to love. A loved ones dies, and we wish to meet again, and from the affection of the human heart grew the great oak of the hope of immortality. And around that oak has climbed the poisonous vine, superstition. Theologians, pretenders, soothsayers, parsons, priests, popes, bishops, have taken all that hope, and they have had the impudence to stand by the grave and prophesy a future of pain. They have erected their toll-gates on the highway to the other world, and have collected money from the poor people on the way, and they have collected it from their fear. The church did not give us the idea of immortality; the bible did not give us the idea of immortality. Let me tell you now that the old testament tells you how you lost immortality; it does not say another word about another world from the first mistake in Genesis to the last curse in Malachi. There is not in the old testament one burial service.

No man in the old testament stands by the bed and says, "I will meet them again"—not one word. From the top of Sinai came no hope of another world. And when we get to the new testament, what do we find there? Have thy heart counted worthy to obtain that world and the resurrection of the dead. As though some would be counted unworthy to obtain the resurrection of the dead. And, in another place: "Seek for honor, glory, immortality." If you have got it, why seek for it? And in another place: "God, who alone hath immortality;" and yet they tell us that we get our ideas of immortality from the bible. I deny it. If Christ was in fact God, why didn't He plainly say there was another life? Why didn't He tell us something about it? Why didn't He turn the tear-stained hope of immortality into the glad knowledge of another life? Why did He go dumbly to his death, and leave the world in darkness and in doubt? Why? Because He was a man and didn't know. I would not destroy the smallest star of human hope, but I deny that we got our idea of immortality from the bible. It existed long before Moses existed. We find it symbolized through all Egypt, through all India. Wherever man has lived, his religion has made another world in which to meet the lost. It is not born of the bible. The idea of immortality, like the great sea, has ebbed and flowed in the human heart, beating with its countless waves against the rocks and sands of fate and time. It was not born of the bible. It was born of the human heart, and it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death. We do not know. We do not prophesy a life of pain. We leave the dead with nature, the mother of us all, under a seven-hued bow of hope. Under the seven-hued arch let the dead sleep. "Ah, but you take the consolation of religion." What consolation has religion for the widow of the unbeliever, the widow of a good, brave, kind man who lies dead? What can the orthodox ministers say to relieve the bursting heart of that woman? What can the orthodox ministers say to relieve the aching hearts of the little orphans as they kneel by the grave of that father, if that father didn't happen to be an orthodox Christian? What consolation have they? I find that when a Christian loses a friend the tears spring from his eyes as quickly as from the eyes of others. Their tears are as bitter as ours. Why? The echo of the promises spoken eighteen hundred years ago is so low, and the sound of the clods upon the coffin so loud, the promises are so far away, and the dead are so near. That is the reason. And they find no consolation there. I say honestly we do not know; we cannot say. We cannot say whether death is a wall or a door; the beginning or end of a day; the spreading of pinions too soar or the folding forever of wings; whether it is the rising or the setting of sun, or an endless life that brings rapture and love to every one—we do not know; we can not say.

There is an old fable of Orpheus and Eurydice: Eurydice had been captured and taken to the infernal regions, and Orpheus went after her, taking with him his harp and playing as he went; and when he came to the infernal regions he began to play, and Sysiphus sat down upon the stone that he had been heaving up the side of the mountain so many years, and which continually rolled back upon him. Ixion paused upon his wheel of fire; Tantalus ceased in his vain efforts for water; the daughters of the Danaidae left off trying to fill their sieves with water; Pluto smiled, and for the first time in the history of hell the cheeks of the Furies were wet with tears; monsters relented and they said, "Eurydice may go with you, but you must not look back." So he again threaded the caverns, playing as he went, and as he again reached the light he failed to hear the footsteps of Eurydice, and he looked back and in a moment she was gone. This old fable gives to us the idea of the perpetual effort to rescue truth from the churches of monsters. Some time Orpheus will not look back. Some day Eurydice will reach the blessed light, and at some time there will fade from the memory of men the superstition of religion.

Ingersoll's Lecture on "Blasphemy"

Ladies and Gentlemen: There is an old story of a missionary trying to convert an Indian. The Indian made a little circle in the sand and said, "That is what the Indian knows." Then he made another circle a little larger and said, "that is what missionary knows; but outside there the Indian knows just as much as missionary."

I am going to talk mostly outside that circle tonight.

First, what is the origin of the crime known as blasphemy? It is the belief in a God who is cruel, revengeful, quick tempered and capricious; a God who punishes the innocent for the guilty; a God who listens with delight to the shrieks of the tortured and gazes enraptured on their spurting blood. You must hold this belief before you can believe in the doctrine of blasphemy. You must believe that this God loves ceremonies, that this God knows certain men to whom He has told all His will. It then follows that, if this God loves ceremonies and has certain men to teach His will and perform these ceremonies, these men must have a place to live in. This place was called a temple, and it was sacred. And the pots and pans and kettles and all in it were sacred too. No one but the priests must touch them. Then the God wrote a book in which He told His covenants to men, and gave this book to priests to interpret. While it was sacrilege to touch with the hands the pots and pans of the temple, it was blasphemy to doubt or question anything in the book. And then the right to think was gone, and the right to use the brain that God had given was taken away, and religion was entrenched behind that citadel called blasphemy.

God was a kind of juggler. He did not wish man to be impudent or curious about how He did things. You must sit in audience and watch the tricks and ask no questions. In front of every fact He has hung the impenetrable curtain of blasphemy. Now, then, all the little reason that poor man had is useless. To say anything against the priest was blasphemy and to say anything against God was blasphemy—to ask a question was blasphemy. Finally we sank to the level of fetishism. We began to worship inanimate things. If you will read your bible you will find that the Jews had a sacred box. In it were the rod of Aaron and a piece of manna and the tables of stone. To touch this box was a crime. You remember that one time when a careless Jew thought the box was going to tip he held it. God killed him. What a warning to baggage smashers of the present day.

We find also that God concocted a hair oil and threatened death to any one who imitated it. And we see that He also made a certain perfume and it was death to make anything that smelt like it. It seems to me this is carrying protection too far. It always has been blasphemy to say "I do not know whether God exists or not." In all Catholic countries it is blasphemy to doubt the bible, to doubt the sacredness of the relics. It always has been blasphemy to laugh at a priest, to ask questions, to investigate the Trinity. In a world of superstition, reason is blasphemy. In a world of ignorance, facts are blasphemy. In a world of cruelty, sympathy is a crime, and in a world of lies, truth is blasphemy. Who are the real blasphemers? Webster offers the definition; blasphemy is an insult offered to God by attributing to Him a nature and qualities differing from His real nature and qualities, and dishonoring Him. A very good definition, if you only know what His nature and qualities are. But that is not revealed; for, studying Him through the medium of the bible, we find Him illimitably contradictory. He commands us not to work on the Sabbath day, because it is holy. Yet God works himself on the Sabbath day. The sun, moon and stars swing round in their orbits, and all the creation attributed to this God goes on as on other days. He says: "Honor thy father and mother," and yet this God, in the person of Christ, offered honors, and glory, and happiness a hundred fold to any who would desert their father and mother for Him. Thou shalt not kill, yet God killed the first-born of Egypt, and he commanded Joshua to kill all His enemies, not sparing old or young, man, woman or child, even an unborn child. "Thou shalt not commit adultery," he says, and yet this God gave the wives of defeated enemies to His soldiers of Joshua's army. Then again He says, "Thou shalt not steal." By this command He protected the inanimate property and the cattle of one man against the hand of another, and yet this God who said "Thou shalt not steal," established human slavery. The products of industry were not to be interfered with, but the producer might be stolen as often as possible. "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." And yet the God who said this said also, "I have sent lying spirits unto Ahab." The only commandment He really kept was, "Thou shalt have none other gods but Me."

Is it blasphemous to describe this God as malicious? You know that laughter is a good index of the character of a man. You like and rejoice with the man whose laugh is free and joyous and full of good will. You fear and dislike him of the sneering laugh. How does God laugh? He says, "I will laugh at their calamity and mock at their misfortune," speaking of some who have sinned. Think of the malice and malignity of that in an infinite God when speaking of the sufferings He is going to impose upon His children. You know that it is said of a Roman emperor that he wrote laws very finely, and posted them so high on the walls that no one could read them, and then he punished the people who disobeyed the laws. That is the acme of tyranny: to provide a punishment for breach of laws the existence of which were unknown. Now we all know that there is sin against the Holy Ghost which will not be forgiven in this world nor in the world to come. Hundreds of thousands of people have been driven to the lunatic asylum by the thought that they had committed this unpardonable sin. Every educated minister knows that that part of the bible is an interpolation, but they all preach it. What that sin against the Holy Ghost is, is not specified. I say, "Oh, but my good God, tell me what this sin is." And He answers, "Maybe now asking is the crime. Keep quiet." So I keep quiet and go about tortured with the fear that I have committed that sin. Is it blasphemy to describe God as needing assistance from the Legislature? Calling for the aid of a mob to enforce His will here, compare that God with a man, even with Henry Bergh. See what Mr. Bergh has done to awaken pity in our people and call sympathy to the rescue of suffering animals. And yet our God was a torturer of dumb brutes.

It is blasphemy to say that our God sent the famine and dried the mother's breast from her infant's withered lips? Is it blasphemy to say that He is the author of the pestilence; that He ordered some of His children to consume others with fire and sword? Is it blasphemy to believe what we read in the 109th Psalm? If these things are not blasphemy, then there is no blasphemy. If there be a God I desire Him to write in the book of judgment opposite my name that I denied these lies for Him.

Let us take another step; let us examine the Presbyterian confession of faith. If it be possible to commit blasphemy, then I contend that the Presbyterian creed is most blasphemous, for, according to that, God is a cruel, unrelenting, revengeful, malignant and utterly unreasonable tyrant. I propose now to pay a little attention to the creed. First, it confesses that there is such a thing as a light of nature. It is sufficient to make man inexcusable, but not sufficient for salvation; just light enough to lead man to hell. Now imagine a man who will put a false light on a hilltop to lure a ship to destruction. What would we say of that man? What can we say of a God who gives this false light of nature which, if its lessons are followed, results in hell? That is the Presbyterian God. I don't like Him. Now it occurred to God that the light of nature was somewhat weak, and He thought He'd light another burner. Therefore He made His book and gave it to His servants, the priests, that they might give it to men. It was to be accepted, not on the authority of Moses, or any other writer, but because it was the word of God. How do you know it's the word of God? You're not to take the word of Moses, or David, or Jeremiah, or Isaiah, or any other man, because the authenticity of their work has nothing to do with the matter; this creed expressly lets them out. How are you to know that it is God's word? Because it is God's word. Why is it God's word? What proof have we that it is God's word? Because it is God's word.

Now, then, I find that the next thing in this wonderful confession of faith of the Presbyterians is the decree of predestination. [Reads the decree.] I am pleased to assure you that it is not necessary to understand this. You have only to believe it. You see that by the decree of God some men and angels are predestinated to heaven and others to eternal hell, and you observe that their number is so certain and definite that it can neither be changed nor altered. You are asked to believe that billions of years ago this God knew the names of all the men and women whom He was going to save. Had 'em in His book, that being the only thing except Himself that then existed. He had chosen the names by the aid of the secret council. The reason they called it secret was because they knew all about it.

In making His choice, God was not at all bigoted. He did not choose John Smith because He foresaw that Smith was to be a Presbyterian, and was to possess a loving nature, was to be honest and true and noble in all his ways, doing good himself and encouraging others in the same. Oh, no! He was quite as likely to pick Brown, in spite of the fact that He knew long before that Brown would be a wicked wretch. You see He was just as apt to send Smith to the devil and take Brown to heaven—and all for "His glory." This God also blinds and hardens—ah! he's a peculiar God. If sinners persevere, He will blind and harden and give them over at last to their own wickedness instead of trying to reclaim and save them.

Now we come to the comforting doctrine of the total depravity of man, and this leads us to consider how he came that way. Can any person read the first chapters of Genesis and believe them unless his logic was assassinated in the cradle? We read that our first parents were placed in a pleasant garden; that they were given the full run of the place and only forbidden to meddle with the orchard; that they were tempted as God knew they were to be tempted; that they fell as God knew they would fall, and that for this fall, which He knew would happen before He made them, He fixed the curse of original sin upon them, to be continued to all their children. Why didn't He stop right there? Why didn't He kill Adam and Eve and make another pair who didn't like apples? Then when He brought His flood why did He rescue eight people if their descendants were to be so totally depraved and wicked? Why didn't He have His flood first, and then drown the devil? That would have solved the problem, and He could then have tried experiments unmolested.

