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1301 lines
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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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Regarding
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COLONEL INGERSOLL ON CHRISTIANITY.
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Some Remarks on his Reply to Dr. Field.
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1888
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BY HON. WM. E. GLADSTONE.
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As a listener from across the broad Atlantic to the clash of
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arms in the combat between Colonel ingersoll and Dr. Field on the
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most momentous of all subjects, I have not the personal knowledge
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which assisted these doughty champions in making reciprocal
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acknowledgments, as broad as could be desired, with reference to
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personal character and motive. Such acknowledgments are of high
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value in keeping the issue clear, if not always of all
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adventitious, yet of all venomous matter. Destitute of the
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experience on which to found them as original testimonies, still,
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in attempting partially to criticize the remarkable Reply of
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Colonel Ingersoll, I can both accept in good faith what has been
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said by Dr. Field, and add that it seems to me consonant with the
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strain of the pages I have set before me. Having said this, I shall
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allow myself the utmost freedom in remarks, which will be addressed
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exclusively to the matter, not the man.
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Let me begin by making several acknowledgments of another
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kind, but which I feel to he serious. The Christian Church has
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lived long enough in external triumph and prosperity to expose
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those of whom it is composed to all such perils of error and
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misfeasance, as triumph and prosperity bring with them. Belief in
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divine guidance is not of necessity belief that such guidance can
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never be frustrated by the laxity, the infirmity, the perversity of
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man, alike in the domain of action and in the domain of thought.
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Believers in the perpetuity of the life of the Church are not tied
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to believing in the perpetual health of the Church. Even the great
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Latin Communion, and that communion even since the Council of the
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Vatican in 1870 theoretically admits, or does not exclude, the
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possibility of a wide range of local and partial error in opinion
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as well as conduct. Elsewhere the admission would be more
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unequivocal. Of such errors in tenet, or in temper and feeling more
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or less hardened into tenet, there has been a crop alike abundant
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and multifarious. Each Christian party is sufficiently apt to
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recognize this tact with regard to every other Christian party, and
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the more impartial and reflective minds are aware that no party is
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exempt from mischiefs, which lie at the root of the human
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constitution in its warped, impaired, and dislocated condition.
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Naturally enough, these deformities help to indispose men towards
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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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INGERSOLL - GLADSTONE DEBATE, 1
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belief; and when this indisposition has been developed into a
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system of negative warfare, all the faults of all the Christian
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bodies, and sub-divisions of bodies, are, as it was natural to
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expect they would be, carefully raked together, and become part and
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parcel of the indictment against the divine scheme of redemption.
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I notice these things in the mass, without particularity, which
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might be invidious, for two important purposes. First, that we all,
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who hold by the Gospel and the Christian Church, may learn humility
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and modesty, as well as charity and indulgence, in the treatment of
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opponents, from our consciousness that we all, alike by our
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exaggerations and our shortcomings in belief, no less than by
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faults of conduct, have contributed to bring about this condition
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of fashionable hostility to religious faith: and, secondly, that we
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may resolutely decline to be held bound to tenets, or to
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consequences of tenets, which represent not the great Christendom
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of the past and present, but only some hole and corner of its vast
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organization; and not the heavenly treasure, but the rust or the
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canker to which that treasure has been exposed through the
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incidents of its custody in earthen vessels.
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I do not remember ever to have read a composition, in which
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the merely local coloring of particular, and even very limited
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sections of Christianity, was more systematically used as if it had
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been available and legitimate argument against the whole, than in
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the Reply before us. Colonel Ingersoll writes with a rare and
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enviable brilliancy, but also with an impetus which he seems unable
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to control. Denunciation, sarcasm, and invective, may in
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consequence be said to constitute the staple of his work; and, if
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argument or some favorable admission here and there peeps out for
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a moment, the writer soon leaves the dry and barren heights for his
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favorite and more luxurious galloping grounds beneath. Thus, when
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the Reply has consecrated a line (N. A. R., No. 372, p. 473) to the
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pleasing contemplation of his opponent as "manly, candid, and
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generous," it immediately devotes more than twelve to a declamatory
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denunciation of a practice (as if it were his) altogether contrary
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to generosity and to candor, and reproaches those who expect (ibid)
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"to receive as alms an eternity of joy." I take this as a specimen
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of the mode of statement which permeates the whole Reply. It is not
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the statement of an untruth. The Christian receives as alms all
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whatsoever he receives at all. Qui salvandos salvas gratis is his
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song of thankful praise. But it is the statement of one-half of a
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truth, which lives only in its entirety, and of which the Reply
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gives us only a mangled and bleeding fustum. For the gospel teaches
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that the faith which saves is a living and energizing faith, and
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that the most precious part of the alms which we receive lies in an
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ethical and spiritual process, which partly qualifies for, but also
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and emphatically composes, this conferred eternity of joy. Restore
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this ethical element to the doctrine from which the Reply has
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rudely displaced it, and the whole force of the assault is gone,
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for there is now a total absence of point in the accusation; it
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comes only to this, that "mercy and judgment are met together," and
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that "righteousness and peace have kissed each other" (Ps. ixxxv.
