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846 lines
46 KiB
Plaintext
13 page printout.
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Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.
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This file, its printout, or copies of either
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are to be copied and given away, but NOT sold.
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Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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The Works of ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
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**** ****
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Part 1 -- FIELD - INGERSOLL debate.
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1887
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An Open Letter to Robert G. Ingersoll.
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by Dr. Henry M. Field
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Dear Sir: I am glad that I know you, even though some of my
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brethren look upon you as a monster because of your unbelief. I
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shall never forget the long evening I spent at your house in
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Washington; and in what I have to say, however it may fail to
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convince you, I trust you will feel that I have not shown myself
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unworthy of your courtesy or confidence.
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Your conversation, then and at other times, interested me
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greatly. I recognized at once the elements of your power over large
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audiences, in your wit and dramatic talent -- impersonating
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characters and imitating tones of voice and expressions of
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countenance -- and your remarkable use of language, which even in
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familiar talk often rose to a high degree of eloquence. All this
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was a keen intellectual stimulus. I was, for the most part, a
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listener; but as we talked freely of religious matters, I protested
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against your unbelief as utterly without reason. Yet there was no
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offence given or taken, and we parted, I trust, with a feeling of
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mutual respect.
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Still further, we found many points of sympathy. I do not
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hesitate to say that there are many things in which I agree with
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you, in which I love what you love and hate what you hate. A man's
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hatreds are not the least important part of him; they are among the
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best indications of his character. You love truth, and hate lying
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and hypocrisy -- all the petty arts and deceits of the world by
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which men represent themselves to be other than they are -- as well
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as the pride and arrogance, in which they assume superiority over
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their fellow-beings. Above all, you hate every form of injustice
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and oppression. Nothing moves your indignation so much as "man's
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inhumanity to man," and you mutter "curses, not loud but deep," on
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the whole race of tyrants and oppressors, whom you would sweep from
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the face of the earth. And yet, you do not hate oppression more
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than I, nor love liberty more. Nor will I admit that you have any
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stronger desire for that intellectual freedom, to the attainment of
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which you look forward as the last and greatest emancipation of
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mankind.
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Nor have you a greater horror of superstition. Indeed, I might
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say that you cannot have so great, for the best of all reasons,
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that you have not seen so much of it; you have not stood on the
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banks of the Ganges, and seen the Hindoos by tens of thousands
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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1
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THE FIELD-INGERSOLL DISCUSSION.
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by Dr. Henry M. Field
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rushing madly to throw themselves into the sacred river, even
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carrying the ashes of their dead to cast them upon the waters. It
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seems but yesterday that I was sitting on the back of an elephant,
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looking down on this horrible scene of human degradation. Such
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superstition overthrows the very foundations of morality. In place
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of the natural sense of right and wrong, which is written in men's
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consciences and hearts, it introduces an artificial standard, by
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which the order of things is totally reversed: right is made wrong,
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and wrong is made right. It makes that a virtue which is not a
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virtue, and that a crime which is not a crime. Religion consists in
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a round of observances that have no relation whatever to natural
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goodness, but which rather exclude it by being a substitute for it.
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Penances and pilgrimages take the place of justice and mercy,
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benevolence and charity. Such a religion, so far from being a
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purifier, is the greatest corrupter of morals; so that it is no
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extravagance to say of the Hindoos, who are a gentle race, that
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they might be virtuous and good if they were not so religious. But
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this colossal superstition weighs upon their very existence,
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crushing out even natural virtue. Such a religion is an
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immeasurable curse.
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I hope this language is strong enough to satisfy even your own
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intense hatred of superstition. You cannot loathe it more than I
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do. So far we agree perfectly. But unfortunately you do not limit
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your crusade to the religions of Asia, but turn the same style of
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argument against the religion of Europe and America, and, indeed,
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against the religious belief and worship of every country and
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clime. In this matter you make no distinctions: you would sweep
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them all away; church and cathedral must go with the temple and the
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pagoda, as alike manifestations of human credulity, and proofs of
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the intellectual feebleness and folly of mankind. While under the
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impression of that memorable evening at your house, I took up some
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of your public addresses, and experienced a strange revulsion of
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feeling. I could hardly believe my eyes as I read, so inexpressibly
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was I shocked. Things which I held sacred you not only rejected
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with unbelief, but sneered at with contempt. Your words were full
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of a bitterness so unlike anything I had heard from your lips, that
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I could not reconcile the two, till I reflected that in Robert
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Ingersoll (as in the most of us) there were two men, who were not
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only distinct, but contrary the one to the other -- the one gentle
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and sweet-tempered; the other delighting in war as his native
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element. Between the two, I have a decided preference for the
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former. I have no dispute with the quiet and peaceable gentleman,
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whose kindly spirit makes sunshine in his home; but it is that
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other man over yonder, who comes forth into the arena like a
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gladiator, defiant and belligerent, that rouses my antagonism. And
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yet I do not intend to stand up even against him; but if he will
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only sit down and listen patiently, and answer in those soft tones
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of voice which he knows so well how to use, we can have a quiet
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talk, which will certainly do him no harm, while it relieves my
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troubled mind.