The Presbyterian confession says this corruption was in all men. It was born with them, it lived through their life, and after death survived in the children. Well, can't man help himself? No, I'll show you, God's got him. Listen to this. [Reads extracts.] So that a natural man is not only dead in sin and unable to accomplish salvation, but he is also incapable of preparing himself therefore. Absolutely incapable of taking a trick. He is saved, if at all, completely by the mercy of God. If that's the case, then why doesn't He convert us all? Oh, He doesn't. He wishes to send the most of us to hell—to show His justice. Elect infants dying in infancy are regenerate. So also are all persons incapable of unbelief. That includes insane persons and idiots, because an idiot is incapable of unbelief. Idiots are the only fellows who've got the dead wood on God. Then according to this, the man who has lived according to the light of nature, doing the best he knew how to make this earth happy, will be damned by God because he never heard of His son. Whose fault is it that an infinite God does not advertise? Something wrong about that. I am inclined to think that the Presbyterian church is wrong. I find here how utterly unpardonable sin is. There is no sin so small but it is punished with hell, and away you go straight to the deepest burning pit unless your heart has been purified by this confession of faith—unless this snake has crawled in there and made itself a nest. Why should we help religion? I would like people to ask themselves that question. An infinite God, by practicing a reasonable economy, can get along without assistance. Loudly this confession proclaims that salvation comes from Christ alone. What, then, becomes of the savage who, having never known the name of Christ, has lived according to the light of nature, kind and heroic and generous, and possessed of and cultivating all the natural virtues? He goes to hell. God, you see, loves us. If He had not loved us what would He have done? The light of nature then shows that God is good and therefore to be feared—on account of his goodness, to be served and honored without ceasing. And yet this creed says that on the last day God will damn anyone who has walked according to this light. It's blasphemy to walk by the light of nature.

The next great doctrine is on the preservation of the saints. Now, there are peculiarities about saints. They are saints without their own knowledge or free will; they may even be down on saints, but its no good. God has got a rolling hitch on them, and they have to come into the kingdom sooner or later. It all depends on whether they have been elected or not. God could have made me a saint just as easy as not, but He passed me by. Now you know the Presbyterians say I trample on holy things. They believe in hell and I come and say there is no hell. I hurt their hearts, they say, and they add that I am going to hell myself. I thank them for that; but now let's see what these tender Presbyterians say of other churches. Here it is:

This confession of faith calls the pope of Rome anti-Christ and a son of perdition. Now there are forty Roman Catholics to one Presbyterian on this earth. Do not the Presbyterians rather trample on the things that are holy to the Roman Catholics, and do they respect their feelings? But the Presbyterians have a pope themselves, composed of the presbyters and preachers. This confession attributes to them the keys of heaven and hell and the power to forgive sins. [Here extracts are read.] Therefore these men must be infallible, for God would never be so foolish as to entrust fallible men with the keys of heaven and hell. I care nothing for their keys, nor for any world these keys would open or lock; I prefer the country.

We are told by this faith that at the last day all the men and women and children who have ever lived on the earth will appear in the self same bodies they have had when on earth. Everyone who knows anything knows the constant exchange which is going on between the vegetable and animal kingdom. The millions of atoms which compose one of our bodies have all come from animals and vegetables, and they in their turn drew them from animals and vegetables which preceded them. The same atoms which are now in our bodies have previously been in the bodies of our ancestors. The negro from Central Africa has many times been mahogany and the mahogany has many times been negro. A missionary goes to the cannibal islands and a cannibal eats him and dies. The atoms which composed the missionary's body now compose in great part the cannibal's body. To whom will these atoms belong on the morning of the resurrection?

How did the devil, who had always lived in heaven among the best society, ever happen to become bad? If a man surrounded by angels could become bad, why cannot a man surrounded by devils become good?

Here is the last Presbyterian joy: At the day of judgment the righteous shall be caught up to heaven and shall stand at the right hand of Christ and share with Him in judging the wicked. Then the Presbyterian husband may have the ineffable pleasure of judging his wife and condemning her to eternal hell, and the boy will say to his mother, echoing the command of God: "Depart, thou accursed, into everlasting torment!" Here will come a man who has not believed in God. He was a soldier who took up arms to free the slaves and who rotted to death in Andersonville prison rather than accept the offer of his captors to fight against freedom. He loved his wife and his children and his Home and his native country and all mankind, and did all the good he knew. God will say to the Presbyterians, "What shall We do to this man?" ; and they will answer, "Throw him into hell."

Last night there was a fire in Philadelphia, and at a window fifty feet above the ground Mr. King stood amid flame and smoke and pressed his children to his breast one after the other, kissed them, and threw them to the rescuers with a prayer. That was man. At the last day God takes His children with a curse and hurls them into eternal fire. That's your God as the Presbyterians describe Him. Do you believe that God—if there is one—will ever damn me for thinking Him better than He is? If this creed be true, God is the insane keeper of a mad house.

We have in this city a clergyman who contends that this creed gives a correct picture of God, and furthermore says that God has the right to do with us what He pleases—because He made us. If I could change this lamp into a human being, that would not give me the right to torture him, and if I did torture him and he cried out, "Why torturest thou me?" and I replied, "Because I made you," he would be right in replying, "You made me, therefore you are responsible for my happiness." No God has a right to add to the sum of human misery. And yet this minister believes an honest thought blasphemy. No doubt he is perfectly honest. Otherwise he would have too much intellectual pride to take the position he does. He says that the bible offers the only restraint to the savage passions of man. In lands where there has been no bible there have been mild and beneficent philosophers, like Buddha and Confucius. Is it possible that the bible is the only restraint, and yet the nations among whom these men lived have been as moral as we? In Brooklyn and New York you have the bible, yet do you find that the restraint is a great success? Is there a city on the globe which lacks more in certain directions than some in Christendom, or even the United States? What are the natural virtues of man? Honesty, hospitality, mercy in the hour of victory, generosity—do we not find these virtues among some savages? Do we find them among all Christians? I am also told by these gentlemen that the time will come when the infidel will be silenced by society. Why that time came long ago. Society gave the hemlock to Socrates, society in Jerusalem cried out for Barabbas and crucified Jesus. In every Christian country society has endeavored to crush the infidel.

Blasphemy is a padlock which hypocrisy tries to put on the lips of all honest men. At one time Christianity succeeded in silencing the infidel, and then came the dark ages, when all rule was ecclesiastical, when the air was filled with devils and spooks, when birth was a misfortune, life a prolonged misery of fear and torment, and death a horrible nightmare. They crushed the infidels, Galileo, Kepler, Copernicus, wherever a ray of light appeared in the ecclesiastical darkness. But I want to tell this minister tonight, and all others like him, that that day is passed. All the churches in the United States can not even crush me. The day for that has gone, never to return. If they think they can crush free thought in this country, let them try it. What must this minister think of you and the citizens of this republic when he says, "Take the fear of hell out of men's hearts and a majority of them will become ungovernably wicked." Oh, think of an angel in heaven having to allow that he was scared there.

This minister calls for my arrest. He thinks his God needs help, and would like to see the police crush the infidel. I would advise Mr. Talmage (hisses) to furnish his God with a rattle, so that when he is in danger again he can summon the police immediately.

I'll tell you what is blasphemy. It is blasphemy to live on the fruits of other men's labor, to prevent the growth of the human mind, to persecute for opinion's sake, to abuse your wife and children, to increase in any manner the sum of human misery.

I'll tell you what is sacred. Our bodies are sacred, our rights are sacred, justice and liberty are sacred. I'll tell you what is the true bible. It is the sum of all actual knowledge of man, and every man who discovers a new fact adds a new verse to this bible. It is different from the other bible, because that is the sum of all that its writers and readers do not know.

Ingersoll's Lecture entitled "Some Reasons Why"

Ladies and Gentlemen: The history of the world shows that religion has made enemies instead of friends. That one word "religion" paints the horizon of the past with every form of agony and torture, and when one pronounces the name of "religion" we think of 1,500 years of persecution, of 6,000 years of hatred, slander and vituperation. Strange, but true, that those who have loved God most have loved men least; strange that in countries where there has been the most religion there has been the most agony; and that is one reason why I am opposed to what is known as religion. By religion I mean the duties that men are supposed to owe to God; by religion I mean, not what man owes to man, but what we owe to some invisible, infinite and supreme being. The question arises, Can any relation exist between finite man and infinite being? An infinite being is absolutely conditional. An infinite being can not walk, cannot receive, and a finite being cannot give to the infinite. Can I increase his happiness or decrease his misery? Does he need my strength or my life? What can I do for him? I say, nothing.

For one, I do not believe there is any God who gives rain or sunshine for praying. For one, I do not believe there is any being who helps man simply because he kneels. I may be mistaken, but that is my doctrine—that the finite cannot by any possibility help the infinite, or the infinite be indebted to the finite; that the finite cannot by any possibility assist a being who is all in all. What can we do? We can help man; we can help clothe the naked, feed the hungry; we can help break the chains of the slave; we can help weave a garment of joy that will finally cover this world. That is all that man can do. Wherever he has endeavored to do more he has simply increased the misery of his fellows. I can find out nothing of these things myself by my unaided reasoning. If there is an infinite God and I have not reason enough to comprehend His universe, whose fault is it? I am told that we have the inspired will of God. I do not know exactly what they mean by inspired. Not two sects agree on that word. Some tell me that every great work is inspired; that Shakespeare is inspired. I would be less apt to dispute that than a similar remark about any other book on this earth. If Jehovah had wanted to have a book written, the inspiration of which should not be disputed, He should have waited until Shakespeare lived.

Whatever they mean by inspiration, they at least mean that it is true. If it is true, it does not need to be inspired. The truth will take care of itself. Nothing except a falsehood needs inspiration. What is inspiration? A man looks at the sea, and the sea says something to him. Another man looks at the same sea, and the sea tells another story to him. The sea cannot tell the same story to any two human beings. There is not a thing in nature, from a pebble to a constellation, that tells the same story to any two human beings. It depends upon the man's experience, his intellectual development, and what chord of memory it touches. One looks upon the sea and is filled with grief; another looks upon it and laughs.

Last year, riding in the cars from Boston to Portsmouth, sat opposite me a lady and gentleman. As we reached the latter place the woman, for the first time in her life, caught a burst of the sea, and she looked and said to her husband "Isn't that beautiful!" And he looked and said: "I'll bet you can dig clams right there."

Another illustration: A little while ago a gentleman was walking with another in South Carolina, at Charleston—one who had been upon the other side. Said the Northerner to the Southerner, "Did you ever see such a night as this; did you ever in your life see such a moon?" "Oh, my God," said he, "you ought to have seen that moon before the War!"

I simply say these things to convince you that everything in nature has a different story to tell every human being. So the bible tells a different story to every man that reads it. History proves what I say. Why so many sects? Why so much persecution? Simply because two people couldn't understand it exactly alike. You may reply that God intended it should be so understood, and that is the real revelation that God intended.

For instance, I write a letter to Smith. I want to convey to him certain thoughts. If I am honest I will use the words which will convey to him my thoughts, but not being infinite, I don't know exactly how Smith will understand my words; but if I were infinite I would be bound to use the words that I know Smith would get my exact idea from. If God intended to make a revelation to me He has to make it to me through my brain and my reasoning. He cannot make a revelation to another man for me. That other man will have God's word for it but I will only have that man's word for it. As that man has been dead for several thousand years, and as I don't know what his reputation was for truth and veracity in the neighborhood in which he lived, I will wait for the Lord to speak again.

Suppose when I read it, the revelation to me, through the bible, is that it is not true, and God knew that I would know that when I did read it, and knew, if I did not say it, I would be dishonest. Is it possible that He would damn me for being honest, and give me wings if I would play the hypocrite?

The inspiration of the bible depends upon the ignorance of the gentleman who reads it. Yet they tell me this book was written by the creator of every shining star. Now let us see. I want to be honest and candid. I have just as much at stake in the way of soul as any doctor of divinity that ever lived, and more than some I have met. According to this book, the first attempt at peopling this world was a failure. God had to destroy all but eight. He saved some of the same kind to start again, which I think was a mistake. After that, the people still getting worse, he selected from the wide world a few of the tribe of Abraham. He had no time to waste with everybody. He had no time to throw away on Egypt. It had at that time a vast and splendid civilization, in which there were free schools; in which the one man married the one wife; where there were courts of law; where there were codes of laws.

Neither could He give attention to India, that had at that time a literature as splendid almost as ours, a language as perfect; that had produced poets, philosophers, statesmen. He had no time to waste with them, but took a few of the tribe of Abraham, and He did His best to civilize these people. He was their governor, their executive, their supreme court. He established a despotism, and from Mount Sinai He proclaimed His laws. They didn't pay much attention to them. He wrought thousands of miracles to convince them that He was God.

