The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume VIII Part 9

_Answer_. I guess not; but I may pay Lansing something for advertising my lecture. I suppose Mr. Wilc.o.x (who controls the Opera House) did what he thought was right. I hear he is a good man. He probably got a little frightened and began to think about the day of judgment. He could not help it, and I cannot help laughing at him.

_Question_. Those in Meriden who most strongly oppose you are radical Republicans. Is it not a fact that you possess the confidence and friends.h.i.+p of some of the most respected leaders of that party?

_Answer_. I think that all the respectable ones are friends of mine. I am a Republican because I believe in the liberty of the body, and I am an Infidel because I believe in the liberty of the mind. There is no need of freeing cages. Let us free the birds.

If Mr. Lansing knew me, he would be a great friend. He would probably annoy me by the frequency and length of his visits.

_Question_. During the recent presidential campaign did any clergymen denounce you for your teachings, that you are aware of?

_Answer_. Some did, but they would not if they had been running for office on the Republican ticket.

_Question_. What is most needed in our public men?

_Answer_. Hearts and brains.

_Question_. Would people be any more moral solely because of a disbelief in orthodox teaching and in the Bible as an inspired book, in your opinion?

_Answer_. Yes; if a man really believes that G.o.d once upheld slavery; that he commanded soldiers to kill women and babes; that he believed in polygamy; that he persecuted for opinion's sake; that he will punish forever, and that he hates an unbeliever, the effect in my judgment will be bad. It always has been bad. This belief built the dungeons of the Inquisition. This belief made the Puritan murder the Quaker, and this belief has raised the devil with Mr. Lansing.

_Question_. Do you believe there will ever be a millennium, and if so how will it come about?

_Answer_. It will probably start in Meriden, as I have been informed that Lansing is going to leave.

_Question_. Is there anything else bearing upon the question at issue or that would make good reading, that I have forgotten, that you would like to say?

_Answer_. Yes. Good-bye.

--_The Sunday Union_, New Haven, Conn., April 10, 1881.

BEACONSFIELD, LENT AND REVIVALS.

_Question_. What have you to say about the attack of Dr. Buckley on you, and your lecture?

_Answer_. I never heard of Dr. Buckley until after I had lectured in Brooklyn. He seems to think that it was extremely ill bred in me to deliver a lecture on the "Liberty of Man, Woman and Child,"

during Lent. Lent is just as good as any other part of the year, and no part can be too good to do good. It was not a part of my object to hurt the feelings of the Episcopalians and Catholics.

If they think that there is some subtle relation between hunger and heaven, or that faith depends upon, or is strengthened by famine, or that veal, during Lent, is the enemy of virtue, or that beef breeds blasphemy, while fish feeds faith--of course, all this is nothing to me. They have a right to say that vice depends upon victuals, sanct.i.ty on soup, religion on rice and chast.i.ty on cheese, but they have no right to say that a lecture on liberty is an insult to them because they are hungry. I suppose that Lent was inst.i.tuted in memory of the Savior's fast. At one time it was supposed that only a divine being could live forty days without food. This supposition has been overthrown.

It has been demonstrated by Dr. Tanner to be utterly without foundation. What possible good did it do the world for Christ to go without food for forty days? Why should we follow such an example? As a rule, hungry people are cross, contrary, obstinate, peevish and unpleasant. A good dinner puts a man at peace with all the world--makes him generous, good natured and happy. He feels like kissing his wife and children. The future looks bright.

He wants to help the needy. The good in him predominates, and he wonders that any man was ever stingy or cruel. Your good cook is a civilizer, and without good food, well prepared, intellectual progress is simply impossible. Most of the orthodox creeds were born of bad cooking. Bad food produced dyspepsia, and dyspepsia produced Calvinism, and Calvinism is the cancer of Christianity.

Oatmeal is responsible for the worst features of Scotch Presbyterianism.

Half cooked beans account for the religion of the Puritans. Fried bacon and saleratus biscuit underlie the doctrine of State Rights.