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What then is the basis of this religion which you despise? At
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the foundation of every form of religious faith and worship, is the
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idea of God. Here you take your stand; you do not believe in God.
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Of course you do not deny absolutely the existence of a Creative
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Power: for that would be to assume a knowledge which no human being
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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2
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THE FIELD-INGERSOLL DISCUSSION.
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by Dr. Henry M. Field
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can possess. How small is the distance that we can see before us!
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The candle of our intelligence throws its beams but a little way,
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beyond which the circle of light is compassed by universal
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darkness. Upon this no one insists more than yourself I have heard
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you discourse upon the insignificance of man in a way to put many
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preachers to shame. I remember your illustration from the myriads
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of creatures that live on plants, from which you picked out, to
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represent human insignificance, an insect too small to be seen by
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the naked eye, whose world was a leaf, and whose life lasted but a
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single day! Surely a creature that can only be seen with a
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microscope, cannot know that a Creator does not exist!
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This, I must do you the justice to say, you do not affirm. All
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that you can say is, that if there be no knowledge on one side,
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neither is there on the other; that it is only a matter of
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probability; and that, judging from such evidence as appeals to
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your senses and your understanding, you do not believe that there
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is a God. Whether this be a reasonable conclusion or not, it is at
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least an intelligible state of mind.
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Now I am not going to argue against what the Catholics call
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"invincible ignorance" -- an incapacity on account of temperament
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-- for I hold that the belief in God, like the belief in all
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spiritual things, comes to some minds by a kind of intuition. There
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are natures so finely strung that they are sensitive to influences
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which do not touch others. You may say that it is mere poetical
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rhapsody when Shelley writes:
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"The awful shadow of some unseen power,
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Floats, through unseen, among us."
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But there are natures which are not at all poetical or dreamy,
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only most simple and pure, which, in moments of spiritual
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exaltation, are almost conscious of a Presence that is not of this
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world. But this, which is a matter of experience, will have no
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weight with those who do not have that experience. For the present,
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therefore, I would not be swayed one particle by mere sentiment,
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but look at the question in the cold light of reason alone.
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The idea of God is, indeed, the grandest and most awful that
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can be entertained by the human mind. Its very greatness overpowers
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us, so that it seems impossible that such a Being should exist. But
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if it is hard to conceive of Infinity, it is still harder to get
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any intelligible explanation of the present order of things without
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admitting the existence of an intelligent Creator and Upholder of
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all. Galileo, when he swept the sky with his telescope, traced the
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finger of God in every movement of the heavenly bodies. Napoleon,
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when the French savants on the voyage to Egypt argued that there
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was no God, disdained any other answer than to point upward to the
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stars and ask, "Who made all these?" This is the first question,
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and it is the last. The farther we go, the more we are forced to
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one conclusion. No man ever studied nature with a more simple
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desire to know the truth than Agassiz, and yet the more he
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explored, the more he was startled as he found himself constantly
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face to face with the evidences of MIND.
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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3
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THE FIELD-INGERSOLL DISCUSSION.
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by Dr. Henry M. Field
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Do you say this is "a great mystery," meaning that it is
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something that we do not know anything about? Of course, it is "a
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mystery." But do you think to escape mystery by denying the Divine
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existence? You only exchange one mystery for another. The first of
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all mysteries is, not that God exists, but that we exist. Here we
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are. How did we come here? We go back to our ancestors; but that
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does not take away the difficulty; it only removes it farther off.
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Once begin to climb the stairway of past generations, and you will
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find that it is a Jacob's ladder, on which you mount higher and
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higher until you step into the very presence of the Almighty.
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But even if we know that there is a God, what can we know of
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His character? You say, "God is whatever we conceive Him to be." We
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frame an image of Deity out of our consciousness -- it is simply a
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reflection of our own personality, cast upon the sky like the image
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seen in the Alps in certain states of the atmosphere -- and then
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fall down and worship that which we have created, not indeed with
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our hands, but out of our minds. This may be true to some extent of
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the gods of mythology, but not of the God of Nature, who is as
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inflexible as Nature itself. You might as well say that the laws of
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nature are whatever we imagine them to be. But we do not go far
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before we find that, instead of being pliant to our will, they are
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rigid and inexorable, and we dash ourselves against them to our own
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destruction. So God does not bend to human thought any more than to
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human will. The more we study Him the more we find that He is not
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what we imagined him to be; that He is far greater than any image
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of Him that we could frame.
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But, after all, you rejoin that the conception of a Supreme
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Being is merely an abstract idea, of no practical importance, with
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no bearing upon human life. I answer, it is of immeasurable
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importance. Let go the idea of God, and you have let go the highest
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moral restraint. There is no Ruler above man; he is a law unto
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himself -- a law which is as impotent to produce order, and to hold
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society together, as man is with his little hands to hold the stars
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in their courses.
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I know how you reason against the Divine existence from the
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moral disorder of the world. The argument is one that takes strong
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hold of the imagination, and may be used with tremendous effect.