Isn't it perfectly wonderful that the priest of one religion never believes the miracles told by the priest of another? Is it possible that they know each other? I heard a story the other day. A gentleman was telling a very remarkable circumstance that happened to himself, and all the listeners except one said, "Is it possible; did you ever hear such a wonderful thing in all your life?" They noticed that this one man didn't appear to take a vivid interest in the story, so one said to him, "You don't express much astonishment at the story?" "No," says he, "I am a liar myself."

I find by reading this book that a worse government was never established than that established by Jehovah; that the Jews were the most unfortunate people who lived upon the globe. Let us compare this book. In all civilized countries it is not only admitted, but passionately asserted, that slavery is an infamous crime; that a war of extermination is murder; that polygamy enslaves woman, degrades man and destroys home; that nothing is more infamous than the slaughter of decrepit men and helpless women, and of prattling babes; that the captured maiden should not be given to her captors; that wives should not be stoned to death for differing in religion from their husbands. We know there was a time in the history of most nations when all these crimes were regarded as divine institutions. Nations entertaining these views today are called savage, and with the exception of the Feejee islanders, some tribes in Central Africa, and a few citizens of Delaware, no human being can be found degraded enough to agree upon those subjects with Jehovah.

Today, the fact that a nation has abolished and abandoned those things is the only evidence that it can offer to show that it is not still barbarous; but a believer in the inspiration of the bible is compelled to say there was a time when slavery was right, when polygamy was the highest form of virtue, when wars of extermination were waged with the sword of mercy, and when the creator of the whole world commanded the soldier to sheathe the dagger of murder in the dimpled breast of infancy. The believer of inspiration of the bible is compelled to say there was a time when it was right for a husband to murder his wife because they differed upon subjects of religion. I deny that such a time ever was. If I knew the real God said it, I would still deny it.

Four thousand years ago, if the bible is true, God was in favor of slavery, polygamy, wars of extermination and religious persecution. Now we are told the devil is in favor of all those things, and God is opposed to them; in other words, the devil stands now where God stood 4,000 years ago; yet they tell me God is just as good now as he was then, and the devil just as bad now as God was then. Other nations believed in slavery, polygamy, and war and persecution without ever having received one ray of light from heaven. That shows that a special revelation is not necessary to teach a man to do wrong. Other nations did no worse without the bible than the Jews did with it.

Suppose the devil had inspired a book. In what respect would he have differed from God on the subject of slavery, polygamy, wars of extermination, and religious persecution? Suppose we knew that after God had finished his book the devil had gotten possession of it, and written a few passages to suit himself. Which passages, O Christian, would you pick out now as having probably been written by the devil? Which of these two, "Love thy neighbor as thyself," or "Kill all the males among the little ones, and kill every man, but all the women and girls keep alive for yourselves"—which of those two passages would they select as having been written by the devil?

If God wrote the last, there is no need of a devil. Is there a Christian in the wide world who does not wish that God, from the thunder and lightning of Sinai, had said: "You shall not enslave your fellow-man!" I am opposed to any man who is in favor of slavery. If revolution is needed at all it is to prevent man enslaving his fellow-man.

But they say God did the best He could; that the Jews were so bad that He had to come up kind of slow. If He had told them suddenly they must not murder and steal, they would not have paid any respect to the ten commandments. Suppose you go to the Cannibal Islands to prevent the gentlemen there from eating missionaries, and you found they ate them raw. The first move is to induce them to cook them. After you get them to eat cooked missionaries, you will then, without their knowing it, occasionally slip in a little mutton. We will go on gradually decreasing missionaries and increasing mutton until finally the last will be so cultivated that they will prefer the sheep to the priest, I think the missionaries would object to that mode, of course.

I know this was written by the Jews themselves. If they were to write it now, it would be different. Today they are a civilized people. I do not wish it understood that a word I say tonight touches the slightest prejudice in any man's mind against the Jewish people. They are as good a people as live today. I will say right here, they never had any luck until Jehovah abandoned them.

Now we come to the new testament. They tell me that is better than the old, I say it is worse. The great objection to the old testament is that it is cruel; but in the old testament the revenge of God stopped with the portals of the tomb. He never threatened punishment after death. He never threatened one thing beyond the grave. It was reserved for the new testament to make known the doctrine of eternal punishment.

Is the new testament inspired? I have not time to give many reasons, but I will give some. In the first place, they tell me the very fact that the witnesses disagree in minor matters shows that they have not conspired to tell the same story. Good. And I say in every lawsuit where four or five witnesses testify, or endeavor to testify, to the same transaction, it is natural that they should differ on minor points. Why? Because no two occupy exactly the same position; no two see exactly alike; no two remember precisely the same, and their disagreement is due to and accounted for by the imperfection of human nature, and the fact that they did not all have an equal opportunity to know. But if you admit or say that the four witnesses were inspired by an infinite being who did see it all, then they should remember all the same, because inspiration does not depend on memory.

That brings me to another point. Why were there four gospels? What is the use of more than one correct account of anything? If you want to spread it, send copies. No human being has got the ingenuity to tell me why there were four gospels, when one correct gospel would have been enough. Why should there have been four original multiplication tables? One is enough, and if anybody has got any use for it he can copy that one. The very fact that we have got four gospels shows that it is not an inspired book.

The next point is that, according to the new testament, the salvation of the world depended upon the atonement. Only one of the books in the new testament says anything about that, and that is John. The church followed John, and they ought to follow John, because the church wrote that book called John. According to that, the whole world was to be damned on account of the sins of one man; and that absurdity was the father and mother of another absurdity—that the whole world could be saved on account of the virtue of another man. I deny both propositions. No man can sin for me; no man can be virtuous for me; I must reap what I sow. But they say the law must be satisfied. What kind of a law is it that would demand punishment of the innocent? Just think of it. Here is a man about to be hanged, and another comes up and says: "That man has got a family, and I have not; that man is in good health and I am not well, and I will be hung in his place." And the governor says: "All right; a murder has been committed, and we have got to have a hanging—we don't care who." Under the Mosaic dispensation there was no remission of sins without the shedding of blood. If a man committed a murder he brought a pair of doves or a sheep to the priest, and the priest laid his hands on the animal, and the sins of the man were transferred to the animal. You see how that could be done easy enough. Then they killed the animal, and sprinkled its blood on the altar. That let the man off. And why did God demand the sacrifice of a sheep? I will tell you; because priests love mutton.

To make the innocent suffer is the greatest crime. I don't wish to go to heaven on the virtues of somebody else. If I can't settle by the books and go, I don't wish to go. I don't want to feel as if I was there on sufferance—that I was in the poorhouse of the universe, supported by the town.

They tell us Judas betrayed Christ. Well, if Christ had not been betrayed, no atonement would have been made, and then every human soul would have been damned, and heaven would have been for rent.

Supposing that Judas knew the Christian system, then perhaps he thought that by betraying Christ he could get forgiven, not only for the sins that he had already committed but for the sin of betrayal, and if, on the way to Calvary, and later, some brave, heroic soul had rescued Christ from the mob, he would have made his own damnation sure. It won't do. There is no logic in that.

They say God tried to civilize the Jews. If He had succeeded, according to the Christian system, we all would have been damned, because if the Jews had been civilized they would not have crucified Christ. They would have believed in the freedom of speech, and as a result the world would have been lost for two thousand years. The Christian world has been trying to explain the atonement, and they have always ended by failing to explain it.

Now I come to the second objection, which is that certain belief is necessary to salvation. I will believe according to the evidence. In my mind are certain scales, which weigh everything, and my integrity stands there and knows which side goes up and which side goes down. If I am an honest man I will report the weights like an honest man. They say I must believe a certain thing or I will be eternally damned. They tell me that to believe is the safer way. I deny it. The safest thing you can do is to be honest. No man, when the shadows of the last hours were gathering around him, ever wished that he had lived the life of a hypocrite. If I find at the Day of Judgment that I have been mistaken, I will say so, like a man. If God tells me then that he is the author of the old testament I will admit that he is worse than I thought He was, and when He comes to pronounce sentence upon me, I will say to Him: "Do unto others as You would that others should do unto You." I have a right to think; I cannot control my belief; my brain is my castle, and if I don't defend it, my soul becomes a slave and a serf.

If you throw away your reason, your soul is not worth saving. Salvation depends, not upon belief but upon deed—upon kindness, upon justice, upon mercy. Your own deeds are your savior, and you can be saved in no other way. I am told in this testament to love my enemies. I cannot; I will not. I don't hate enemies; I don't wish to injure enemies, but I don't care about seeing them. I don't like them. I love my friends, and the man who loves enemies and friends loves me. The doctrine of non-resistance is born of weakness. The man that first said it, said it because it was the best he could do under the circumstances. While the church said, "love your enemies," in her sacred vestments gleamed the daggers of assassination. With her cunning hand, she wore the purple for hypocrisy, and placed the crown upon the brow of crime.

For more than one thousand years larceny held the scales of justice, and hypocrisy wore the mitre, and the tiara of Christ was in fact God. He knew of the future. He knew what crimes and horrors would be committed in His name. He knew the fires of persecution would climb around the limbs of countless martyrs; that brave men and women would languish in dungeons and darkness; that the church would use instruments of torture; that in His name His followers would trade in human flesh; that cradles would be robbed and women's breasts unbabed for gold, and yet He died with voiceless lips. If Christ was God, why did He not tell His disciples, and through them, the world, "Man shall not persecute his fellow-man?" Why didn't He say, "I am God?" Why didn't He explain the doctrine of the Trinity? Why didn't He tell what manner of baptism was pleasing to Him? Why didn't He say the old testament is true? Why didn't He write His testament himself? Why did He leave His words to accident, to ignorance, to malice, and to chance? Why didn't He say something positive, definite, satisfactory, about another world? Why did He not turn the tear-stained hope of immortality to the glad knowledge of another life? Why did he go dumbly to His death, leaving the world to misery and to doubt? Because He was a man.

[Colonel Ingersoll read several extracts from the bible, which he said originated with Zoroaster, Buddha, Cicero, Epictetus, Pythagoras and other ancient writers, and he read extracts from various pagan writers, which he claimed compared favorably with the best things in the bible. He continued:]

No God has a right to create a man who is to be eternally damned. Infinite wisdom has no right to make a failure, and a man who is to be eternally damned is not a conspicuous success. Infinite Wisdom has no right to make an instrument that will not finally pay a dividend. No God has a right to add to the agony of this universe, and yet around the angels of immortality Christianity has coiled this serpent of eternal pain. Upon love's breast the church has placed that asp, and yet people talk to me about the consolations of religion.

A few days ago the bark Tiger was found upon the wide sea 126 days from Liverpool. For nine days not a mouthful of food or a drop of water was to be had. There was on board the captain, mate, and eleven men. When they had been out 117 days they killed the captain's dog. Nine days more—no food, no water, and Captain Kruger stood upon the deck in the presence of his starving crew. With a revolver in his hand, put it upon his temple, and said, "Boys, this can't last much longer; I am willing to die to save the rest of you." The mate grasped the revolver from his hand, and said, "Wait;" and the next day upon the horizon of despair was the smoke of the ship which rescued them. Do you tell me tonight if Captain Kruger was not a Christian and he had sent that ball crashing through his generous brain that there was an Almighty waiting to clutch his naked soul that He might damn him forever? It won't do.

Ah, but they tell me "You have no right to pick the bad things out of the bible." I say, an infinite God has no right to put bad things into His bible. Does anybody believe if God was going to write a book now He would uphold slavery; that He would favor polygamy; that He would say kill the heathen, stab the women, dash out the brains of the children? We have civilized him. We make our own God, and we make Him better day by day.

Some honest people really believe that in some wonderful way we are indebted to Moses for geology, to Joshua for astronomy and military tactics, to Samson for weapons of war, to Daniel for holy curses, to Solomon for the art of cross-examination, to Jonah for the science of navigation, to Saint Paul for steamships and locomotives, to the four Gospels for telegraphs and sewing-machines, to the Apocalypse; for looms, saw-mills, and telephones; and that to the sermon on the mount we are indebted for mortars and Krupp guns. We are told that no nation has ever been civilized without a bible. The Jews had one, and yet they crucified a perfectly innocent man. They couldn't have done much worse without a bible.

God must have known 6,000 years ago that it was impossible to civilize people without a bible just as well as they know it now. Why did He ever allow a nation to be Without a bible? Why didn't He give a few leaves to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden? Take from the bible the miracles, and I admit that the good passages are true. If they are true they don't need to be inspired. Miracles are the children of mendacity. Nothing can be more wonderful than the majestic, sublime, and eternal march of cause and effect. Reason must be the final arbiter. An inspired book cannot stand against a demonstrated fact. Is a man to be rewarded eternally for believing without evidence or against evidence? Do you tell me that the less brain a man has the better chance he has for heaven? Think of a heaven filled with men who never thought. Better that all that is should cease to be; better that God had never been; better that all the springs and seeds of things should fall and wither in great nature's realm; better that causes and effects should lose relation; better that every life should change to breathless death and voiceless blank, and every star to blind oblivion and moveless naught, than that this religion should be true.