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10).
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Perhaps, as we proceed, then will be supplied ampler means of
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judging whether I am warranted in saying that the instance I have
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here given is a normal instance of a practice so largely followed
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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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INGERSOLL - GLADSTONE DEBATE, 1
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as to divest the entire Reply of that calmness and sobriety of
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movement which are essential to the just exercise of the reasoning
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power in subject matter not only grave, but solemn. Pascal has
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supplied us, in the "Provincial Letters," with an unique example of
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easy, brilliant, and fascinating treatment of a theme both profound
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and complex. But where shall we find another Pascal? And, if we had
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found him, he would be entitled to point out to us that the famous
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work was not less close and logical than it was witty. In this
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case, all attempt at continuous argument appears to be deliberately
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abjured, not only as to pages, but, as may almost be said, even as
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to lines. The paper, noteworthy as it is, leaves on my mind the
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impression of a battle-field where everyman strikes at every man,
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and all is noise, hurry, and confusion. Better surely had it been,
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and worthier of the great weight and elevation of the subject, if
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the controversy had been waged after the pattern of those
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engagements where a chosen champion on either side, in a space
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carefully limited and reserved, does battle on behalf of each
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silent and expectant host. The promiscuous crowds represent all the
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lower elements which enter into human conflicts: the chosen
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champions, and the order of their proceeding, signify the dominion
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of reason over force, and its just place as the sovereign arbiter
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of the great questions that involve the main destiny of man.
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I will give another instance of the tumultuous method in which
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the Reply conducts, not, indeed, its argument, but its case. Dr.
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Field had exhibited an example of what he thought superstition, and
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had drawn a distinction between superstition and religion. But to
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the author of the Reply all religion is superstition, and,
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accordingly, he writes as follows (p. 475):
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"You are shocked at the Hindoo mother, when she gives her
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child to death at the supposed command of her God. What do you
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think of Abraham? of Jephthah? What is your opinion of Jehovah
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himself?"
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Taking these three appeals in the reverse order to that in
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which they are written, I will briefly ask, as to the closing
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challenge, "What do you think of Jehovah himself?" whether this is
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the tone in which controversy ought to be carried on? Not only is
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the name of Jehovah encircled in the heart of every believer with
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the profoundest reverence and love, but the Christian religion
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teaches, through the Incarnation, a doctrine of personal union with
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God so lofty that it can only be approached in a deep, reverential
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calm. I do not deny that a person who deems a given religion to be
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wicked may be led onward by logical consistency to impugn in strong
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terms the character of the Author and Object of that religion. But
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he is surely bound by the laws of social morality and decency to
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consider well the terms and the manner of his indictment. If he
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founds it upon allegations of fact, these allegations should he
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carefully stated, so as to give his antagonists reasonable evidence
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that it is truth and not temper which wrings from him a sentence of
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condemnation, delivered in sobriety and sadness, and not without a
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due commiseration for those, whom he is attempting to undeceive,
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who think he is himself both deceived and a deceiver, but who
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surely are entitled, while this question is in process of decision,
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to require that He whom they adore should at least be treated with
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those decent reserves which are deemed essential when a human
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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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INGERSOLL - GLADSTONE DEBATE, 1
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being, say a parent, wife, or sister, is in question. But here a
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contemptuous reference to Jehovah follows, not upon a careful
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investigation of the cases of Abraham and of Jephthah, but upon a
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mere summary citation of them to surrender themselves, so to speak,
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as culprits; that is to say, a summons to accept at once, on the
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authority of the Reply, the view which the writer is pleased to
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take of those cases. It is true that he assures us in another part
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of his paper that he has read the scriptures with care; and I feel
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bound to accept this assurance, but at the same time to add that if
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it had not been given I should, for one, not have made the
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discovery, but might have supposed that the author had galloped,
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not through, but about, the sacred volume, as a man glances over
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the pages of an ordinary newspaper or novel.
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Although there is no argument as to Abraham or Jephthah
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expressed upon the surface, we must assume that one is intended,
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and it seems to be of the following kind: "You are not entitled to
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reprove the Hindoo mother who cast her child under the wheels of
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the car of Juggernaut, for you approve of the conduct of Jephthah,
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who (probably) sacrificed his daughter in fulfillment of a vow
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(Judges xi. 31) that he would make a burnt offering of whatsoever,
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on his safe return, he should meet coming forth from the doors of
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his dwelling." Now the whole force of this rejoinder depends upon
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our supposed obligation as believers to approve the conduct of
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Jephthah. It is, therefore, a very serious question whether we are
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or are not so obliged. But this question the Reply does not
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condescend either to argue, or even to state. It jumps to an
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extreme conclusion without the decency of an intermediate step. Are
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not such methods of proceeding more suited to placards at an
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election, than to disquisitions on these most solemn subjects?