Lent is a mistake, fasting is a blunder, and bad cooking is a crime.

_Question_. It is stated that you went to Brooklyn while Beecher and Talmage were holding revivals, and that you did so for the purpose of breaking them up. How is this?

_Answer_. I had not the slightest idea of interfering with the revivals. They amounted to nothing. They were not alive enough to be killed. Surely one lecture could not destroy two revivals.

Still, I think that if all the persons engaged in the revivals had spent the same length of time in cleaning the streets, the good result would have been more apparent. The truth is, that the old way of converting people will have to be abandoned. The Americans are getting hard to scare, and a revival without the "scare" is scarcely worth holding. Such maniacs as Hammond and the "Boy Preacher" fill asylums and terrify children. After saying what he has about h.e.l.l, Mr. Beecher ought to know that he is not the man to conduct a revival. A revival sermon with h.e.l.l left out--with the brimstone gone--with the worm that never dies, dead, and the Devil absent--is the broadest farce. Mr. Talmage believes in the ancient way. With him h.e.l.l is a burning reality. He can hear the shrieks and groans. He is of that order of mind that rejoices in these things. If he could only convince others, he would be a great revivalist. He cannot terrify, he astonishes. He is the clown of the horrible--one of Jehovah's jesters. I am not responsible for the revival failure in Brooklyn. I wish I were. I would have the happiness of knowing that I had been instrumental in preserving the sanity of my fellow-men.

_Question_. How do you account for these attacks?

_Answer_. It was not so much what I said that excited the wrath of the reverend gentlemen as the fact that I had a great house.

They contrasted their failure with my success. The fact is, the people are getting tired of the old ideas. They are beginning to think for themselves. Eternal punishment seems to them like eternal revenge. They see that Christ could not atone for the sins of others; that belief ought not to be rewarded and honest doubt punished forever; that good deeds are better than bad creeds, and that liberty is the rightful heritage of every soul.

_Question_. Were you an admirer of Lord Beaconsfield?

_Answer_. In some respects. He was on our side during the war, and gave it as his opinion that the Union would be preserved. Mr.

Gladstone congratulated Jefferson Davis on having founded a new nation. I shall never forget Beaconsfield for his kindness, nor Gladstone for his malice. Beaconsfield was an intellectual gymnast, a political athlete, one of the most adroit men in the world. He had the persistence of his race. In spite of the prejudices of eighteen hundred years, he rose to the highest position that can be occupied by a citizen. During his administration England again became a Continental power and played her game of European chess.

I have never regarded Beaconsfield as a man controlled by principle, or by his heart. He was strictly a politician. He always acted as though he thought the clubs were looking at him. He knew all the arts belonging to his trade. He would have succeeded anywhere, if by "succeeding" is meant the attainment of position and power.

But after all, such men are splendid failures. They give themselves and others a great deal of trouble--they wear the tinsel crown of temporary success and then fade from public view. They astonish the pit, they gain the applause of the galleries, but when the curtain falls there is nothing left to benefit mankind. Beaconsfield held convictions somewhat in contempt. He had the imagination of the East united with the ambition of an Englishman. With him, to succeed was to have done right.

_Question_. What do you think of him as an author?

_Answer_. Most of his characters are like himself--puppets moved by the string of self-interest. The men are adroit, the women mostly heartless. They catch each other with false bait. They have great worldly wisdom. Their virtue and vice are mechanical.

They have hearts like clocks--filled with wheels and springs. The author winds them up. In his novels Disraeli allows us to enter the greenroom of his heart. We see the ropes, the pulleys and the old masks. In all things, in politics and in literature, he was cold, cunning, accurate, able and successful. His books will, in a little while, follow their author to their grave. After all, the good will live longest.

--Was.h.i.+ngton correspondent, _Brooklyn Eagle_, April 24, 1881.