The religion of the future is humanity. The religion of the future will say to every man, "You have the right to think and investigate for yourself." Liberty is my religion—everything that is true, every good thought, every beautiful thing, every self-denying action—all these make my bible. Every bubble, every star, are passages in my bible. A constellation is a chapter. Every shining world is a part of it. You cannot interpolate it; you cannot change it. It is the same forever. My bible is all that speaks to man. Every violet, every blade of grass, every tree, every mountain crowned with snow, every star that shines, every throb of love, every honest act, all that is good and true combined, make my bible; and upon that book I stand.

Ingersoll's Lecture on Intellectual Development

Ladies and Gentlemen: In the first place I want to admit that there are a great many good people, quite pious people, who don't agree with me and all that proves in the world is, that I don't agree with them. I am not endeavoring to force my ideas or notions upon other people, but I am saying what little I can to induce everybody in the world to grant to every other person every right he claims for himself. I claim, standing under the flag of nature, under the blue and the stars, that I am the peer of any other man, and have the right to think and express my thoughts. I claim that in the presence of the unknown, and upon a subject that nobody knows anything about, and never did, I have as good a right to guess as anybody else. The gentlemen who hold views against mine, if they had any evidence, would have no fears—not the slightest.

If a man has a diamond that has been examined by the lapidaries of the world, and some ignorant stonecutter tells him that it is nothing but an ordinary rock, he laughs at him; but if it has not been examined by lapidaries, and he is a little suspicious himself that it is not genuine, it makes him mad. Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man. Any man who is afraid to have his doctrine investigated is not only a coward but a hypocrite. Now, all I ask is simply an opportunity to say my say. I will give that right to everybody else in the world. I understand that owing to my success in the lecture field several clergymen have taken it into their heads to lecture—some of them, I believe, this evening. I say all that I claim is the right I give to others, and any man who will not give that right is a dishonest man, no matter what church he may belong to or not belong to—if he does not freely accord to all others the right to think, he is not an honest man. I said some time ago that if there was any being who would eternally damn one of his children for the expression of an honest opinion that he was not a God, but that he was a demon; and from that they have said first, that I did not believe in any God, and, secondly, that I called Him a demon. If I did not believe in Him how could I call Him anything? These things hardly hang together. But that makes no difference; I expect to be maligned; I expect to be slandered; I expect to have my reputation blackened by gentlemen who are not fit to blacken my shoes.

But letting that pass—I simply believe in liberty; that is my religion; that is the altar where I worship; that is my shrine—that every human being shall have every right that I have—that is my religion. I am going to live up to it and going to say what little I can to make the American people brave enough and generous enough and kind enough to give everybody else the rights they have themselves. Can there ever be any progress in this world to amount to anything until we have liberty? The thoughts of a man who is not free are not worth much. A man who thinks with the club of a creed above his head—a man who thinks casting his eye askance at the flames of hell, is not apt to have very good thoughts. And for my part, I would not care to have any status or social position even in heaven if I had to admit that I never would have been there only I got scared. When we are frightened we do not think very well. If you want to get at the honest thoughts of a man he must be free. If he is not free you will not get his honest thought. You won't trade with a merchant, if he is free; you won't employ him if he is a lawyer, if he is free; you won't call him if he is a doctor, if he is free; and what are you going to get out of him but hypocrisy. Force will not make thinkers, but hypocrites. A minister told me awhile ago, "Ingersoll," he says, "if you do not believe the bible you ought not to say so." Says I, "Do you believe the bible?" He says, "I do." I says, "I don't know whether you do or not; maybe you are following the advice you gave me; how shall I know whether you believe it or not?" Now, I shall die without knowing whether that man believed the bible or not. There is no way that I can possibly find out, because he said that even if he did not believe it he would not say so. Now, I read, for instance, a book. Now, let us be honest. Suppose that a clergyman and I were on an island—nobody but us two—and I were to read a book, and I honestly believed it untrue, and he asked me about it—what ought I to say? Ought I to say I believed it, and be lying, or ought I to say I did not? —that is the question; and the church can take its choice between honest men, who differ, and hypocrites, who differ, but say they do not—you can have your choice, all of you. *

[* "These black-coats are the only persons of my acquaintance who resemble the chameleon, in being able to keep one eye directed upwards to heaven, and the other downwards to the good things of this world." —Alex. von Humboldt]

If you give to us liberty, you will have in this country a splendid diversity of individuality; but if on the contrary you say men shall think so and so, you will have the sameness of stupid nonsense. In my judgment, it is the duty of every man to think and express his thoughts; but at the same time do not make martyrs of yourselves.

Those people that are not willing you should be honest, are not worth dying for; they are not worth being a martyr for; and if you are afraid you cannot support your wife and children in this town and express your honest thought, why keep it to yourself, but if there is such a man here he is a living certificate of the meanness of the community in which he lives. Go right along, if you are afraid it will take food from the mouths of your dear babes—if you are afraid you cannot clothe your wife and children, go along with them to church, say amen in as near the right place as you can, if you happen to be awake, and I will do your talking for you.

I will say my say, and the time will come when every man in the country will be astonished that there ever was a time that everybody had not the right to speak his honest thoughts. If there is a man here or in this town, preacher or otherwise, who is not willing that I should think and speak, he is just so much nearer a barbarian than I am. Civilization is liberty, slavery is barbarism; civilization is intelligence, slavery is ignorance; and if we are any nearer free than were our fathers, it is because we have got better heads and more brains in them—that is the reason. Every man who has invented anything for the use and convenience of man has helped raise his fellow-man, and all we have found out of the laws and forces of nature so that we are finally enabled to bring these forces of nature into subjection, to give us better houses, better food, better clothes—these are the real civilizers of our race; and the men who stand up as prophets and predict hell to their fellow-man, they are not the civilizers of our race; the men who cut each other's throats because they fell out about baptism—they are not the civilizers of my race; the men who built the inquisitions and put into dungeons all the grand and honest men they could find—they are not the civilizers of my race.

The men who have corrupted the imaginations and hearts of men by their infamous dogma of hell—they are not the civilizers of my race. The men who have been predicting good for mankind, the men who have found some way to get us better homes and better houses and better education, the men who have allowed us to make slaves of the blind forces of nature—they have made this world fit to live in.

I want to prove to you if I can that this is all a question of intellectual development, a question of sense, and the more a man knows the more liberal he is; the less a man knows the more bigoted he is. The less a man knows the more certain he is that he knows it, and the more a man knows the better satisfied he is that he is entirely ignorant. Great knowledge is philosophic, and little, narrow, contemptible knowledge is bigoted and hateful. I want to prove it to you. I saw a little while ago models of nearly everything man has made for his use—nearly everything. I saw models of all the watercraft; from the rude dug-out, in which paddled the naked savage, with his forehead about half as high as his teeth were long—all the water craft from that dug-out up to a man of war that carries a hundred guns and miles of canvas; from that rude dug-out to a steamship that turns its brave prow from the port of New York, with three thousand miles of foaming billows before it, not missing a throb or beat of its mighty iron heart from one shore to the other. I saw their ideas of weapons, from the rude club, such as was seized by that same barbarian as he emerged from his den in the morning, hunting a snake for his dinner; from that club to the boomerang, to the dagger, to the sword, to the blunderbuss, to the old flintlock, to the cap-lock, to the needle-gun, to the cannon invented by Krupp, capable of hurling a ball weighing two thousand pounds through eighteen inches of solid steel.

I saw their ideas of defensive armor, from the turtle shell which one of these gentlemen lashed upon his breast preparatory to going to war, or the skin of a porcupine, dried with the quills on, that he pulled on his orthodox head before he sallied forth. By "orthodox" I mean man who has quit growing; not simply in religion, but it everything; whenever a man is done, he is orthodox whenever he thinks he has found out all, he is orthodox whenever he becomes a drag on the swift car of progress, he is orthodox. I saw their defensive armor, from the turtle-shell and the porcupine skin to the shirts of mail of the middle ages, that defied the edge of the sword and the point of the spear. I saw their ideas of agricultural implements, from the crooked stick that was attached to the horn of an ox by some twisted straw, to the agricultural implements of today, that make it possible for a man to cultivate the soil without being an ignoramus. When they had none of these agricultural implements—when they depended upon one crop—they were superstitious, for if the frosts struck one crop they thought the gods were angry with them.

Now, with the implements, machinery and knowledge of mechanics of today, people have found out that no man can be good enough nor bad enough to cause a frost. After having found out these things are contrary to the laws of nature, they began to raise more than one kind of crop. If the frost strikes one they have the other; if it happens to strike all in that locality there is a surplus somewhere else, and that surplus is distributed by railways and steamers and by the thousand ways that we have to distribute these things; and as a consequence the agriculturist begins to think and reason, and now for the first time in the history of the world the agriculturist begins to stand upon a level with the mechanic and with the man who has confidence in the laws and facts of nature.

I saw there their musical instruments, from the tomtom (that is a hoop with two strings of rawhide drawn across it) to the instruments we have that make the common air blossom with melody. I saw their ideas on ornaments, from a string of the claws of a wild beast that once ornamented the dusky bosom of some savage belle, to the rubies and sapphires and diamonds with which civilization today is familiar. I saw the books, written upon the shoulder-blades of sheep, upon the bark of trees, down to the illustrated volumes that are now in the libraries of the world. I saw their ideas of paintings, from the rude daubs of yellow mud, to the grand pictures we see in the art galleries of today. I saw their ideas of sculpture, from a monster god with several legs, a good many noses, a great many eyes, and one little, contemptible, brainless head, to the sculpture that we have, where the marble is clothed with such personality that it seems almost impudence to touch it without an introduction. I saw all these things, and how men had gradually improved through the generations that are dead. And I saw at the same time a row of men's skulls—skulls from the Bushmen of Australia, skulls from the center of Africa, skulls from the farthest islands of the Pacific, skulls from this country—from the aborigines of America, skulls of the Aztecs, up to the best skulls, or many of the best of the last generation; and I noticed there was the same difference between the skulls as between the products of the skulls, the same between that skull and that, as between the dugout and the man-of-war, as between the dugout and the steamship, as between the tomtom and an opera of Verdi, as between those ancient agricultural implements and ours, as between that yellow daub and that landscape, as between that stone god and a statue of today; and I said to myself, "This is a question of intellectual development; this is a question of brain." The man has advanced just in proportion as he has mingled his thoughts with his labor, and just in proportion that his brain has gotten into partnership with his hand. Man has advanced just as he has developed intellectually, and no other way. That skull was a low den in which crawled and groped the meaner and baser instincts of mankind, and this was a temple in which dwelt love, liberty and joy.

Why is it that we have advanced in the arts? It is because every incentive has been held out to the world; because we want better clubs or better cannons with which to kill our fellow Christians; we want better music, we want better houses, and any man who will invent them, and any man who will give them to us we will clothe him in gold and glory; we will crown him with honor. That gentleman in his dugout not only had his ideas of mechanics, but he was a politician. His idea of politics was, "Might makes right;" and it will take thousands of years before the world will be willing to say that, "Right makes might." That was his idea of politics, and he had another idea—that all power came from the clouds, and that every armed thief that lived upon the honest labor of mankind had had poured out upon his head the divine oil of authority. He didn't believe the power to govern came from the people; he did not believe that the great mass of people had any right whatever, or that the great mass of people could be allowed the liberty of thought—and we have thousands of such today.

They say thought is dangerous—don't investigate;* don't inquire; just believe; shut your eyes, and then you are safe. You trust not hear this man or that man or some other man, or our dear doctrines will be overturned, and we have nobody on our side except a large majority; we have nobody on our side except the wealth and respectability of the world; we have nobody on our side except the infinite God, and we are afraid that one man, in one or two hours, will beat the whole party.

[* There is no method of reasoning more common, or more blamable, than in philosophical disputes, to endeavor the refutation of any hypothesis, by a pretense of its dangerous consequences to religion and morality." —David Hume]

This man in the dugout also had his ideas of religion—that fellow was orthodox, and any man who differed with him he called an infidel, an atheist, an outcast, and warned everybody against him. He had his religion—he believed in hell; he was glad of it; he enjoyed it; it was a great source of comfort to him to think when he didn't like people that he would have the pleasure of looking over and seeing them squirm upon the gridiron. When any man said he didn't believe there was a hell this gentleman got up in his pulpit and called him a hyena. That fellow believed in a devil too; that lowest skull was a devil factory—he believed in him. He believed he had a long tail adorned with a fiery dart; he believed he had wings like a bat, and had a pleasant habit of breathing sulphur; and he believed he had a cloven foot—such as most of your clergymen think I am blessed with myself. They are shepherds of the sheep. The people are the sheep—that is all they are, they have to be watched and guarded by these shepherds and protected from the wolf who wants to reason with them. That is the doctrine. Now, all I claim is the same right to improve on that gentleman's politics, as on the dug-out, and the same right to improve upon his religion as upon his plough, or the musical instrument known as the tomtom—that is all.