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I am aware of no reason why any believer in Christianity
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should not be free to canvass, regret, condemn the act of Jephthah.
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So far as the narration which details it is concerned, there is not
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a word of sanction given to it more than to the falsehood of
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Abraham in Egypt, or of Jacob and Rebecca in the matter of the
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hunting (Gen. xx. 1-18, and Gen. xxiii.); or to the dissembling of
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St. Peter in the case of the Judaizing converts (Gal. ii. 11). I am
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aware of no color of approval given to it elsewhere. But possibly
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the author of the Reply may have thought he found such an approval
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in the famous eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, where
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the apostle, handling his subject with a discernment and care very
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different from those of the Reply, writes thus (Heb. xi. 32):
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"And what shall I say more? For the time would fail me to tell
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of Gideon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthah: of David
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also, and Samuel, and of the prophets."
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Jephthah, then, is distinctly held up to us by a canonical
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writer as an object of praise. But of praise on what account? Why
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should the Reply assume that it is on account of the sacrifice of
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his child? The writer of the Reply has given us no reason, and no
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rag of a reason, in support of such a proposition. But this was the
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very thing he was bound by every consideration to prove, upon
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making his indictment against the Almighty. In my opinion, he could
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have one reason only for not giving a reason, and that was that no
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reason could be found.
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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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INGERSOLL - GLADSTONE DEBATE, 1
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The matter, however, is so full of interest, as illustrating
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both the method of the Reply and that of the Apostolic writer, that
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I shall enter farther into it, and draw attention to the very
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remarkable structure of this noble chapter, which is to Faith what
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the thirteenth of Cor. I. is to Charity. From the first to the
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thirty-first verse, it commemorates the achievements of faith in
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ten persons: Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob,
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Joseph, Moses (in greater detail than any one else), and finally
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Rahab, in whom, I observe in passing, it will hardly be pretended
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that she appears in this list on account of the profession she had
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pursued. Then comes the rapid recital (v. 31), without any
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specification of particulars whatever, of these four names: Gideon,
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Barak, Samson, Jephthah. Next follows a kind of recommencement,
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indicated by the word also; and the glorious act and sufferings of
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the prophets are set forth largely with a singular power and
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warmth, headed by the names of David and Samuel, the rest of the
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sacred band being mentioned only in the mass.
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Now, it is surely very remarkable that, in the whole of this
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recital, the Apostle, whose "feet were shod with the preparation of
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the gospel of peace," seems with a tender instinct to avoid
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anything like stress on the exploits of warriors. Of the twelve
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persons having a share in the detailed expositions, David is the
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only warrior, and his character as a man of war is eclipsed by his
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greater attributes as a prophet, or declarer of the Divine
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counsels. It is yet more noteworthy that Joshua, who had so fair a
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fame, but who was only a warrior, is never named in the chapter,
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and we are simply told that "by faith the walls of Jericho fell
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down, after they had been compassed about seven times" (Hebrews xi.
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30). But the series of four names, which are given without any
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specification of their title to appear in the list, are all names
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of distinguished warriors. They had all done great acts of faith
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and patriotism against the enemies of Israel, -- Gideon against the
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Midianites, Barak against the hosts of Syria, Samson against the
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Philistines, and jephthah against the children of Ammon. Their
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title to appear in the list at all is in their acts of war, and the
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mode of their treatment as men of war is in staking accordance with
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the analogies of the chapter. All of them had committed errors.
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Gideon had again and again demanded a sign, and had made a golden
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ephod, "which thing became a snare unto Gideon and to his house"
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(Judges viii. 27). Barak had refused to go up against Jabin unless
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Deborah would join the venture (Judges v. 8). Samson had been in
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dalliance with delilah. Last came Jephthah, who had, as we assume,
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sacrificed his daughter in fulfillment of a rash vow. No one
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supposes that any of the others are honored by mention in the
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chapter on account of his sin or error: why should that supposition
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be made in the case of Jephthah, at the cost of all the rules of
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orderly interpretation?
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Having now answered the challenge as to Jephthah, I proceed to
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the case of Abraham. It would not be fair to shrink from touching
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it in its tenderest point. That point is nowhere expressly touched
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by the commendations bestowed upon Abraham in Scripture. I speak
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now of the special form, of the words that are employed. He is not
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commended because, being a father, he made all the preparations
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antecedent to plunging the knife into his son. He is commended (as
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I read the text) because, having received a glorious promise, a
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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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INGERSOLL - GLADSTONE DEBATE, 1
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promise that his wife should be a mother of nations, and that kings
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should be born of her (Gen. xvii. 6), and that by his seed the
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blessings of redemption should be conveyed to man, and the
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fulfillment of this promise depending solely upon the life of
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Isaac, he was, nevertheless, willing that the chain of these
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promises should be broken by the extinction of that life, because
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his faith assured him that the Almighty would find the way to give
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effect to His own designs (Heb. xi. 17-19). The offering of Isaac
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is mentioned as a completed offering, and the intended blood-
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shedding, of which I shall speak presently, is not here brought
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into view.