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You set forth in colors none too strong the injustice that prevails
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in the relations of men to one another -- the inequalities of
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society; the haughtiness of the rich and the misery of the poor;
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you draw lurid pictures of the vice and crime which run riot in the
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great capitals which are the centers of civilization; and when you
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have wound up your audience to the highest pitch, you ask, "How can
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it be that there is a just God in heaven, who looks down upon the
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earth and sees all this horrible confusion, and yet does not lift
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His hand to avenge the innocent or punish the guilty? "To this I
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will make but one answer: Does it convince yourself? I do not mean
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to imply that you are conscious of insincerity. But an orator is
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sometimes carried away by his own eloquence, and states things more
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strongly than he would in his cooler moments. So I venture to ask:
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With all your tendency to skepticism, do you really believe that
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there is no moral government of the world -- no Power behind nature
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"making for righteousness?" Are there no retribution in history?
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When Lincoln stood on the field of Gettysburg, so lately drenched
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
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4
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|
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THE FIELD-INGERSOLL DISCUSSION.
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by Dr. Henry M. Field
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with blood, and, reviewing the carnage of that terrible day,
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accepted it as the punishment of our national sins, was it a mere
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theatrical flourish in him to lift his hand to heaven, and exclaim,
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"Just and true arc Thy ways, Lord God Almighty!"
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Having settled it to your own satisfaction that there is no
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God, you proceed in the same easy way to dispose of that other
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belief which lies at the foundation of all religion -- the
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immortality of the soul. With an air of modesty and diffidence that
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would carry an audience by storm, you confess your ignorance of
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what, perhaps, others are better acquainted with, when you say,
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"This world is all that I know anything about, so far as I
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recollect." This is very wittily put, and some may suppose it
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contains an argument; but do you really mean to say that you do not
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know anything except what you "recollect," or what you have seen
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with your eyes? Perhaps you never saw your grandparents; but have
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you any more doubt of their existence than of that of your father
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and mother whom you did see?
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Here, as when you speak of the existence of God, you carefully
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avoid any positive affirmation: you neither affirm nor deny. You
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are ready for whatever may "turn up." In your jaunty style, if you
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find yourself hereafter in some new and unexpected situation, you
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will accept it and make the best of it, and be "as ready as the
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next man to enter on any remunerative occupation!"
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But while airing this pleasant fancy, you plainly regard the
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hope of another life as a beggar's dream -- the momentary illusion
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of one who, stumbling along life's highway, sets him down by the
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roadside, footsore and weary, cold and hungry, and falls asleep,
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and dreams of a time when he shall have riches and plenty. Poor
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creature! let him dream; it helps him to forget his misery, and may
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give him a little courage for his rude awaking to the hard reality
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of life. But it is all a dream, which dissolves in thin air, and
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floats away and disappears. This illustration I do not take from
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you, but simply choose to set forth what (as I infer from the
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sentences above quoted and many like expressions) may describe, not
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unfairly, your state of mind. Your treatment of the subject is one
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of trifling. You do not speak of it in a serious way, but lightly
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and flippantly, as if it were all a matter of fancy and conjecture,
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and not worthy of sober consideration.
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Now, does it never occur to you that there is something very
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cruel in this treatment of the belief of your fellow-creatures, on
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whose hope of another life hangs all that relieves the darkness of
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their present existence? To many of them life is a burden to carry,
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and they need all the helps to carry it that can be found in
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reason, in philosophy, or in religion. But what support does your
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hollow creed supply? You are a man of warm heart, of the tenderest
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sympathies. Those who know you best, and love you most, tell me
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that you cannot bear the sight of suffering even in animals; that
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your natural sensibility is such that you find no pleasure in
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sports, in hunting or fishing; to shoot a robin would make you feel
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like a murderer. If you see a poor man in trouble your first
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impulse is to help him. You cannot see a child in tears but you
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want to take up the little fellow in your arms, and make him smile
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again. And yet, with all your sensibility, you hold the most
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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5
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THE FIELD-INGERSOLL DISCUSSION.
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by Dr. Henry M. Field
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remorseless and pitiless creed in the world -- a creed in which
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there is not a gleam of mercy or of hope. A mother has lost her
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only son. She goes to his grave and throws herself upon it, the
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very picture of woe. One thought only keeps her from despair: it is
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that beyond this life there is a world where she may once more
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clasp her boy in her arms. What will you say to that mother? You
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are silent, and your silence is a sentence of death to her hopes.
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By that grave you cannot speak; for if you were to open your lips
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and tell that mother what you really believe, it would be that her
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son is blotted out of existence, and that she can never look upon
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his face again. Thus with your iron heel do you trample down and
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crush the last hope of a broken heart.
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When such sorrow comes to you, you feel it as keenly as any
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man. With your strong domestic attachments one cannot pass out of
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your little circle without leaving a great void in your heart, and
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your grief is as eloquent as it is hopeless. No sadder words ever
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fell from human lips than these, spoken over the coffin of one to
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whom you were tenderly attached: "Life is but a narrow vale,
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between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities!" This is a
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doom of annihilation, which strike a chill to the stoutest heart.
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Even you must envy the faith which, as it looks upward, sees those
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"peaks of two eternities," not "cold and barren," but warm with the
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glow of the setting sun, which gives promise of a happier tomorrow!