Now, suppose the king and priest, if there was one, and there probably was one, as the farther you go back the more ignorant you find mankind and the thicker you find these gentlemen—suppose the king and priest had said: "That boat is the best boat that ever can be built; we got the model of that from Neptune, the god of the seas, and I guess the god of the water knows how to build a boat, and any man that says he can improve it by putting a stick in the middle with a rag on the end of it, and has any talk about the wind blowing this way, and that, he is a heretic—he is a blasphemer." Honor bright, what, in your judgment, would have been the effect upon the circumnavigation of the globe? I think we would have been on the other side yet. Suppose the king and priests had said: "That plow is the best that ever can be invented; the model of that was given to a pious farmer in a holy dream, and that twisted straw is the ne plus ultra of all twisted things, and any man who says he can out-twist it, we will twist him." Suppose the king and priests had said: "That tomtom is the finest instrument of music in the world—that is the kind of music found in heaven. An angel sat upon the edge of a glorified cloud playing upon that tomtom and became so entranced with the music that in a kind of ecstasy she dropped it and that is how we got it, and any man who talks about putting any improvement on that, he is not fit to live." Let me ask you—do you believe if that had been done that the human ears ever would have been enriched with the divine symphonies of Beethoven?

All I claim is the same right to improve upon this barbarian's ideas of politics and religion as upon everything else, and whether it is an improvement or not, I have a right to suggest it—that is my doctrine. They say to me, "God will punish you forever, if you do these things." Very well. I will settle with Him. I had rather settle with Him than any one of His agents. I do not like them very well. In theology I am a granger—I do not believe in middle-men, what little business I have with heaven I will attend to thyself. Our fathers thought, just as many now think, that you could force men to think your way and if they failed to do it by reason, they tried it another way. I used to read about it when I was a boy—it did not seem to me that these things were true; it did not seem to me that there ever was such heartless bigotry in the heart of man, but there was and is tonight. I used to read about it—I did not appreciate it. I never appreciated it until I saw the arguments of those gentlemen. They used to use just such arguments as that man in the dug-out would have used to the next man ahead of him. This low, miserable skull—this next man was a little higher, and this fellow behind called him a heretic, and the next was still a little higher, and he was called an infidel. And, so it went on through the whole row—always calling the man who was ahead an infidel and a heretic. No man was ever called so who was behind the army of progress. It has always been the man ahead that has been called the heretic. Heresy is the last and best thought always. Heresy extends the hospitality of the brain to a new idea; that is what the rotting says to the growing; that is what the dweller in the swamp says to the man on the sun-lit hill; that is what the man in the darkness cries out to the grand man upon whose forehead is shining the dawn of a grander day; that is what the coffin says to the cradle. Orthodoxy is a kind of shroud, and heresy is a banner—orthodoxy is a frog and heresy a star shining forever above the cradle of truth. I do not mean simply in religion, I mean in everything, and the idea I wish to impress upon you is that you should keep your minds open to all the influences of nature; you should keep your minds open to reason. Hear what a man has to say, and do not let the turtle-shell of bigotry grow above your brain. Give everybody a chance and an opportunity; that is all.

I saw the arguments that those gentlemen have used on each other through all the ages. I saw a little bit of thumbscrew not more than so long (illustrating), and attached to each end was a screw, and the inner surface vas trimmed with little protuberances to prevent their slipping; and when some man doubted—when a man had an idea—then those that did not have an idea put the thumbscrew upon him who did. He had doubted something. For instance, they told him, "Christ says you must love your enemies;" he says, "I do not know about that;" then they said, "We will show you!" "Do unto others as you would be done by," they said is the doctrine. He doubted. "We will show you that it is!" So they put this screw on; and in the name of universal love and universal forgiveness—"pray for those who despitefully use you"—they began screwing these pieces of iron into him—always done in the name of religion—always. It never was done in the name of reason, never was done in the name of science—never. No man was ever persecuted in defense of a truth—never. No man was ever persecuted except in defense of a lie—never.

This man had fallen out with them about something; he did not understand it as they did. For instance he said, "I do not believe there ever was a man whose strength was in his hair." They said: "You don't? We'll show you!" "I do not believe," he says, "that a fish ever swallowed a man to save his life." "You don't? Well, we'll show you!" And so they put this on, and generally the man would recant and say, "Well, I'll take it back." Well I think I should. Such men are not worth dying for. The idea of dying for a man that would tear the flesh of another on account of an honest difference of opinion—such a man is not worth dying for; he is not worth living for, and if I was in a position that I could not send a bullet through his brain, I would recant. I would say: "You write it down and I will sign it—I will admit that there is one God, or a million—suit yourself; one hell or a billion; you just write it—only stop this screw. You are not worth suffering for, you are not worth dying for and I am never going to take the part of any Lord that won't take my part—you just write it down and I'll sign it."

But there was now and then a man who would not do that. He said, "No, I believe I am right, and I will die for it," and I suppose we owe what little progress we have made to a few men in all ages of the world who really stood by their convictions. The men who stood by the truth and the men who stood by a fact, they are the men that have helped raise this world, and in every age there has been some sublime and tender soul who was true to his convictions, and who really lived to make men better. In every age some men carried the torch of progress and handed it to some other, and it has been carried through all the dark ages of barbarism, and had it not been for such men we would have been naked and uncivilized tonight, with pictures of wild beasts tattooed on our skins, dancing around some dried snake fetish.

When a man would not recant, these men, in the name of the love of the Lord, screwed them down to the last thread of agony and threw them into some dungeon, where, in the throbbing silence of darkness, they suffered the pangs of the fabled damned; and this was done in the name of civilization, love and order, and in the name of the most merciful Christ. There are no thumbscrews now; they are rusting away; but every man in this town who is not willing that another shall do his own thinking and will try to prevent it, has in him the same hellish spirit that made and used that very instrument of torture, and the only reason he does not use it today is because he cannot. The reason that I speak here tonight is because they cannot help it.

I saw at the same time a beautiful little instrument for the propagation of kindness, called "The Scavenger's Daughter." (The lecturer here described and illustrated construction of the instrument.) The victim would be thrown upon that instrument and the strain upon the muscles was such that insanity would sometimes come to his relief. See what we owe to the civilizing influence of the gentlemen who have made a certain idea in metaphysics necessary to salvation—see what we owe to them.

I saw a collar of torture which they put about the neck of their victim, and inside of that there were a hundred points; so that the victim could not stir without the skin being punctured with these points, and after a little while the throat would swell and suffocation would end the agony, and they would have that done in the presence of his wife and weeping children. That was all done so that finally everybody would love everybody else as his brother. I saw a rack. Imagine a wagon with a windlass on each end, and each windlass armed with leather bands, and a ratchet that prevented slipping. The victim was placed upon this.

Maybe he had denied something that some idiot said was true; may be he had a discussion—a division of opinion with a man, like John Calvin. John Calvin said Christ was the Eternal Son of God and Michael Servetus said that Christ was the son of the Eternal God. That was the only difference of opinion. Think of it! What an important thing it was! How it would have affected the price of food! "Christ is the Eternal Son of God," said one; "No," said the other, "Christ is the Son of Eternal God"—that was all, and for that difference of opinion Michael Servetus was burned at a slow fire of green wood, and the wind happening to blow the flames from him instead of towards him; he was in the most terrible agony, writhing for minutes and minutes, and hours and hours, and finally he begged and implored those wretches to move him so that the wind would blow the flames against him and destroy him without such hellish agony, but they were so filled with the doctrine of "love your enemies" that they would not do it. I never will, for my part, depend upon any religion that has ever shed a drop of human blood. *

[* Speaking of the Inquisition, Prof. Draper says: "With such savage alacrity did it carry out its object of protecting the interests of religion, that between 1480 and 1808 it had punished 340,000 persons, and of these nearly 32,000 had been burnt!" —Conflict between Religion and Science]

Upon this rack I have described, this victim was placed, and those chains were attached to his ankles and then to his waist, and clergymen—good men! pious men! men that were shocked at the immorality of their day! They talked about playing cards and the horrible crime of dancing! Oh, how such things shocked them; men going to theaters and seeing a play written by the grandest genius the world ever has produced. How it shocked their sublime and tender souls! But then commenced turning this machine, and they kept on turning until the ankles, knees, hips, elbows, shoulders and wrists were all dislocated and the victim was red with the sweat of agony, and they had standing by a physician to feel the pulse, so that the last faint flutter of life would not leave his veins. Did they wish to save his life? Yes. In mercy? No! Simply that they might have the pleasure of racking him once again. That is the spirit, and it is a spirit born of the doctrine that there is upon the throne of the universe a being who will eternally damn his children, and they said: "If God is going to have the supreme happiness of burning them forever, certainly he ought not to begrudge to us the joy of burning them for an hour or two." That was their doctrine, and when I read these things it seems to me that I have suffered them myself. When I look upon those instruments I look upon them as though I had suffered all these tortures myself. It seems to me as though I had stood upon the shore an exile and looking with tear-filled eyes toward home and native land. It seems as though my nails had been plucked out and into bleeding flesh needles had been thrust; as though my eyelids had been torn away and I had been set out in the ardent rays of the sun; as though I had been set out upon the sands of the sea and drowned by the inexorable tide; as though I had been in the dungeon waiting for the coming footsteps of relief; as though I had been upon the scaffold arid seen the glittering axe falling upon me; and seen bending above me the white faces of hypocrite priests; as though I had been taken from my wife and children to the public square, where faggots had been piled around me and the flames had climbed around my limbs and scorched my eyes to blindness; as though my ashes had been scattered by all the hands of hatred; and I feel like saying, that while I live I will do what little I can to preserve and augment the rights of men, women arid children; while I live I will do a little something so that they who come after me shall have the right to think and express that thought. The trouble is those who oppose us pretend they are better than we are. They are more mortal, they are kinder, they are more generous. I deny it. They are not. And if they are the ones that are to be saved in another world, and if those who simply think they are honest, and express that honest thought, are to be damned, there will be but little originality, to say the least of it, in heaven. They say they are better than we are—and to show you how much better they are I have got at home copies of some letters that passed between gentlemen high in the church several hundred years ago, and the question was this: "Ought we to cut out the tongues of blasphemers before we burn them?" And they finally decided that they ought to do so, and I will tell you the reason they gave: They said if they were not cut out that while they were being burned, they might, by their heresies, scandalize the gentleman who would bring the wood; they were too good to hear these things and they might be injured; and the same idea appears to prevail in this world now that they are too good and they must not be shocked.

They say to us: "You must not shock us, and when you say there is no hell we are shocked. You must not say that." When I go to church and they tell me there is a hell I must not get shocked; and if they tell me that there is not only a hell, but that I am going to it, I must not be shocked. Even if they take the next step and act as though they would be glad to see me there, still I must not be shocked. I will agree to keep from being shocked as long as anybody in the world—they can say what they please; I will not get shocked, but let me say it. You send missionaries to Turkey and tell them that the Koran is a lie. You shock them. You tell them that Mahomet was not a prophet. You shock them. It is too bad to shock them. You go to India and you tell them that Vishnu was nothing, Puranas was nothing, that Buddha was nobody, and your Brahma, he is nothing. Why do you shock these people? You should not do that; you ought not to hurt their feelings. I tell you no man on earth has a right to be shocked at the expression of an honest opinion when it is kindly done, and I don't believe there is any God in the universe who has put a curtain over the fact and made it a crime for the honest hand of investigation to endeavor to draw that curtain.

This world has not been fit to live in fifty years. There is no liberty in it—very little. Why, it is only a few years ago that all the Christian nations were engaged in the slave trade. It was not until 1808, that England abolished the slave trade, and up to that time her priests in her churches, and her judges on her benches, owned stock in slave ships, and luxuriated on the profits of piracy and murder; and when a man stood up and denounced it, they mobbed him as though he had been a common burglar or a horse thief. Think of it! It was not until the 28th day of August, 1833, that England abolished slavery in her colonies; and it was not until the first day of January, 1863, that Abraham Lincoln, by direction of the entire North, wiped that infamy out of this country; and I never speak of Abraham Lincoln but I want to say that he was, in my judgment, in many respects the grandest man ever president of the United States. I say that upon his tomb there ought to be this line—and I know of no other man deserving it so well as he: "Here lies one who, having been clothed with almost absolute power, never abused it except on the side of mercy."