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The facts, however, which we have before us, and which are
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treated in Scripture with caution, are grave and startling. A
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father is commanded to sacrifice his son. Before consummation, the
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sacrifice is interrupted. Yet the intention of obedience had been
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formed, and certified by a series of acts. It may have been
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qualified by a reserve of hope that God would interpose before the
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final act, but of this we have no distinct statement, and it can
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only stand as an allowable conjecture. It may be conceded that the
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narrative does not supply us with a complete statement of
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particulars. That being so, it behooves us to tread cautiously in
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approaching it. Thus much, however, I think, may further be said:
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the command was addressed to Abraham under conditions essentially
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different from those which now determine for us the limits of moral
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obligation.
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For the conditions, both socially and otherwise, were indeed
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very different. The estimate of human life at the time was
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different. The position of the father in the family was different:
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its members were regarded as in some sense his property. There is
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every reason to suppose that, around Abraham in "the land of
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Moriah," the practice of human sacrifice as an act of religion was
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in vigor. But we may look more deeply into the matter. According to
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the Book of Genesis, Adam and Eve were placed under a law, not of
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consciously perceived right and wrong, but of simple obedience. The
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tree, of which alone they were forbidden to eat, was the tree of
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the knowledge of good and evil. Duty lay for them in following the
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command of the Most High, before and until they, or their
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descendants, should become capable of appreciating it by an ethical
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standard. Their condition was greatly analogous to that of the
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infant, who has just reached the stage at which he can comprehend
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that he is ordered to do this or that, but not the nature of the
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thing so ordered. To the external standard of right and wrong, and
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to the obligation it entails per se, the child is introduced by a
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process gradually unfolded with the development of his nature, and
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the opening out of what we term a moral sense. If we pass at once
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from the epoch of Paradise to the period of the prophets, we
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||
perceive the important progress that has been made in the education
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of the race. The Almighty, in His mediate intercourse with Israel,
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deigns to appeal to an independently conceived criterion, as to an
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arbiter between His people and Himself "Come, now, and let us
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reason together, saith the Lord" (Isaiah i. 18). "Yet ye say the
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way of the Lord is not equal. Hear now, O house of Israel, is not
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my way equal, are not your ways unequal?" (Ezekiel xvii. 25).
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||
Between these two epochs how wide a space of moral teaching has
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||
been traversed! But Abraham, so far as we may judge from the pages
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||
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||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
6
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||
INGERSOLL - GLADSTONE DEBATE, 1
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of Scripture. belongs essentially to the Adamic period, far more
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than to the prophetic. The notion of righteousness and sin was not
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indeed hidden from him: transgression itself had opened that
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chapter, and it was never to be closed: but as yet they lay wrapped
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up, so to speak, in Divine command and prohibition. And what God
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||
commanded, it was for Abraham to believe that He himself would
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||
adjust to the harmony of His own character.
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The faith of Abraham, with respect to this supreme trial,
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||
appears to have been centered in this, that he would trust God to
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all extremities, and in despite of all appearances. The command
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||
received was obviously inconsistent with the promises which had
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||
preceded it. It was also inconsistent with the morality
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||
acknowledged in later times, and perhaps too definitely reflected
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||
in our minds, by an anachronism easy to conceive, on the day of
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||
Abraham. There can be little doubt, as between these two points of
|
||
view, that the strain upon his faith was felt mainly, to say the
|
||
least, in connection with the first mentioned. This faith is not
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||
wholly unlike the faith of Job; for Job believed, in despite of
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what was to the eye of flesh an unrighteous government of the
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world. If we may still trust the Authorized Version, his cry was,
|
||
"though he slay me, yet will I trust in him" (Job xiii. 15). This
|
||
cry was, however, the expression of one who did not expect to be
|
||
slain; and it may be that Abraham, when he said, "My son, God will
|
||
provide Himself a lamb for a burnt offering," not only believed
|
||
explicitly that God would do what was right, but, moreover,
|
||
believed implicitly that a way of rescue would be found for his
|
||
son. I do not say that this case is like the case of Jephthah,
|
||
where the introduction of difficulty is only gratuitous. I confine
|
||
myself to these propositions. Though the law of moral action is the
|
||
same everywhere and always, it is variously applicable to the human
|
||
being, as we know from experience, in the various stages of his
|
||
development; and its first form is that of simple obedience to a
|
||
superior whom there is every ground to trust. And further, if the
|
||
few straggling rays of our knowledge in a case of this kind rather
|
||
exhibit a darkness lying around us than dispel it, we do not even
|
||
know all that was in the mind of Abraham, and are not in a
|
||
condition to pronounce upon it, and cannot, without departure from
|
||
sound reason, abandon that anchorage by which he probably held,
|
||
that the law of Nature was safe in the hands of the Author of
|
||
Nature, though the means of the reconciliation between the law and
|
||
the appearances have not been fully placed within our reach.