ANSWERING THE NEW YORK MINISTERS.*

[* Ever since Colonel Ingersoll began the delivery of his lecture called _The Great Infidels_, the ministers of the country have made him the subject of special attack. One week ago last Sunday the majority of the leading ministers in New York made replies to Ingersoll's latest lecture.

What he has to say to these replies will be found in a report of an interview with Colonel Ingersoll.

No man is harder to pin down for a long talk than the Colonel. He is so beset with visitors and eager office seekers anxious for help, that he can hardly find five minutes unoccupied during an entire day. Through the shelter of a private room and the guardians.h.i.+p of a stout colored servant, the Colonel was able to escape the crowd of seekers after his personal charity long enough to give some time to answer some of the ministerial arguments advanced against him in New York.]

_Question_. Have you seen the attacks made upon you by certain ministers of New York, published in the _Herald_ last Sunday?

_Answer_. Yes, I read, or heard read, what was in Monday's _Herald_.

I do not know that you could hardly call them attacks. They are substantially a repet.i.tion of what the pulpit has been saying for a great many hundred years, and what the pulpit will say just so long as men are paid for suppressing truth and for defending superst.i.tion. One of these gentlemen tells the lambs of his flock that three thousand men and a few women--probably with quite an emphasis on the word "Few"--gave one dollar each to hear their Maker cursed and their Savior ridiculed. Probably nothing is so hard for the average preacher to bear as the fact that people are not only willing to hear the other side, but absolutely anxious to pay for it. The dollar that these people paid hurt their feelings vastly more than what was said after they were in. Of course, it is a frightful commentary on the average intellect of the pulpit that a minister cannot get so large an audience when he preaches for nothing, as an Infidel can draw at a dollar a head. If I depended upon a contribution box, or upon pa.s.sing a saucer that would come back to the stage enriched with a few five cent pieces, eight or ten dimes, and a lonesome quarter, these gentlemen would, in all probability, imagine Infidelity was not to be feared.

The churches were all open on that Sunday, and all could go who desired. Yet they were not full, and the pews were nearly as empty of people as the pulpit of ideas. The truth is, the story is growing old, the ideas somewhat moss-covered, and everything has a wrinkled and withered appearance. This gentleman says that these people went to hear their Maker cursed and their Savior ridiculed.

Is it possible that in a city where so many steeples pierce the air, and hundreds of sermons are preached every Sunday, there are three thousand men, and a few women, so anxious to hear "their Maker cursed and their Savior ridiculed" that they are willing to pay a dollar each? The gentleman knew that n.o.body cursed anybody's Maker. He knew that the statement was utterly false and without the slightest foundation. He also knew that n.o.body had ridiculed the Savior of anybody, but, on the contrary, that I had paid a greater tribute to the character of Jesus Christ than any minister in New York has the capacity to do. Certainly it is not cursing the Maker of anybody to say that the G.o.d described in the Old Testament is not the real G.o.d. Certainly it is not cursing G.o.d to declare that the real G.o.d never sanctioned slavery or polygamy, or commanded wars of extermination, or told a husband to separate from his wife if she differed with him in religion. The people who say these things of G.o.d--if there is any G.o.d at all--do what little there is in their power, unwittingly of course, to destroy his reputation. But I have done something to rescue the reputation of the Deity from the slanders of the pulpit. If there is any G.o.d, I expect to find myself credited on the heavenly books for my defence of him. I did say that our civilization is due not to piety, but to Infidelity. I did say that every great reformer had been denounced as an Infidel in his day and generation. I did say that Christ was an Infidel, and that he was treated in his day very much as the orthodox preachers treat an honest man now. I did say that he was tried for blasphemy and crucified by bigots. I did say that he hated and despised the church of his time, and that he denounced the most pious people of Jerusalem as thieves and vipers.

And I suggested that should he come again he might have occasion to repeat the remarks that he then made. At the same time I admitted that there are thousands and thousands of Christians who are exceedingly good people. I never did pretend that the fact that a man was a Christian even tended to show that he was a bad man.