Just think of it! Our churches and best people, as they call themselves, defending the institution of slavery. When I was a little boy I used to see steamers go down the Mississippi river with hundreds of men and women chained hand to hand, and even children, and men standing about them with whips in their hands and pistols in their pockets in the name of liberty, in the name of civilization and in the name of religion! I used to hear them preach to these slaves in the South and the only text they ever took was "Servants, be obedient unto your masters." That was the salutation of the most merciful God to a man whose back was bleeding, that was the salutation of the most merciful God to the slave mother bending over an empty cradle, to the woman from whose breast a child had been stolen—"Servants, be obedient unto you masters." That was what they said to a man running for his life and for his liberty through tangled swamps and listening to the baying of bloodhounds, and when he listened for them the voice came from heaven: "Servants, be obedient unto your masters."

That is civilization. Think what slaves we have been! Think how we have crouched and cringed before wealth even! How they used to cringe in old times before a man who was rich—there are so many of them gone into bankruptcy lately that we are losing a little of our fear.

We used to worship the golden calf, and the worst you can say of us now, is, we worship the gold of the calf, and even the calves are beginning to see this distinction. We used to go down on our knees to every man that held office; now he must fill it if he wishes any respect. We care nothing for the rich, except what will they do with their money? Do they benefit mankind? That is the question. You say this man holds an office. How does he fill it? —that is the question. And there is rapidly growing up in the world an aristocracy of heart and brain—the only aristocracy that has a right to exist. We are getting free. We are thinking in every direction. We are investigating with the microscope and the telescope. We are digging into the earth and finding souvenirs of all the ages. We are finding out something about the laws of health and disease. We are adding years to the span of human life and we are making the world fit to live in. That is what we are doing, and every man that has an honest thought and expresses it, helps, and every man that tries to keep honest thought from being expressed is an obstruction and a hindrance.

Now if men have been slaves what shall we say of women? They have been the slaves of slaves. The meaner a man is, the better he thinks he is than a woman. As a rule, you take an ignorant, brutal man—don't talk to him about a woman governing him, he don't believe it—not he; and nearly every religion of this world has been gallant enough to account for all the trouble and misfortune we have had by the crime of woman.

Even if it is true, I do not care; I had rather live in a world full of trouble with the woman I love than in heaven with nobody but men. Nearly every religion accounts for all the trouble we have ever had by the crime of woman. I recollect one book where I read an account of what is called the creation—I am not giving the exact words, I will give the substance of it. The supreme being thought best to make a world and one man—never thought about making a woman at that time; making a woman was a second thought, and I am free to admit that second thoughts as a rule are best. He made this world and one man, and put this man in a park, or garden, or public square, or whatever you might call it, to dress and keep it. The man had nothing to do. He moped around there as though he was waiting for a train. And the supreme being noticed that he got lonesome—I am glad He did! It occurred to Him that he would make a companion, and having made the world and one man out of nothing, and having used up all the nothing, He had to take a part of the man to start the woman with—I am not giving the exact language, neither do I say this story is true. I do not know. I would not want to deceive anybody.

So sleep fell upon this man, and they took from his side a rib—the French would call it a cutlet. And out of that they made a woman, and taking into consideration the amount and quality of the raw material used, I look upon it as the most successful job ever accomplished in this world. I am giving just a rough outline of this story. After He got the woman done she was brought to the man—not to see how she liked him, but to see how he liked her. He liked her and they went to keeping house. Before she was made there was really nothing to do; there was no news, no politics, no religion, not even civil service reform. And as the devil had not yet put in an appearance, there was no chance to conciliate him. They started in the housekeeping business, and they were told they could do anything they liked except eat an apple. Of course they ate it. I would have done it myself I know. I am satisfied I would have had an apple off that tree, if I had been there, in fifteen minutes. They were caught at it, and they were turned out, and there was an extra police force put on to keep them from coming in again. And then measles, and whooping-cough, mumps, etc., started in the race of man, roses began to have thorns and snakes began to have teeth, and people began to fight about religion and politics, and they have been fighting and scratching each other's eyes out from that day to this.

I read in another book an account of the same transaction. They tell us the Supreme Brahma made up his mind to make a man, a woman, and a world; and that he put this man and woman in the island of Ceylon. According to the description, it was the most beautiful isle that ever existed; it beggared the description of a Chicago land agent completely. It was delightful; the branches of the trees were so arranged that when the wind swept through them they seemed like a thousand aeolian harps, and the man was named Adami, and the Woman's name was Heva. This book was written about three or four thousand years before the other one, and all the commentators in this country agree that the story that was written first was copied from the one that was written last. I hope you will not let a matter of three or four thousand years interfere with your ideas on the subject. The Supreme Brahma said: "Let them have a period of courtship, because it is my desire that true love always should precede marriage"—and that was so much better than lugging her up to him and saying, "Do you like her?" that upon my word I said when I read it, "If either one of these stories turn out to be true, I hope it will be this one."

They had a courtship in the starlight and moonlight, and perfume-laden air, with the nightingale singing his song of joy, and they got in love. There was nobody to bother them, no prospective fathers or mothers-in-law, no gossiping neighbors, nobody to say "Young man, how do you propose to support her"—they got in love and they were married, and they started keeping house, and the Supreme Brahma said to them: "You must not leave this island." After awhile the man got uneasy—wanted to go west. He went to the western extremity of the island, and there the devil got up, and when he looked over on the mainland he saw such hills and valleys and torrents, and such mountains crowned with snow; such cataracts, robed in glory, that he went right back to Heva. Says he: "Come over here; it is a thousand times better;" says he: "let us emigrate." She said, like another woman: "No, let well enough alone; we have no rent to pay, and no taxes; we are doing very well now, let us stay where we are." But he insisted, and so she went with him, and when he got to this western extremity, where there was a little neck of land leading to this better land, he took her on his back and walked over, and the moment he got over he heard a crash, and he looked back and this narrow neck of land had sunk into the sea, leaving here and there a rock (and those rocks are called even unto this day the footsteps of Adami), and when he looked back this beautiful mirage had disappeared.

Instead of verdure and flowers there was naught but rocks and sand, and then he heard the voice of the Supreme Brahma crying out cursing them both to the lowest hell, and then it was that Adami said: "Curse me, if you choose, but not her; it was not her fault, it was mine; curse me." That is the kind of a man to start a world with. And the Supreme Brahma said "I will spare her, but I will not spare you." Then she spoke, out of a breast so full of affection that she has left a legacy of love to all her daughters: "If thou wilt not spare him, spare neither me, because I love him." Then the Supreme Brahma said—and I have liked him ever since—"I will spare both, and watch over you and your children forever." Now, really this story appears to me better than the other one. It is loftier; there is more in it than I can admire. In order to show you that humanity does not belong to any particular nation, and that there are great and tender souls everywhere, let me tell you a little more that is in this book. "Blessed is that man, and beloved of all the gods who is afraid of no man, and of whom no man is afraid." Think of that kind of character! Another: "Man is strength, woman is beauty; man is courage, woman is love; and where the one man loves the one woman the very angels leave heaven and come and sit in that house and sing for joy." I think that is nearly equal to this: "If you do not want your wife, give her a writing of divorcement," and make the mother of your children a houseless wanderer and a vagrant—nearly as good as that.

I believe that marriage should be a perfect partnership; that woman should have all the rights that man has, and one more—the right to be protected. I believe in marriage. It took hundreds and thousands of years for woman to get from a state of abject slavery up to the height even of marriage. I have not the slightest respect for the ideas of those short-haired women and long-haired men who denounce the institution of the family, who denounce the institution of marriage; but I hold in greater contempt the husband who would enslave his wife. I hold in greater contempt the man who is anything in his family except love and tenderness, and kindness. I say it took hundreds of years for woman to come from a state of slavery to marriage; and ladies, the chains that are upon your necks and the bracelets that are put upon your arms were iron, and they have been changed by the touch of the wand of civilization to shining, glittering gold. Woman came from a condition of abject slavery and thousands and thousands of them are in that condition now. I believe marriage should be a perfect and equal partnership. I do not like a man who thinks he is boss. That fellow in the dug-out was always talking about being boss. I do not like a man who thinks he is the head of the family. I do not like a man who thinks he has got authority and that the woman belongs to him—that wants for his wife a slave. I would not have a slave for my wife. I would not want the love of a woman that is not great enough, grand enough, and splendid enough to be free. I will never give to any woman my heart upon whom I afterwards would put chains.

Do you know sometimes I think generosity is about the only virtue there is. How I do hate a man that has to be begged and importuned every minute for a few cents by his wife. "Give me a dollar?" "What did you do with that fifty cents I gave you last Christmas?" If you make your wife a perpetual beggar, what kind of children do you expect to raise with a beggar for their mother? If you want great children, if you want to people this world with great and grand men and women they must be born of love and liberty. I have known men that would trust a woman with their heart—if you call that thing which pushes their blood around a heart; and with their honor—if you call that fear, of getting into the penitentiary, honor; I have known men that would trust that heart and that honor with a woman, but not their pocket-book—not a dollar bill. When I see a man of that kind, I think they know better than I do which of these three articles is the most valuable. I believe if you have got a dollar in the world and you have got to spend it, spend it like a man; spend it like a king, like a prince. If you have to spend it, spend it as though it was a dried leaf, and you were the owner of unbounded forests. I had rather be a beggar and spend my last dollar like a king than be a king and spend my money like a beggar. What is it worth compared with the love of a splendid woman?

People tell me that is very good doctrine for rich folks, but it won't do for poor folks. I tell you that there is more love in the huts and homes of the poor, than in the mansions of the rich, and the meanest but with love in it is a palace fit for the gods, and a palace without that, is a den only fit for wild beasts. The man who has the love of one splendid woman is a rich man. Joy is wealth, and love is the legal tender of the soul! Love is the only thing that will pay ten percent to borrower and lender both; and if some men were as ashamed of appearing cross in public as they are of appearing tender at home, this world would be infinitely better. I think you can make your home a heaven if you want to—you can make up your minds to that. When a man comes home let him come home like a ray of light in the night bursting through the doors and illuminating the darkness. What right has a man to assassinate joy, and murder happiness in the sanctuary of love—to be a cross man, a peevish man—is that the way he courted? Was there always something ailing him? Was he too nervous to hear her speak? When I see a man of that kind I am always sorry that doctors know so much about preserving life as they do.

It is not necessary to be rich, nor powerful, nor great to be a success; and neither is it necessary to have your name between the putrid lips of rumor to be great. We have had a false standard of success. In the years when I was a little boy we read in our books that no fellow was a success that did not make a fortune or get a big office, and he generally was a man that slept about three hours a night. They never put down in the books the names of those gentlemen that succeeded in life that slept all they wanted to; and we all thought that we could not sleep to exceed three or four hours if we ever expected to be anything in this world. We have had a wrong standard. The happy man is the successful man; and the man who makes somebody else happy, is a happy man. The man that has gained the love of one good, splendid, pure woman, his life has been a success, no matter if he dies in the ditch; and if he gets to be a crowned monarch of the world, and never had the love of one splendid heart, his life has been an ashen vapor.

A little while ago I stood by the tomb of the first Napoleon, a magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a dead deity, and here was a great circle, and in the bottom there, in a sarcophagus, rested at last the ashes of that restless man. I looked at that tomb, and I thought about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world. As I looked, in imagination I could see him walking up and down the banks of the Seine contemplating suicide. I could see him at Toulon; I could see him at Paris, putting down the mob; I could see him at the head of the army of Italy; I could see him crossing the bridge of Lodi, with the tri-color in his hand; I saw him in Egypt, fighting battles under the shadow of the Pyramids; I saw him returning; I saw him conquer the Alps, and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of Italy; I saw him at Marengo, I saw him at Austerlitz; I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the blast smote his legions, when death rode the icy winds of winter. I saw him at Leipsic; hurled back upon Paris, banished; and I saw him escape from Elba and retake an empire by the force of his genius. I saw him at the field of Waterloo, where fate and chance combined to wreck the fortune of their former king. I saw him at St. Helena, with his hands behind his back, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea, and I thought of all the widows he had made, of all the orphans, of all the tears that had been shed for his glory; and I thought of the woman, the only woman who ever loved him, pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition and I said to myself, as I gazed, "I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes, and lived in a little hut but with a vine running over the door and the purple grapes growing red in the amorous kisses of the autumn sun—I would rather have been that poor French peasant, to sit in my door, with my wife knitting by my side and my children upon my knees with their arms around my neck—I would rather have lived and died unnoticed and unknown except by those who loved me, and gone down to the voiceless silence of the dreamless dust—I would rather have been that French peasant than to have been that imperial impersonation of force and murder who covered Europe with blood and tears."

I tell you I had rather make somebody happy, I would rather have the love of somebody; I would rather go to the forest, far away, and build me a little cabin—build it myself and daub it with mud, and live there with my wife and children; I had rather go there and live by myself—our little family—and have a little path that led down to the spring, where the water bubbled out day and night like a little poem from the heart of the earth; a little hut with some hollyhocks at the corner, with their bannered bosoms open to the sun, and with the thrush in the air, like a song of joy in the morning; I would rather live there and have some lattice work across the window, so that the sunlight would fall checkered on the baby in the cradle; I would rather live there and have my soul erect and free, than to live in a palace of gold and wear the crown of imperial power and know that my soul was slimy with hypocrisy. It is not necessary to be rich and great and powerful in order to be happy. If you will treat your wife like a splendid flower, she will fill your life with a perfume and with joy.