|
||
|
||
But the Reply is not entitled to so wide an answer as that
|
||
which I have given. In the parallel with the case of the Hindoo
|
||
widow, it sins against first principles. An established and
|
||
habitual practice of child-slaughter, in a country of an old and
|
||
learned civilization, presents to us a case totally different from
|
||
the issue of a command which was not designed to be obeyed and
|
||
which belongs to a period when the years of manhood were associated
|
||
in great part with the character that appertains to childhood.
|
||
|
||
It will already have been seen that the method of this Reply
|
||
is not to argue seriously from point to point, but to set out in
|
||
masses, without the labor of proof, crowds of imputations, which
|
||
may overwhelm an opponent like balls from a mitrail leuse. As the
|
||
charges lightly run over in a line or two require pages for
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
7
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL - GLADSTONE DEBATE, 1
|
||
|
||
exhibition and confutation, an exhaustive answer to the Reply
|
||
within the just limits of an article is on this account out of the
|
||
question; and the only proper course left open seems to be to make
|
||
a selection of what appears to be the favorite, or the most
|
||
formidable and telling assertions, and to deal with these in the
|
||
serious way which the grave interests of the theme, not the manner
|
||
of their presentation, may deserve.
|
||
|
||
It was an observation of Aristotle that weight attaches to the
|
||
undemonstrated propositions of those who are able to speak on any
|
||
given subject matter from experience. The Reply abounds in
|
||
undemonstrated propositions. They appear, however, to be delivered
|
||
without any sense of a necessity that either experience or
|
||
reasoning are required in order to give them a title to acceptance.
|
||
Thus, for example, the system of Mr. Darwin is hurled against
|
||
Christianity as a dart which cannot but be fatal (p. 475):
|
||
|
||
"His discoveries, carried to their legitimate conclusion,
|
||
destroy the creeds and sacred Scriptures of mankind."
|
||
|
||
This wide-sweeping proposition is imposed upon us with no
|
||
exposition of the how or the why; and the whole controversy of
|
||
belief one might suppose is to be determined, as if from St.
|
||
Petersburg, by a series of ukases. It is only advanced, indeed, to
|
||
decorate the introduction of Darwin's name in support of the
|
||
proposition, which I certainly should support and not contest, that
|
||
error and honesty are compatible.
|
||
|
||
On what ground, then, and for what reason, is the system of
|
||
Darwin fatal to Scriptures and to creeds? I do not enter into the
|
||
question whether it has passed from the stage of working hypothesis
|
||
into that of demonstration, but I assume, for the purposes of the
|
||
argument, all that, in this respect, the Reply can desire.
|
||
|
||
It is not possible to discover, from the random language of
|
||
the Reply, whether the scheme of Darwin is to sweep away all
|
||
theism, or is to be content with extinguishing revealed religion.
|
||
If the latter is meant, I should reply that the moral history of
|
||
man, in its principal stream, has been distinctly an evolution from
|
||
the first until now; and that the succinct though grand account of
|
||
the Creation in Genesis is singularly accordant with the same idea,
|
||
but is wider than Darwinism, since it includes in the grand
|
||
progression the inanimate world as well as the history of
|
||
organisms. But, as this could not be shown without much detail, the
|
||
Reply reduces me to the necessity of following its own
|
||
unsatisfactory example in the bald form of an assertion, that there
|
||
is no colorable ground for assuming evolution and revelation to be
|
||
at variance with one another.
|
||
|
||
If, however, the meaning be that theism is swept away by
|
||
Darwinism, I observe that, as before, we have only an unreasoned
|
||
dogma or dictum to deal with, and, dealing perforce with the
|
||
unknown, we are in danger of striking at a will of the wisp. Still,
|
||
I venture on remarking that the doctrine of Evolution has acquired
|
||
both praise and dispraise which it does not deserve. It is lauded
|
||
in the skeptical camp because it is supposed to get rid of the
|
||
shocking idea of what are termed sudden acts of creation; and it is
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
8
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL - GLADSTONE DEBATE, 1
|
||
|
||
as unjustly dispraised, on the opposing side, because it is thought
|
||
to bridge over the gap between man and the inferior animals, and to
|
||
give emphasis to the relationship between them. But long before the
|
||
day either of Mr. Darwin or his grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin,
|
||
this relationship had been stated, perhaps even more emphatically
|
||
by one whom, were it not that I have small title to deal in
|
||
undemonstrated assertion, I should venture to call the most
|
||
cautious, the most robust, and the most comprehensive of our
|
||
philosophers. Suppose, says Bishop Butler (Analogy, Part 2, Chap.