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I think I hear you say, "So might it be! Would that I could
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believe it! "for no one recognizes more the emptiness of life as it
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is. I do not forget the tone in which you said: "Life is very sad
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to me; it is very pitiful; there isn't much to it." True indeed!
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With your belief, or want of belief, there is very little to it;
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and if this were all, it would be a fair question whether life were
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worth living. In the name of humanity, let us cling to all that is
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left us that can bring a ray of hope into its darkness, and thus
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lighten its otherwise impenetrable gloom.
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I observe that you not infrequently entertain yourself and
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your audiences by caricaturing certain doctrines of the Christian
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religion. The "Atonement," as you look upon it, is simply
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"punishing the wrong man" -- letting the guilty escape and putting
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the innocent to death. This is vindicating justice by permitting
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injustice. But is there not another side to this? Does not the idea
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of sacrifice run through human life, and ennoble human character?
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You see a mother denying herself for her children, foregoing every
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comfort, enduring every hardship, till at last, worn out by her
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labor and her privation, she folds her hands upon her breast. May
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it not be said truly that she gives her life for the life of her
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children? History is full of sacrifice, and it is the best part of
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history. I will not speak of "the noble army of martyrs, "but of
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heroes who have died for their country or for liberty -- what is it
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but this element of devotion for the good of others that gives such
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glory to their immortal names? How then should it be thought a
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thing without reason that a Deliverer of the race should give His
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life for the life of the world?
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So, too, you find a subject for caricature in the doctrine of
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"Regeneration." But what is regeneration but a change of character
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shown in a change of life? Is that so very absurd? Have you never
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||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
6
|
||
|
||
THE FIELD-INGERSOLL DISCUSSION.
|
||
by Dr. Henry M. Field
|
||
|
||
seen a drunkard reformed? Have you never seen a man of impure life,
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who, after running his evil course, had, like the prodigal, "come
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to himself" -- that is, awakened to his shame, and turning from it,
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come back to the path of purity, and finally regained a true and
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noble manhood? Probably you would admit this, but say that the
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change was the result of reflection, and of the man's own strength
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of will. The doctrine of regeneration only adds to the will of man
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the power of God. We believe that man is weak, but that God is
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mighty; and that when man tries to raise himself, an arm is
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stretched out to lift him up to a height which he could not attain
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||
alone. Sometimes one who has led the worst life, after being
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plunged into such remorse and despair that he feels as if he were
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enduring the agonies of hell, turns back and takes another course:
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he becomes "a new creature," whom his friends can hardly recognize
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as he "sits clothed and in his right mind." The change is from
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darkness to light, from death to life; and he who has known but one
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such case will never say that the language is too strong which
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describes that man as "born again."
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If you think that I pass lightly over these doctrines, not
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||
bringing out all the meaning which they bear, I admit it. I am not
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||
writing an essay in theology, but would only show, in passing, by
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||
your favorite method of illustration, that the principles involved
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are the same with which you are familiar in everyday life.
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||
|
||
But the doctrine which excites your bitterest animosity is
|
||
that of Future Retribution. The prospect of another life, reaching
|
||
on into an unknown futurity, you would contemplate with composure
|
||
were it not for the dark shadow hanging over it. But to live only
|
||
to suffer; to live when asking to die; to "long for death, and not
|
||
be able to find it" -- is a prospect which arouses the anger of one
|
||
who would look with calmness upon death as an eternal sleep. The
|
||
doctrine loses none of its terrors in passing through your hands;
|
||
for it is one of the means by which you work upon the feelings of
|
||
your hearers. You pronounce it "the most horrible belief that ever
|
||
entered the human mind: that the Creator should bring beings into
|
||
existence to destroy them! This would make Him the most fearful
|
||
tyrant in the universe -- a Moloch devouring his own children!" I
|
||
shudder when I recall the fierce energy with which you spoke as you
|
||
said, "Such a God I hate with all the intensity of my being!"
|
||
|
||
But gently, gently, Sir! We will let this burst of fury pass
|
||
before we resume the conversation. When you are a little more
|
||
tranquil, I would modestly suggest that perhaps you are fighting a
|
||
figment of your imagination. I never heard of any Christian teacher
|
||
who said that "the Creator brought beings into the world to destroy
|
||
them! " Is it not better to moderate yourself to exact statements,
|
||
especially when, with all modifications, the subject is one to
|
||
awaken a feeling the most solemn and profound?
|
||
|
||
Now I am not going to enter into a discussion of this
|
||
doctrine. I will not quote a single text. I only ask you whether it
|
||
is not a scientific truth that the effect of everything which is of
|
||
the nature of a cause is eternal. Science has opened our eyes to
|
||
some very strange facts in nature. The theory of vibrations is
|
||
carried by the physicists to an alarming extent. They tell us that
|
||
it is literally and mathematically true that you cannot throw a
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
7
|
||
|
||
THE FIELD-INGERSOLL DISCUSSION.