Neither have I ever insisted that the fact that a man is an Infidel even tends to show what, in other respects, his character is. But I always have said, and I always expect to say, that a Christian who does not believe in absolute intellectual liberty is a curse to mankind, and that an Infidel who does believe in absolute intellectual liberty is a blessing to this world. We cannot expect all Infidels to be good, nor all Christians to be bad, and we might make some mistakes even if we selected these people ourselves. It is admitted by the Christians that Christ made a great mistake when he selected Judas. This was a mistake of over eight per cent.

Chaplain Newman takes pains to compare some great Christians with some great Infidels. He compares Was.h.i.+ngton with Julian, and insists, I suppose, that Was.h.i.+ngton was a great Christian. Certainly he is not very familiar with the history of Was.h.i.+ngton, or he never would claim that he was particularly distinguished in his day for what is generally known as vital piety. That he went through the ordinary forms of Christianity n.o.body disputes. That he listened to sermons without paying any particular attention to them, no one will deny. Julian, of course, was somewhat prejudiced against Christianity, but that he was one of the greatest men of antiquity no one acquainted with the history of Rome can honestly dispute.

When he was made emperor he found at the palace hundreds of gentlemen who acted as barbers, hair-combers, and brushers for the emperor.

He dismissed them all, remarking that he was able to wash himself.

These dismissed office-holders started the story that he was dirty in his habits, and a minister of the nineteenth century was found silly enough to believe the story. Another thing that probably got him into disrepute in that day, he had no private chaplains.

As a matter of fact, Julian was forced to pretend that he was a Christian in order to save his life. The Christians of that day were of such a loving nature that any man who differed with them was forced to either fall a victim to their ferocity or seek safety in subterfuge. The real crime that Julian committed, and the only one that has burned itself into the very heart and conscience of the Christian world, is, that he transferred the revenues of the Christian churches to heathen priests. Whoever stands between a priest and his salary will find that he has committed the unpardonable sin commonly known as the sin against the Holy Ghost.

This gentleman also compares Luther with Voltaire. If he will read the life of Luther by Lord Brougham, he will find that in his ordinary conversation he was exceedingly low and vulgar, and that no respectable English publisher could be found who would soil paper with the translation. If he will take the pains to read an essay by Macaulay, he will find that twenty years after the death of Luther there were more Catholics than when he was born. And that twenty years after the death of Voltaire there were millions less than when he was born. If he will take just a few moments to think, he will find that the last victory of Protestantism was in Holland; that there has never been one since, and will never be another. If he would really like to think, and enjoy for a few moments the luxury of having an idea, let him ponder for a little while over the instructive fact that languages having their root in the Latin have generally been spoken in Catholic countries, and that those languages having their root in the ancient German are now mostly spoken by people of Protestant proclivities. It may occur to him, after thinking of this a while, that there is something deeper in the question than he has as yet perceived. Luther's last victory, as I said before, was in Holland; but the victory of Voltaire goes on from day to day. Protestantism is not holding its own with Catholicism, even in the United States. I saw the other day the statistics, I believe, of the city of Chicago, showing that, while the city had increased two or three hundred per cent., Protestantism had lagged behind at the rate of twelve per cent.

I am willing for one, to have the whole question depend upon a comparison of the worth and work of Voltaire and Luther. It may be, too, that the gentleman forgot to tell us that Luther himself gave consent to a person high in office to have two wives, but prudently suggested to him that he had better keep it as still as possible. Luther was, also, a believer in a personal Devil. He thought that deformed children had been begotten by an evil spirit.

On one occasion he told a mother that, in his judgment, she had better drown her child; that he had no doubt that the Devil was its father. This same Luther made this observation: "Universal toleration is universal error, and universal error is universal h.e.l.l." From this you will see that he was an exceedingly good man, but mistaken upon many questions. So, too, he laughed at the Copernican system, and wanted to know if those fool astronomers could undo the work of G.o.d. He probably knew as little about science as the reverend gentleman does about history.