|
||
2) that it were implied in the natural immortality of brutes, that
|
||
they must arrive at great attainments, and become (like us)
|
||
rational and moral agents; even this would be no difficulty, since
|
||
we know not what latent powers and capacities they may be endowed
|
||
with. And if pride causes us to deem it an indignity that our race
|
||
should have proceeded by propagation from an ascending scale of
|
||
interior organisms, why should it be a more repulsive idea to have
|
||
sprung immediately from something less than man in brain and body,
|
||
than to have been fashioned according to the expression in Genesis
|
||
(Chap. II., v. 7), "out of the dust of the ground?" There are halls
|
||
and galleries of introduction in a palace, but none in a cottage;
|
||
and this arrival of the creative work at its climax through an ever
|
||
aspiring preparatory series, rather than by transition at a step
|
||
from the inanimate mould of earth, may tend rather to magnify than
|
||
to lower the creation of man on its physical side. But if belief
|
||
has (as commonly) been premature in its alarms, has non-belief been
|
||
more reflective in its exulting anticipations, and its paeans on
|
||
the assumed disappearance of what are strangely enough termed
|
||
sudden acts of creation from the sphere of our study and
|
||
contemplation?
|
||
|
||
One striking effect of the Darwinian theory of descent is, so
|
||
far as I understand, to reduce the breadth of all intermediate
|
||
distinctions in the scale of animated life. It does not bring all
|
||
creatures into a single lineage, but all diversities are to be
|
||
traced back, at some point in the scale and by stages indefinitely
|
||
minute, to a common ancestry. All is done by steps, nothing by
|
||
strides, leaps, or bounds; all from protoplasm up to Shakespeare,
|
||
and, again, all from primal night and chaos up to protoplasm. I do
|
||
not ask, and am incompetent to judge, whether this is among the
|
||
things proven, but I take it so for the sake of the argument; and
|
||
I ask, first, why and whereby does this doctrine eliminate the idea
|
||
of creation? Does the new philosophy teach that if the passage from
|
||
pure reptile to pure bird is achieved by a spring (so to speak)
|
||
over a chasm, this implies and requires creation; but that if
|
||
reptile passes into bird, and rudimental into finished bird, by a
|
||
thousand slight and but just discernible modifications, each one of
|
||
these is so small that they are not entitled to a name so lofty,
|
||
may be set down to any cause or no cause, as we please? I should
|
||
have supposed it miserably unphilosophical to treat the distinction
|
||
between creative and non-creative function as a simply quantitative
|
||
distinction. As respects the subjective effect on the human mind,
|
||
creation in small, when closely regarded, awakens reason to
|
||
admiring wonder, not less than creation in great: and as regards
|
||
that function itself, to me it appears no less than ridiculous to
|
||
hold that the broadly outlined and large advances of so-called
|
||
Mosaism are creation, but the refined and stealthy onward steps of
|
||
Darwinism are only manufacture, and relegate the question of a
|
||
cause into obscurity, insignificance, or oblivion.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
9
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL - GLADSTONE DEBATE, 1
|
||
|
||
But does not reason really require us to go farther, to turn
|
||
the tables on the adversary, and to contend that evolution, by how
|
||
much it binds more closely together the myriad ranks of the living,
|
||
aye, and of all other orders, by so much the more consolidates,
|
||
enlarges, and enhances the true argument of design, and the entire
|
||
theistic position? If orders are not mutually related, it is easier
|
||
to conceive of them as sent at haphazard into the world. We may,
|
||
indeed, sufficiently draw an argument of design from each separate
|
||
structure, but we have no further title to build upon the position
|
||
which each of them holds as towards any other. But when the
|
||
connection between these objects has been established, and so
|
||
established that the points of transition are almost as
|
||
indiscernible as the passage from day to night, then, indeed, each
|
||
preceding stage is a prophecy of the following, each acceding one
|
||
is a memorial of the past, and, throughout the immeasurable series,
|
||
every single member of it is a witness to all the rest. The Reply
|
||
ought surely to dispose of these, and probably many more arguments
|
||
in the case, before assuming so absolutely the rights of
|
||
dictatorship, and laying it down that Darwinism, carried to its
|
||
legitimate conclusion (and I have nowhere endeavored to cut short
|
||
its career), destroys the creeds and Scriptures of mankind. That I
|
||
may be the more definite in my challenge, I would, with all
|
||
respect, ask the author of the Reply to set about confuting the
|
||
succinct and clear argument of his countryman, Mr. Fiske, who, in
|
||
the earlier part of the small work entitled Man's Destiny
|
||
(Macmillan, London, 1887) has given what seems to me an admissible
|
||
and also striking interpretation of the leading Darwinian idea in
|
||
its bearings on the theistic argument. To this very partial
|
||
treatment of a great subject I must at present confine myself; and
|
||
I proceed to another of the notions, as confident as they seem to
|
||
be crude, which the Reply has drawn into its wide-casting net (p.