|
||
by Dr. Henry M. Field
|
||
|
||
ball in the air but it shakes the solar system. Thus all things act
|
||
upon all. What is true in space may be true in time, and the law of
|
||
physics may hold in the spiritual realm. When the soul of man
|
||
departs out of the body, being released from the grossness of the
|
||
flesh, it may enter on a life a thousand times more intense than
|
||
this: in which it will not need the dull senses as avenues of
|
||
knowledge, because the spirit itself will be all eye, all ear, all
|
||
intelligence; while memory, like an electric flash, will in an
|
||
instant bring the whole of the past into view; and the moral sense
|
||
will be quickened as never before. Here then we have all the
|
||
conditions of retribution -- a world which, however shadowy it may
|
||
be seem, is yet as real as the homes and habitations and activities
|
||
of our present state; with memory trailing the deeds of a lifetime
|
||
behind it, and conscience, more inexorable than any judge, giving
|
||
its solemn and final verdict.
|
||
|
||
With such conditions assumed, let us take a case which would
|
||
awaken your just indignation -- that of a selfish, hardhearted, and
|
||
cruel man; who sacrifices the interests of everybody to his own;
|
||
who grinds the faces of the poor, robbing the widow and the orphan
|
||
of their little all; and who, so far from making restitution, dies
|
||
with his ill-gotten gains held fast in his clenched hand. How long
|
||
must the night be to sleep away the memory of such a hideous life?
|
||
If he wakes, will not the recollection cling to him still? Are
|
||
there any waters of oblivion that can cleanse his miserable soul?
|
||
If not -- if he cannot forget -- surely he cannot forgive himself
|
||
for the baseness which now he has no opportunity to repair. Here,
|
||
then, is a retribution which is inseparable from his being, which
|
||
is a part of his very existence. The undying memory brings the
|
||
undying pain.
|
||
|
||
Take another case -- alas! too sadly frequent. A man of
|
||
pleasure betrays a young, innocent, trusting woman by the promise
|
||
of his love, and then casts her off, leaving her to sink down,
|
||
down, through every degree of misery and shame, till she is lost in
|
||
depths, which plummet never sounded, and disappears. Is he not to
|
||
suffer for this poor creature's ruin? Can he rid himself of it by
|
||
fleeing beyond "that borne from whence no traveler returns"? Not
|
||
unless he can flee from himself: for in the lowest depths of the
|
||
under-world -- a world in which the sun never shines -- that image
|
||
will still pursue him. As he wanders in its gloomy shades a pale
|
||
form glides by him like an affrighted ghost. The face is the same,
|
||
beautiful even in its sorrow, but with a look upon it as of one who
|
||
has already suffered an eternity of woe. In an instant all the past
|
||
comes back again. He sees the young, unblessed mother wandering in
|
||
some lonely place, that only the heavens may witness her agony and
|
||
her despair. There he sees her holding up in her arms the babe that
|
||
had no right to be born, and calling upon God to judge her
|
||
betrayer. How far in the future must he travel to forget that look?
|
||
Is there any escape except by plunging into the gulf of
|
||
annihilation?
|
||
|
||
Thus far in this paper I have taken a tone of defence. But I
|
||
do not admit that the Christian religion needs any apology, -- it
|
||
needs only to be rightly understood to furnish its own complete
|
||
vindication. Instead of considering its "evidences," which is but
|
||
going round the outer walls, let us enter the gates of the temple
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
8
|
||
|
||
THE FIELD-INGERSOLL DISCUSSION.
|
||
by Dr. Henry M. Field
|
||
|
||
and see what is within. Here we find something better than "towers
|
||
and bulwarks" in the character of Him who is the Founder of our
|
||
Religion, and not its Founder only, but its very core and being.
|
||
Christ is Christianity. Not only is He the Great Teacher, but the
|
||
central subject of what He taught, so that the whole stands or
|
||
falls with Him.
|
||
|
||
In our first conversation, I observed that, with all your
|
||
sharp comments on things sacred, you professed great respect for
|
||
the ethics of Christianity, and for its author. "Make the Sermon on
|
||
the Mount your religion," you said, "and there I am with you." Very
|
||
well! So far, so good. And now, if you will go a little further,
|
||
you may find still more food for reflection.
|
||
|
||
All who have made a study of the character and teachings of
|
||
Christ, even those who utterly deny the supernatural, stand in awe
|
||
and wonder before the gigantic figure which is here revealed. Renan
|
||
closes his "Life of Jesus" with this as the result of his long
|
||
study: "Jesus will never be surpassed. His worship will be renewed
|
||
without ceasing; his story [legend] will draw tears from beautiful
|
||
eyes without end; his sufferings will touch the finest natures; ALL
|
||
THE AGES WILL PROCLAIM THAT AMONG THE SONS OF MEN THERE HAS NOT
|
||
RISEN A GREATER THAN JESUS, "SOCRATES DIED LIKE A PHILOSOPHER, BUT
|
||
JESUS CHRIST LIKE A GOD!"
|
||
|
||
Here is an argument for Christianity to which I pray you to
|
||
address yourself. As you do not believe in miracles, and are ready
|
||
to explain everything by natural causes, I beg you to tell us how
|
||
came it to pass that a Hebrew peasant, born among the hills of
|
||
Judea, had a wisdom above that of Socrates or Plato, of Confucius
|
||
or Buddha? This is the greatest of miracles, that such a Being has
|
||
lived and died on the earth.