I believe in the democracy of the fireside, I believe in the republicism of home, in the equality of man and woman, in the equality of husband and wife, and for this I am denounced by the sentinels upon the walls of Zion.

They say there must be a head to the family. I say no—equal rights for man and wife, and where there is really love there is liberty, and where the idea of authority comes in you will find that love has spread its pinions and flown forever. It is a splendid thing for me to think that when a woman really loves a man he never grows old in her eyes; she always sees the gallant gentleman that won her hand and heart; and when a man really and truly loves a woman she does not grow old to him; through the wrinkles of years he sees the face he loved and won. That is all there is in this world—all the rest amounts to nothing—it is a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing. You take from the family love, and nothing is left. There must be equality; there must be no master; there must be no servant. There must be equality and kindness. The man should be infinitely tender towards the woman—and why? —because she cannot go at hard work, she cannot make her own living. She has squandered her wealth of beauty and youth upon him.

Now, if women have been slaves, what do you say about children? Children have been the slaves of the slaves. I know children that turn pale with fright when they hear their mother's voice; children of property; children of crime, children of sub-cellars; children of the narrow streets, the flotsam and jetsam upon the wild, rude sea of life—my heart goes out to them one and all; I say they have all the rights we have and one more—the right to be protected. I believe in governing children by kindness, by love, by tenderness. If a child commits a fault take it in your arms, let your heart beat against its heart; don't go and talk to it about hell and the bankruptcy of the universe. If your child tells a lie—what of it? Be honest with the child, tell him you have told hundreds of them yourself. Then your child will not be afraid to tell you when it commits a fault; it will not regard you as old perfection, until it gets a few years older, and finds you are an old hypocrite—and you cannot put a thick enough veil upon you but what the eyes of childhood will peep through it; they will see; they will find out; and when your child tells a lie, examine yourself, and in all probability you will find you have been a tyrant. A tyrant father will have liars for his children. A liar is born of tyranny on the one hand and fear on the other. Truth comes from the lips of courage. It is born in confidence and honor. If you want a child to tell you the truth you want to be a faithful man yourself. You go at your little child, five or six years old, with a stick in your hand—what is he to do? Tell the truth? Then he will get whipped. What is he to do? I thank Mother Nature for putting ingenuity in the mind of a little child so that when it is attacked by a brutal parent it throws up a little breastwork in the shape of a lie. That being done by nations it is called strategy, and many a general wears his honors for having practiced it; and will you deny it to little children to protect themselves from brutal parents. Supposing a man as much larger than we are, larger than child would come at us with a liberty-pole in his hand and would shout in tones of thunder, "Who broke that plate?" Every one of us—including myself—would just stand right up and swear either that we never saw that plate, or that it was cracked when we got it. Give a child a chance; there is no other way to have children tell the truth—tell the truth to them—keep your contracts with your children the same as you would to your banker.

I was up at Grand Rapids, Michigan, the other day. There was a gentleman there, and his wife, who had promised to take their little boy for a ride every night for ten days, or every day for ten days, but they did not do it. They slipped out to the barn and they went without him. The day before I was there they played the same game on him again. He is a nice little boy, an American boy, a boy with brains, one of those boys that don't take the hatchet-story as a fact; he had his own ideas. They fooled him again, and they came around the corner as big as life, man and wife. The little fellow was standing on the door step with his nurse, and he looked at them, and he made this remark: "There go the two damndest liars in Grand Rapids." I merely tell you this story to show you that children have level heads; they understand this business.

Teach your children to tell you the truth—tell them the truth. If there is one here that ever intends to whip his child I have a favor to ask. Have your photograph taken when you are in the act, with your red and vulgar face, your brow corrugated, pretending you would rather be whipped yourself. Have the child's photograph taken too, with his eyes streaming with tears, and his chin dimpled with fear, as a little sheet of water struck by a sudden cold wind; and if your child should die I cannot think of a sweeter way to spend an afternoon than to go to the graveyard in the autumn, when the maples are clad in pink and gold, when the little scarlet runners come like poems out of the breast of the earth—go there and sit down and look at that photograph and think of the flesh, now dust, and how you caned it to writhe in pain and agony.

I will tell you what I am doing; I am doing what little I can to save the flesh of children. You have no right to whip them. It is not the way; and yet some Christians drive their children from their doors if they do wrong, especially if it is a sweet, tender girl—I believe there is no instance on record of any veal being given for the return of a girl—some Christians drive them from their doors and then go down upon their knees and ask God to take care of their children! I will never ask God to take care of my children unless I am doing my level best in that same direction. Some Christians act as though they thought when the Lord said, "Suffer little children to come unto me" that he had a raw-hide under His mantle—they act as if they thought so. That is all wrong. I tell yon my children this: Go where you may, commit what crime you may, fall to what depths of degradation you may, I can never shut my arms, my heart or my door to you. As long as I live you shall have one sincere friend; do not be afraid to tell anything wrong you have done; ten to one if I have not done the same thing. I am not perfection, and if it is necessary to sin in order to have sympathy, I am glad I have committed sin enough to have sympathy. The sternness of perfection I do not want. I am going to live so that my children can come to my grave and truthfully say, "He who sleeps here never gave us one moment of pain." Whether you call that religion or infidelity, suit yourselves; that is the way I intend to do it.

When I was a little fellow most everybody thought that some days were too sacred for the young ones to enjoy themselves in. That was the general idea. Sunday used to commence Saturday night at sundown, under the old text, "The evening and the morning were the first day." They commenced then, I think, to get a good ready. When the sun went down Saturday night, darkness ten thousand times deeper than ordinary night fell upon the house. The boy that looked the sickest was regarded as the most pious. You could not crack hickory nuts that night, and if you were caught chewing gum it was another evidence of the total depravity of the human heart. It was a very solemn evening. We would sometimes sing "Another Day has Passed." Everybody looked as though they had the dyspepsia—you know lots of people think they are pious, just because they are bilious, as Mr. Hood says. It was a solemn night, and the next morning the solemnity had increased. Then we went to church, and the minister was in a pulpit about twenty feet high. If it was in the winter there was no fire; it was not thought proper to be comfortable while you were thanking the Lord. The minister commenced at firstly and ran up to about twenty-fourthly, and then he divided it up again; and then he made some concluding remarks, and then he said lastly, and when he said lastly he was about half through. Then we had what we called the catechism—the chief end of man. I think that has a tendency to make a boy kind of bubble up cheerfully.

We sat along on a bench with our feet about eight inches from the floor. The minister said, "Boys, do you know what becomes of the wicked?" We all answered as cheerfully as grasshoppers sing in Minnesota, "Yes, sir." "Do you know, boys, that you all ought to go to hell?" "Yes, sir." As a final test: "Boys, would you be willing to go to hell if it was God's will?" And every little liar said, "Yes, sir." The dear old minister used to try to impress upon our minds about how long we would stay there after we got there, and he used to say in an awful tone of voice—do you know I think that is what gives them the bronchitis—that tone—you never heard of an auctioneer having it—"Suppose that once in a billion of years a bird were to come from some far, distant clime and carry off in its bill a grain of sand, when the time came when the last animal matter of which this mundane sphere is composed would be carried away," said he, "boys, by that time in hell it would not be sun up." We had this sermon in the morning and the same one in the afternoon, only he commenced at the other end. Then we started home full of doctrine—we went sadly and sole solemnly back. If it was in the summer and the weather was good and we had been good boys, they used to take us down to the graveyard, and to cheer us up we had a little conversation about coffins, and shrouds, and worms, and bones, and dust, and I must admit that it did cheer me up when I looked at those sunken graves those stones, those names half effaced with the decay of years. I felt cheered, for I said, "This thing can't last always." Then we had to read a good deal. We were not allowed to read joke books or anything of that kind. We read Baxter's "Call to the Unconverted;" Fox's "Book of Martyrs;" Milton's "History of the Waldenses," and "Jenkins on the Atonement." I generally read Jenkins; and I have often thought that the atonement ought to be pretty broad in its provisions to cover the case of a man that would write a book like that for a boy.

Then we used to go and see how the sun was getting on—when the sun was down the thing was over. I would sit three or four hours reading Jenkins, and then go out and the sun would not have gone down perceptibly. I used to think it stuck there out of simple, pure cussedness. But it went down at last, it had to; that was a part of the plan, and as the last rim of light would sink below the horizon, off would go our hats and we would give three cheers for liberty once again. I do not believe in making Sunday hateful for children. I believe in allowing them to be happy, and no day can be so sacred but that the laugh of a child will make it holier still. There is no God in the heavens that is pleased at the sadness of childhood. You cannot make me believe that. You fill their poor, little, sweet hearts with the fearful doctrine of hell. A little child goes out into the garden; there is a tree covered with a glory of blossoms and the child leans against it, and there is a little bird on the bough singing and swinging, and the waves of melody run out of its tiny throat, thinking about four little speckled eggs in the nest, warmed by the breast of its mate, and the air is filled with perfume, and that little child leans against that tree and thinks about hell and the worm that never dies; think of filling the mind of a child with that infamous dogma!

Where was that doctrine of hell born? Where did it come from? It came from that gentleman in the dug-out; it was a souvenir from the lower animal. I honestly believe that the doctrine of hell was born in the glittering eyes of snakes that run in frightful coils watching for their prey. I believe it was born in the yelping and howling and growling and snarling of wild beasts, I believe it was born in the grin of hyenas and in the malicious chatter of depraved apes, I despise it, I defy it and hate it; and when the great ship freighted with the world goes down in the night of death, chaos and disaster, I will not be guilty of the ineffable meanness of pushing from my breast my wife and children and padding off in some orthodox canoe. I will go down with those I love and with those who love me. I will go down with the ship and with my race. I will go where there is sympathy. I will go with those I love. Nothing can make me believe that there is any being that is going to burn and torment and damn his children forever. No, sir! You will never make me believe you can divide the world up into saints and sinners, and that the saints are all going to heaven and the others to hell. I don't believe that you can draw the line.

You are sometimes in the presence of a great disaster; there is a fire; at the fourth story window you see the white face of a woman with a child in her arms, and humanity calls out for somebody to go to the rescue through that smoke and flame, maybe death. They don't call for a Baptist, nor a Presbyterian, nor a Methodist, but humanity calls for a man. And all at once, out steps somebody that nobody ever did think was much, not a very good man, and yet he springs up the ladder and is lost in the smoke, and a moment afterward he emerges, and the cruel serpents of fire climb and hiss around his brave form, but he goes on and you see that woman and child in his arms, and you see them come down and they are handed to the bystanders, and he has fainted, maybe, and the crowd stand hushed, as they always do, in the presence of a grand action, and a moment after the air is rent with a cheer. Tell me that that man is going to hell, who is willing to lose his life merely to keep a woman and child from the torment of a moment's flame—tell me that he is going to hell; I tell you that it is a falsehood, and if anybody says so he is mistaken.

I have seen upon the battlefield a boy sixteen years of age struck by the fragment of a shell and life oozing slowly from the ragged lips of his death-wound, and I have heard him and seen him die with a curse upon his lips, and he had the face of his mother in his heart. Do you tell me that that boy left that field where he died that the flag of his country might wave forever in the air—do you tell me that he went from that field, where he lost his life in defense of the liberties of men, to an eternal hell? I tell you it is infamous! —and such a doctrine as that would tarnish the reputation of a hyena and smirch the fair fame of an anaconda.

Let us see whether we are to believe it or not. We had a war a little while ago and there was a draft made, and there was many a good Christian hired another fellow to take his place, hired one that was wicked, hired a sinner to go to hell in his place for five hundred dollars! While if he was killed he would go to heaven. Think of that. Think of a man willing to do that for five hundred dollars! I tell you when you come right down to it they have got too much heart to believe it; they say they do, but they do not appreciate it. They do not believe it. They would go crazy if they did. They would go insane. If a woman believed it, looking upon her little dimpled darling in the cradle, and said, "Nineteen chances in twenty I am raising fuel for hell," she would go crazy. They don't believe it, and can't believe it. The old doctrine was that the angels in heaven would become happier as they looked upon those in hell. That is not the doctrine now; we have civilized it. That is not the doctrine. What is the doctrine now? The doctrine is that those in heaven can look upon the agonies of those in hell, whether it is a fire or whatever it is, without having the happiness of those in heaven decreased—that is the doctrine.