|
||
475):
|
||
|
||
"Why should God demand a sacrifice from man? Why should the
|
||
Infinite ask anything from the finite? Should the sun beg of the
|
||
glow-worm, and should the momentary spark excite the envy of the
|
||
source of light?"
|
||
|
||
This is one of the cases in which happy or showy illustration
|
||
is, in the Reply before me, set to carry with a rush the position
|
||
which argument would have to approach more laboriously and more
|
||
slowly. The case of the glow-worm with the sun cannot but move a
|
||
reader's pity, it seems so very hard. But let us suppose for a
|
||
moment that the glow-worm was so constituted, and so related to the
|
||
sun that an interaction between them was a fundamental condition of
|
||
its health and life; that the glowworm must, by the law of its
|
||
nature, like the moon, reflect upon the sun, according to its
|
||
strength and measure, the light which it receives, and that only by
|
||
a process involving that reflection its own store of vitality could
|
||
be upheld? It will be said that this is a very large petitio to
|
||
import into the glowworm's case. Yes, but it is the very petitio
|
||
which is absolutely requisite in order to make it parallel to the
|
||
case of the Christian. The argument which the Reply has to destroy
|
||
is and must be the Christian argument, and not some figure of
|
||
straw, fabricated at will. It is needless, perhaps, but it is
|
||
refreshing, to quote the noble Psalm (Ps. 1. 10, 12, 14, 15), in
|
||
which this assumption of the Reply is rebuked. "All the beasts of
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
10
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL - GLADSTONE DEBATE, 1
|
||
|
||
the forest are mine; and so are the cattle upon a thousand hills.
|
||
. . . If I be hungry I will not tell thee; for the whole world is
|
||
mine, and all that is therein. . . . Offer unto God thanksgiving;
|
||
and pay thy vows unto the Most Highest, and call upon Me in the
|
||
time of trouble; so will I hear thee, and thou shalt praise Me."
|
||
Let me try my hand at a counter illustration. If the Infinite is to
|
||
make no demand upon the finite, by parity of reasoning the great
|
||
and strong should scarcely make them on the weak and small. Why
|
||
then should the father make demands of love, obedience, and
|
||
sacrifice, from his young child? Is there not some flavor of the
|
||
sun and glow-worm here? But every man does so make them, if he is
|
||
a man of sense and feeling; and he makes them for the sake and in
|
||
the interest of the son himself, whose nature, expanding in the
|
||
warmth of affection and pious care, requires, by an inward law, to
|
||
return as well as to receive. And so God asks of us, in order that
|
||
what we give to Him may be far more our own than it ever was before
|
||
the giving, or than it could have been unless first rendered up to
|
||
Him, to become a part of what the gospel calls our treasure in
|
||
heaven.
|
||
|
||
Although the Reply is not careful to supply us with whys, it
|
||
does not hesitate to ask for them (p. 479):
|
||
|
||
"Why should an infinitely wise and powerful God destroy the
|
||
good and preserve the vile? Why should He treat all alike here, and
|
||
in another world make an infinite difference? Why should your God
|
||
allow His worshipers, His adorers, to be destroyed by His enemies?
|
||
Why should He allow the honest, the loving, the noble, to perish at
|
||
the stake?"
|
||
|
||
The upholders of belief or of revelation, from Claudian down
|
||
to Cardinal Newman (see the very remarkable passage of the Apologia
|
||
pro vita sua, pp. 376-78), cannot and do not, seek to deny that the
|
||
methods of divine government, as they are exhibited by experience,
|
||
present to us many and varied moral problems, insoluble by our
|
||
understanding. Their existence may not, and should not, be
|
||
dissembled. But neither should they be exaggerated. Now
|
||
exaggeration by mere suggestion is the fault, the glaring fault, of
|
||
these queries. One who had no knowledge of mundane affairs beyond
|
||
the conception they insinuate would assume that, as a rule, evil
|
||
has the upper hand in the management of the world. Is this the
|
||
grave philosophical conclusion of a careful observer, or is it a
|
||
crude, hasty, and careless overstatement?