|
||
|
||
Since this is the chief argument for Religion, does it not
|
||
become one who undertakes to destroy it to set himself first to
|
||
this central position, instead of wasting his time on mere
|
||
outposts? When you next address one of the great audiences that
|
||
hang upon your words, is it unfair to ask that you lay aside such
|
||
familiar topics as Miracles or Ghosts, or a reply to Talmage, and
|
||
tell us what you think of JESUS CHRIST; whether you look upon Him
|
||
as an impostor, or merely as a dreamer -- a mild and harmless
|
||
enthusiast; or are you ready to acknowledge that He is entitled to
|
||
rank among the great teachers of mankind?
|
||
|
||
But if you are compelled to admit the greatness of Christ, you
|
||
take your revenge on the Apostles, whom you do not hesitate to say
|
||
that you "don't think much of" In fact, you set them down in a most
|
||
peremptory way as "a poor lot." It did seem rather an unpromising
|
||
"lot," that of a boat-load of fishermen, from which to choose the
|
||
apostles of a religion -- almost as unpromising as it was to take
|
||
a rail-splitter to be the head of a nation in the greatest crisis
|
||
of its history! But perhaps in both cases there was a wisdom higher
|
||
than ours, that chose better than we. It might puzzle even you to
|
||
give a better definition of religion than this of the Apostle
|
||
James: "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is
|
||
this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and
|
||
to keep himself unspotted from the world;" or to find among those
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
9
|
||
|
||
THE FIELD-INGERSOLL DISCUSSION.
|
||
by Dr. Henry M. Field
|
||
|
||
sages of antiquity, with whose writings you are familiar, a more
|
||
complete and perfect delineation of that which is the essence of
|
||
all goodness and virtue, than Paul's description of the charity
|
||
which "suffereth long and is kind;" or to find in the sayings of
|
||
Confucius or of Buddha anything more sublime than this aphorism of
|
||
John: "God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God,
|
||
and God in him."
|
||
|
||
And here you must allow me to make a remark, which is not
|
||
intended as a personal retort, but simply in the interest of that
|
||
truth which we both profess to seek, and to count worth more than
|
||
victory. Your language is too sweeping to indicate the careful
|
||
thinker, who measures his words and weighs them in a balance. Your
|
||
lectures remind me of the pictures of Gustave Dore, who preferred
|
||
to paint on a large canvas, with figures as gigantesque as those of
|
||
Michael Angelo in his Last Judgment. The effect is very powerful,
|
||
but if he had softened his colors a little, -- if there were a few
|
||
delicate touches, a mingling of light and shade, as when twilight
|
||
is stealing over the earth, -- the landscape would be more true to
|
||
nature. So, believe me, your words would be more weighty if they
|
||
were not so strong. But whenever you touch upon religion you seem
|
||
to lose control of yourself, and a vindictive feeling takes
|
||
possession of you, which causes you to see things so distorted from
|
||
their natural appearance that you cannot help running into the
|
||
broadest caricature. You swing your sentences as the woodman swings
|
||
his axe. Of course, this "slashing" style is very effective before
|
||
a popular audience, which does not care for nice distinctions, or
|
||
for evidence that has to be sifted and weighed. but wants opinions
|
||
off hand, and likes to have its prejudices and hatreds echoed back
|
||
in a ringing voice. This carries the crowd, but does not convince
|
||
the philosophic mind. The truth-seeker cannot cut a road through
|
||
the forest with sturdy blows; he has a hidden path to trace, and
|
||
must pick his way with slow and cautious step to find that which is
|
||
more precious than gold.
|
||
|
||
But if it were possible for you to sweep away the "evidences
|
||
of Christianity," you have not swept away Christianity itself; it
|
||
still lives, not only in tradition, but in the hearts of the
|
||
people, entwined with all that is sweetest in their domestic life,
|
||
from which it must be torn out with unsparing hand before it can be
|
||
exterminated. To begin with, you turn your back upon history. All
|
||
that men have done and suffered for the sake of religion was folly.
|
||
The Pilgrims, who crossed the sea to find freedom to worship God in
|
||
the forests of the New World, were miserable fanatics, There is no
|
||
more place in the world for heroes and martyrs. He who sacrifices
|
||
his life for a faith, or an idea, is a fool. The only practical
|
||
wisdom is to have a sharp eye to the main chance. If you keep on in
|
||
this work of demolition, you will soon destroy all our ideals.
|
||
Family life withers under the cold sneer -- half pity and half
|
||
scorn -- with which you look down on household worship, Take from
|
||
our American firesides such scenes as that pictured in the Cotter's
|
||
Saturday Night, and you have taken from them their most sacred
|
||
hours and their tenderest memories.
|
||
|
||
The same destructive spirit which intrudes into our domestic
|
||
as well as our religious life, would take away the beauty of our
|
||
villages as well as the sweetness of our homes. In the weary round
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
10
|
||
|
||
THE FIELD-INGERSOLL DISCUSSION.