That is preached today in every orthodox pulpit in Harrisburg. Let me put one case and I will be through with this branch of the subject. A husband and wife love each other. The husband is a good fellow and the wife a splendid woman. They live and love each other and all at once he is taken sick, and they watch day after day and night after night around his bedside until their property is wasted and finally she has to go to work, and she works through eyes blinded with tears, and the sentinel of love watches at the bedside of her prince, and at the least breath or the least motion she is awake; and she attends him night after night and day after day for years, and finally he dies, and she has him in her arms and covers his wasted face with the tears of agony and love. He is a believer and she is not. He dies, and she buries him and puts flowers above his grave, and she goes there in the twilight of evening and she takes her children, and tells her little boys and girls through her tears how brave and how true and how tender their father was, and finally she dies and she goes to hell, because she was not a believer; and he goes to the battlements of heaven and looks over and sees the woman who loved him with all the wealth of her love, and whose tears made his dead face holy and sacred, and he looks upon her in the agonies of hell without having his happiness diminished in the least.

With all due respect to everybody, I say, damn any such doctrine as that. It is infamous! It never ought to be preached; it never ought to be believed. We ought to be true to our hearts, and the best revelation of the infinite is the human heart.

Now, I come back to where I started from. They used to think that a certain day was too good for a child to be happy in, so they filled the imagination of this child with these horrors of hell. I said, and I say again, no day can be so sacred but that the laugh of a child will make the holiest day more sacred still. Strike with hand of fire, oh, weird musician, thy harp, strung with Apollo's golden hair; fill the vast cathedral aisles with symphonies sweet and dim, deft toucher of the organ keys; blow bugler, blow, until thy silver notes do touch the skies, with moonlit waves, and charm the lovers wandering on the vine-clad hills; but know, your sweetest strains are discords all, compared with childhood's happy laugh, the laugh that fills the eyes with light and every heart with joy; oh, rippling river of life, thou art the blessed boundary-line between the beasts and man, and every wayward wave of thine doth drown some fiend of care; oh, laughter, divine daughter of joy, make dimples enough in the cheeks of the world to catch and hold and glorify all the tears of grief.

I am opposed to any religion that makes them melancholy, that makes children sad, and that fills the human heart with shadow.

Give a child a chance. When I was a boy we always went to bed when we were not sleepy, and we always got up when we were sleepy. Let a child commence at which end of the day they please, that is their business; they know more about it than all the doctors in the world. The voice of nature when a man is free, is the voice of right, but when his passions have been damned up by custom, the moment that is withdrawn, he rushes to some excess. Let him be free from the first. Let your children grow in the free air and they will fill your house with perfume. Do not create a child to be a post set in an orthodox row; raise investigators and thinkers, not disciples and followers; cultivate reason, not faith; cultivate investigation, not superstition; and if you have any doubt yourself about a thing being so, tell them about it; don't tell them the world was made in six days—if you think six days means six good whiles, tell them six good whiles. If you have any doubts about anybody being in a furnace and not being burnt, or even getting uncomfortably warm, tell them so—be honest about it. If you look upon the jaw-bone of a donkey as not a good weapon, say so. Give a child a chance. If you think a man never went to sea in a fish, tell them so, it won't make them any worse. Be honest—that is all; don't cram their heads with things that will take them years and years to unlearn; tell them facts—it is just as easy. It is as easy to find out botany, and astronomy, and geology, and history—it is as easy to find out all these things as to cram their minds with things you know nothing about,* and where a child knows what the name of a flower is when it sees it, the name of a bird and all those things, the world becomes interesting everywhere, and they do not pass by the flowers—they are not deaf to all the songs of birds, simply because they are walking along thinking about hell.

[* "We know of no difference between matter and spirit, because we know nothing with certainty about either. Why trouble ourselves about matters of which, however important they may be we do know nothing and can know nothing?" —Huxley]

I tell you, this is a pretty good world if we only love somebody in it, if we only make somebody happy, if we are only honor-bright in it, if we have no fear. That is my doctrine. I like to hear children at the table telling what big things they have seen during the day; I like to hear their merry voices mingling with the clatter of knives and forks. I had rather hear that than any opera that was ever put on the stage. I hate this idea of authority. I hate dignity. I never saw a dignified man that was not after all an old idiot. Dignity is a mask; a dignified man is afraid that you will know he does not know everything. A man of sense and argument is always willing to admit what he don't know—why? —because there is so much that he does know; and that is the first step towards learning anything—willingness to admit what you don't know and when you don't understand a thing, ask—no matter how small and silly it may look to other people—ask, and after that you know. A man never is in a state of mind that he can learn until he gets that dignified nonsense out of him, and so, I say let us treat our children with perfect kindness and tenderness.

Now, then, I believe in absolute intellectual liberty; that a man has a right to think, and think wrong, provided he does the best he can to think right—that is all. I have no right to say that Mr. Smith shall not think; Mr. Smith has no right to say I shall not think; I have no right to go and pull a clergyman out of his pulpit and say: "You shall not preach that doctrine," but I have just as much right as he has to say my say. I have no right to lie about a clergyman, and with great modesty I claim—and with some timidity—that he has no right to slander me—that is all.

I claim that every man and wife are equal, except that she has a right to be protected; that there is nothing like the democracy of the home and the republicism of the fire-side, and that a man should study to make his wife's life one perpetual poem of joy; that there should be nothing but kindness and goodness; and then I say that children should be governed by love, by kindness, by tenderness, and by the sympathy of love, kindness and tenderness. That is the religion I have got, and it is good enough for me whether it suits anybody else in the world or not. I think it is altogether more important to believe in my wife than it is to believe in the master; I think it is altogether more important to love my children than the twelve apostles—that is my doctrine. I may be wrong, but that is it. I think more of the living than I do of the dead. This world is for the living. The grave is not a throne, and a corpse is not a king. The living have a right to control this world. I think a good deal more of today than I do of yesterday, and I think more of tomorrow than I do of this day; because it is nearly gone—that is the way I feel, and this my creed. The time to be happy is now; the way to be happy is to make somebody else happy; and the place to be happy is here. I never will consent to drink skim milk here with the promise of cream somewhere else.

Now, my friends, I have some excuses to offer for the race to which I belong. In the first place, this world is not very well adapted to raising good people; there is but one-quarter of it land to start with; it is three times as well adapted to fish-culture as it is to man, and of that one-quarter there is but a small belt where they raise men of genius. There is one strip from which all the men and women of genius come. When you go too far north yon find no brain; when you go too far south you find no genius, and there never has been a high degree of civilization except where there is winter. I say that winter is the father and mother of the fireside, the family of nations; and around that fireside blossom the fruits of our race. In a country where they don't need any bed-clothes except the clouds, revolution is the normal condition not much civilization there. When in the winter I go by a house where the curtain is a little bit drawn, and I look in there and see children poking the fire and wishing they had as many dollars or knives or something else as there are sparks; when I see the old man smoking and the smoke curling above his head like incense from the altar of domestic peace, the other children reading or doing something, and the old lady with her needle and shears—I never pass such a scene that I do not feel a little ache of joy in my heart.

Awhile ago they were talking about annexing San Domingo. They said it was the finest soil in the world, and so on. Says I, "It don't raise the right kind of folks; you take five thousand of the best people in the world and let them settle there and you will see the second generation barefooted, with the hair sticking out of the top of their sombreros; you will see them riding barebacked, with a rooster under each arm, going to a cockfight on Sunday." That is one excuse I have.

Another is, I think we came from the lower animals, I am not dead sure of it. On that question I stand about eight to seven. If there is nothing of the snake, or hyena, or jackal in man, why would he cut his brother's throat for a difference of belief? Why would he build dungeons and burn the flesh of his brother man with red hot irons? I think we came from the lower animals. When I first heard that doctrine I did not like it. I felt sorry for our English friends, who would have to trace their pedigree back to the Duke of Orangutan, or the Earl of Chimpanzee. But I have read so much about rudimentary bones and rudimentary muscles that I began to doubt about it. Says I: "What do you mean by rudimentary muscles?" They say: "A muscle that has gone into bankruptcy—" "Was it a large muscle?" "Yes." "What did our forefathers use it for?" They say: "To flap their ears with." After I found that out I was astonished to find that they had become rudimentary; I know so many people for whom it would be handy today, so many people where that would have been on an exact level with their intellectual development. So after while I began to like it, and says I to myself: "You have got to come to it." I thought after all I had rather belong to a race of people that came from skull-less vertebrae in the dim Laurentian period, that wiggled without knowing they were wiggling, that began to develop and came up by a gradual development until they struck this gentleman in the dug-out; coming up slowly—up-up-up—until, for instance, they produced such a man as Shakespeare—he who harvested all the fields of dramatic thought, and after whom all others have been only gleaners of straw, he who found the human intellect dwelling in a hut, touched it with the wand of his genius and it became a palace—producing him and hundreds of others I might mention—with the angels of progress leaning over the far horizon beckoning this race of work and thought—I had rather belong to a race commencing at the skull-less vertebrae producing the gentleman in the dug-out and so on up, than to have descended from a perfect pair upon which the Lord has lost money from that day to this. I had rather belong to a race that is going up than to one that is going down. I would rather belong to one that commenced at the skull-less vertebrae and started for perfection, than to belong to one, that started from perfection and started for the skull-less vertebrae.

These are the excuses I have for my race, and taking everything into consideration, I think we have done extremely well.

Let us have more liberty and free thought. Free thought will give us truth. It is too early in the history of the world to write a creed. Our fathers were intellectual slaves; our fathers were intellectual serfs. There never has been a free generation on the globe. Every creed you have got bears the mark of whip, and chain, and fagot. There has been no creed written by a free brain. Wait until we have had two or three generations of liberty and it will then be time enough to seize the swift horse of progress by the bridle and say—thus far and no farther; and in the meantime let us be kind to each other; let us be decent towards each other. We are all travelers on the great plain we call life and there is nobody quite sure, what road to take—not just dead sure, you known. There are lots of guide-boards on the plain and you find thousands of people swearing today that their guide-board is the only board that shows the right direction. I go and talk to them and they say: "You go that way, or you will be damned." I go to another and they say: "You go this way, or you will be damned." I find them all fighting and quarreling and beating each other, and then I say: "Let us cut down all these guide-boards." "What," they say, "leave us without any guide-boards?" I say: "Yes. Let every man take the road he thinks is right; and let everybody else wish him a happy journey; let us part friends."

I say to you tonight, my friends, that I have no malice upon this subject—not a particle; I simply wish to express my thoughts. The world has grown better just in proportion as it is happier; the world has grown better just in proportion as it has lost superstition; the world has grown better just in the proportion that the sacerdotal class has lost influence—just exactly; the world has grown better just in proportion that secular ideas have taken possession of the world. The world has grown better just in proportion that it has ceased talking about the visions of the clouds, and talked about the realities of the earth. The world has grown better just in the proportion that it has grown free, and I want to do what little I can in my feeble way to add another flame to the torch of progress. I do not know, of course, what will come, but if I have said anything tonight that will make a husband love his wife better, I am satisfied; if I have said anything, that will make a wife love her husband better, I am satisfied; if I have said anything that will add one more ray of joy to life, I am satisfied; if I have said anything that will save the tender flesh of a child from a blow, I am satisfied; if I have said anything that will make us more willing to extend to others the right we claim for ourselves, I am satisfied.

I do not know what inventions are in the brain of the future; I do not know what garments of glory may be woven for the world in the loom of the years to be; we are just on the edge of the great ocean of discovery. I do not know what is to be discovered; I do not know what science will do for us. I do know that science did just take a handful of sand and make the telescope, and with it read all the starry leaves of heaven; I know that science took the thunderbolts from the hands of Jupiter, and now the electric spark, freighted with thought and love, flashes under waves of the sea. I know that science stole a tear from the cheek of unpaid labor, converted it into steam, and created a giant that turns with tireless arms the countless wheels of toil; I know that science broke the chains from human limbs and gave us instead the forces of nature for our slaves; I know that we have made the attraction of gravitation work for us; we have made the lightnings our messengers; we have taken advantage of fire and flames and wind and sea; these slaves have no backs to be whipped; they have no hearts to be lacerated; they have no children to be stolen, no cradles to be violated. I know that science has given us better houses; I know it has given us better pictures and better books; I know it has given us better wives and better husbands, and more beautiful children. I know it has enriched a thousand-fold our lives; and for that reason I am in favor of intellectual liberty.

I know not, I say, what discoveries may lead the world to glory; but I do know that from the infinite sea of the future never a greater or grander blessing will strike this bank and shoal of time than liberty for man, woman and child.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have delivered this lecture a great many times; clergymen have attended, and editors of religious newspapers, and they have gone away and written in their papers and declared in their pulpits that in this lecture I advocated universal adultery; they have gone away and said it was obscene and disgusting. Between me and my clerical maligners, between me and my religious slanderers, I leave you, ladies and gentlemen, to judge.