|
||
by Dr. Henry M. Field
|
||
|
||
of a week of toil, there comes an interval of rest; the laborer
|
||
lays down his burden, and for a few hours breathes a serener air.
|
||
The Sabbath morning has come:
|
||
|
||
"Sweet day! so cool, so calm, so bright,
|
||
The bridal of the earth and sky."
|
||
|
||
At the appointed hour the bell rings across the valley, and
|
||
sends its echoes among the hills; and from all the roads the people
|
||
come trooping to the village church. Here they gather, old and
|
||
young, rich and poor; and as they join in the same act of worship,
|
||
feel that God is the maker of them all? Is there in our national
|
||
life any influence more elevating than this one which tends more to
|
||
bring a community together; to promote neighborly feeling; to
|
||
refine the manners of the people; to breed true courtesy, and all
|
||
that makes a Christian village different from a cluster of Indian
|
||
wigwams -- a civilized community different from a tribe of savages?
|
||
|
||
All this you would destroy: you would abolish the Sabbath, or
|
||
have it turned into a holiday; you would tear down the old church,
|
||
so full of tender associations of the living and the dead. or at
|
||
least have it "ruzeed," cutting off the tall spire that points,
|
||
upward to heaven; and the interior you would turn into an Assembly
|
||
room -- a place of entertainment, where the young people could have
|
||
their merry-makings, except perchance in the warm Summer-time, when
|
||
they could dance on the village green! So far you would have gained
|
||
your object. But would that be a more orderly community, more
|
||
refined or more truly happy?
|
||
|
||
You may think this a mere sentiment -- that we care more for
|
||
the picturesque than for the true. But there is one result which is
|
||
fearfully real: the destructive creed, or no creed, which despoils
|
||
our churches and our homes, attacks society in its first principles
|
||
by taking away the support of morality. I do not believe that
|
||
general morality can be upheld without the sanctions of religion.
|
||
There may be individuals of great natural force of character, who
|
||
can stand alone -- men of superior intellect and strong will. But
|
||
in general human nature is weak, and virtue is not the spontaneous
|
||
growth of childish innocence. Men do not become pure and good by
|
||
instinct. Character, like mind, has to be developed by education;
|
||
and it needs all the elements of strength which can be given it,
|
||
from without as well as from within, from the government of man and
|
||
the government of God, To let go of these restraints is a peril to
|
||
public morality.
|
||
|
||
You feel strong in the strength of a robust manhood, well
|
||
poised in body and mind, and in the center of a happy home, where
|
||
loving hearts cling to you like vines round the oak. But many to
|
||
whom you speak are quite otherwise, You address thousands of young
|
||
men who have come out of country homes, where they have been
|
||
brought up in the fear of God, and have heard the morning and
|
||
evening prayer. They come into a city full of temptations, but are
|
||
restrained from evil by the thought of father and mother, and
|
||
reverence for Him who is the Father of us all -- feeling which,
|
||
though it may not have taken the form of any profession, is yet at
|
||
the bottom of their hearts, and keeps them from many a wrong and
|
||
wayward step. A young man, who is thus "guarded and defended" as by
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
11
|
||
|
||
THE FIELD-INGERSOLL DISCUSSION.
|
||
by Dr. Henry M. Field
|
||
|
||
unseen angels, some evening when he feels very lonely, is invited
|
||
to "go and hear Ingersoll," and for a couple of hours listens to
|
||
your caricatures of religion, with descriptions of the prayers and
|
||
the psalm-singing, illustrated by devout grimaces and nasal tones,
|
||
which set the house in roars of laughter, and are received with
|
||
tumultuous applause. When it is all over, and the young man finds
|
||
himself again under the flaring lamps of the city streets, he is
|
||
conscious of a change; the faith of his childhood has been rudely
|
||
torn from him, and with it "a glory has passed away from the
|
||
earth;" the Bible which his mother gave him, the morning that he
|
||
came away, is "a mass of fables;" the sentence which she wished him
|
||
to hang on the wall, "Thou, God, seest me," has lost its power, for
|
||
there is no God that sees him, no moral government, no law and no
|
||
retribution. So he reasons as he walks slowly homeward, meeting the
|
||
temptations which haunt these streets at night -- temptations from
|
||
which he has hitherto turned with a shudder, but which he now meets
|
||
with a diminished power of resistance. Have you done that young man
|
||
any good in taking from him what he held sacred before? Have you
|
||
not left him morally weakened? From sneering at religion, it is but
|
||
a step to sneering at morality, and then but one step more to a
|
||
vicious and profligate career, How are you going to stop this
|
||
downward tendency? When you have stripped him of former restraints,
|
||
do you leave him anything in their stead, except indeed a sense of
|
||
honor, self-respect, and self-interest? -- worthy motives, no
|
||
doubt, but all too feeble to withstand the fearful temptations that
|
||
assail him. Is the chance of his resistance as good as if was
|
||
before? Watch him as he goes along that street at midnight! He
|
||
passes by the places of evil resort, of drinking and gambling --
|
||
those open mouths of hell; he hears the sound of music and dancing,
|
||
and for the first time pauses to listen. How long will it be before
|
||
he will venture in?
|
||
|
||
With such dangers in his path, it is a grave responsibility to
|
||
loosen the restraints which hold such a young man to virtue. These
|
||
gibes and sneers which you utter so lightly, may have a sad echo in
|
||
a lost character and a wretched life. Many a young man has been
|
||
thus taunted until he has pushed off from the shore, under the idea
|
||
of gaining his "liberty," and ventured into the rapids, only to be
|
||
carried down the stream, and left a wreck in the whirlpool below.
|
||
|
||
You tell me that your object is to drive fear out of the
|
||
world. That is a noble ambition; if you succeed, you will be indeed
|
||
a deliverer. Of course you mean only irrational fears. You would
|
||
not have men throw off the fear of violating the laws of nature;
|
||
for that would lead to incalculable misery. You aim only at the
|
||
terrors born of ignorance and superstition. But how are you going
|
||
to get rid of these? You trust to the progress of science, which
|
||
has dispelled so many fears arising from physical phenomena, by
|
||
showing that calamities ascribed to spiritual agencies are
|
||
explained by natural causes. But science can only go a certain way,
|
||
beyond which we come into the sphere of the unknown, where all is
|
||
dark as before. How can you relieve the fears of others -- indeed
|
||
how can you rid yourself of fear, believing as you do that there is
|
||
no Power above which can help you in any extremity; that you are
|
||
the sport of accident, and may be dashed in pieces by the blind
|
||
agency of nature? If I believed this, I should feel that I was in
|
||
the grasp of some terrible machinery which was crushing me to
|
||
atoms, with no possibility of escape.
|
||
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
12
|
||
|
||
THE FIELD-INGERSOLL DISCUSSION.
|
||
by Dr. Henry M. Field
|
||
|
||
Not so does Religion leave man here on the earth, helpless and
|
||
hopeless -- in abject terror, as he is in utter darkness as to his
|
||
fate -- but opening the heaven above him, it discovers a Great
|
||
Intelligence, compassing all things, seeing the end from the
|
||
beginning, and ordering our little lives so that even the trials
|
||
that we bear, as they call out the finer elements of character,
|
||
conduce to our future happiness. God is our Father. We look up into
|
||
His face with childlike confidence, and find that "His service is
|
||
perfect freedom." "Love casts out fear." That, I beg to assure you,
|
||
is the way, and the only way, by which man can be delivered from
|
||
those fears by which he is all his lifetime subject to bondage.
|
||
|
||
In your attacks upon Religion you do violence to your own
|
||
manliness. Knowing you as I do, I feel sure that you do not realize
|
||
where your blows fall, or whom they wound, or you would not use
|
||
your weapons so freely. The faiths of men are as sacred as the most
|
||
delicate manly or womanly sentiments of love and honor. They are
|
||
dear as the beloved faces that have passed from our sight. I should
|
||
think myself wanting in respect to the memory of my father and
|
||
mother if I could speak lightly of the faith in which they lived
|
||
and died. Surely this must be mere thoughtlessness, for I cannot
|
||
believe that you find pleasure in giving pain. I have not forgotten
|
||
the gentle hand that was laid upon your shoulder, and the gentle
|
||
voice which said, "Uncle Robert wouldn't hurt a fly." And yet you
|
||
bruise the tenderest sensibilities, and trample down what is most
|
||
cherished by millions of sisters and daughters and mothers, little
|
||
heeding that you are sporting with "human creatures' lives."
|
||
|
||
You are waging a hopeless war -- a war in which you are
|
||
certain only of defeat. The Christian Religion began to be nearly
|
||
two thousand years before you and I were born, and it will live two
|
||
thousand years after we are dead. Why is it that it lives on and
|
||
on, while nations and kingdoms perish? Is not this "the survival of
|
||
the fittest?" Contend against it with all your wit and eloquence,
|
||
you will fail, as all have failed before you. You cannot fight
|
||
against the instincts of humanity. It is as natural for men to look
|
||
up to a Higher Power as it is to look up to the stars. Tell them
|
||
that there is no God! You might as well tell them that there is no
|
||
Sun in heaven, even while on that central light and heat all life
|
||
on earth depends.
|
||
|
||
I do not presume to think that I have convinced you, or
|
||
changed your opinion; but it is always right to appeal to a man's
|
||
"sober second thought" -- to that better judgment that comes with
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increasing knowledge and advancing years; and I will not give up
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hope that you will yet see things more, clearly, and recognize the
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mistake you have made in not distinguishing Religion from
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Superstition -- two things as far apart as "the hither from the
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utmost pole." Superstition is the greatest enemy of Religion. It is
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||
the nightmare of the mind, filling it with all imaginable terrors
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-- a black cloud which broods over half the world. Against this you
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may well invoke the light of science to scatter its darkness.
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Whoever helps to sweep it away, is a benefactor of his race. But
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when this is done, and the moral atmosphere is made pure and sweet,
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||
then you as well as we may be conscious of a new Presence coming
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into the hushed and vacant air, as Religion, daughter of the skies,
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descends to earth to bring peace and good will to men.
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HENRY M. FIELD.
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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13
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