|
||
|
||
It is not difficult to conceive how, in times of sadness and
|
||
of storm, when the suffering soul can discern no light at any point
|
||
of the horizon, place is found for such an idea of life. It is, of
|
||
course, opposed to the Apostolic declaration that godliness hath
|
||
the promise of the life that now is (1 Tim. iv. 8), but I am not to
|
||
expect such a declaration to be accepted as current coin, even of
|
||
the meanest value, by the author of the Reply. Yet I will offer two
|
||
observations founded on experience in support of it, one taken from
|
||
a limited, another from a larger and more open sphere. John Wesley,
|
||
in the full prime of his mission, warned the converts whom he was
|
||
making among English laborers of a spiritual danger that lay far
|
||
ahead. It was that, becoming godly, they would become careful, and,
|
||
becoming careful, they would become wealthy. It was a just and
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
11
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL - GLADSTONE DEBATE, 1
|
||
|
||
sober forecast, and it represented with truth the general rule of
|
||
life, although it be a rule perplexed with exceptions. But, if this
|
||
be too narrow a sphere of observation, let us take a wider one, the
|
||
widest of all. It is comprised in the brief statement that
|
||
Christendom rules the world, and rules it, perhaps it should be
|
||
added, by the possession of a vast surplus of material as well as
|
||
moral force. Therefore the assertions carried by implication in the
|
||
queries of the Reply, which are general, are because general
|
||
untrue, although they might have been true within those prudent
|
||
limitations which the method of this Reply appears especially to
|
||
eschew.
|
||
|
||
Taking, then, these challenges as they ought to have been
|
||
given, I admit that great believers, who have been also great;
|
||
masters of wisdom and knowledge, are not able to explain the
|
||
inequalities of adjustment between human beings and the conditions
|
||
in which they have been set down to work out their destiny. The
|
||
climax of these inequalities is perhaps to be found in the fact
|
||
that, whereas rational belief, viewed at large, founds the
|
||
Providential government of the world upon the hypothesis of free
|
||
agency, there are so many cases in which the overbearing mastery of
|
||
circumstance appears to reduce it to extinction or paralysis. Now,
|
||
in one sense, without doubt, these difficulties are matter for our
|
||
legitimate and necessary cognizance. it is a duty incumbent upon us
|
||
respectively, according to our means and opportunities, to decide
|
||
for ourselves, by the use of the faculty of reason given us, the
|
||
great questions of natural and revealed religion. They are to be
|
||
decided according to the evidence; and, if we cannot trim the
|
||
evidence into a consistent whole, then according to the balance of
|
||
the evidence. We are not entitled, either for or against belief, to
|
||
set up in this province any rule of investigation, except such as
|
||
common-sense teaches us to use in the ordinary conduct of life. As
|
||
in ordinary conduct, so in considering the basis of belief, we are
|
||
bound to look at the evidence as a whole, We have no right to
|
||
demand demonstrative proofs, or the removal of all conflicting
|
||
elements, either in the one sphere or in the other. What guides us
|
||
sufficiently in matters of common practice has the very same
|
||
authority to guide us in matters of speculation; more properly,
|
||
perhaps, to be called the practice of the soul. If the evidence in
|
||
the aggregate shows the being of a moral Governor of the world,
|
||
with the same force as would suffice to establish an obligation to
|
||
act in a matter of common conduct, we are bound in duty to accept
|
||
it, and have no right to demand as a condition previous that all
|
||
occasions of doubt or question be removed out of the way. Our
|
||
demands for evidence must be limited by the general reason of the
|
||
case. Does that general reason of the case make it probable that a
|
||
finite being, with a finite place in a comprehensive scheme,
|
||
devised and administered by a Being who is infinite, would be able
|
||
either to embrace within his view, or rightly to appreciate, all
|
||
the motives and the aims that may have been in the mind of the
|
||
Divine Disposer? On the contrary, a demand so unreasonable deserves
|
||
to be met with the scornful challenge of Dante (Paradise xix. 79):
|
||
Or tu sei, che vuoi sedere a scranna Per giudicar da lungi mille
|
||
miglia
|
||
|
||
Colla veduta corta d'una spanna?
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
12
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL - GLADSTONE DEBATE, 1
|
||
|
||
Undoubtedly a great deal here depends upon the question
|
||
whether, and in what degree, our knowledge is limited. And here the
|
||
Reply seems to be by no means in accord with Newton and with
|
||
Butler. By its contempt for authority, the Reply seems to cut off
|
||
from us all knowledge that is not at first hand; but then also it
|
||
seems to assume an original and first hand knowledge of all
|
||
possible kinds of things. I will take an instance, all the easier
|
||
to deal with because it is outside the immediate sphere of
|
||
controversy. In one of those pieces of fine writing with which the
|
||
Reply abounds, it is determined abater by a backhanded stroke (N.
|
||
A. R., p. 491) that Shakespeare is "by far the greatest of the
|
||
human race." I do not feel entitled to assert that he is not; but
|
||
how vast and complex a question is here determined for us in this
|
||
airy manner! Has the writer of the Reply really weighed the force,
|
||
and measured the sweep of his own words? Whether Shakespeare has or
|
||
has not the primacy of genius over a very few other names which
|
||
might be placed in competition with his, is a question which has
|
||
not yet been determined by the general or deliberate judgment of
|
||
lettered mankind. But behind it lies another question,
|
||
inexpressibly difficult, except for the Reply, to solve. That
|
||
question is, what is the relation of human genius to human
|
||
greatness. Is genius the sole constitutive element of greatness, or
|
||
with what other elements, and in what relations to them, is it
|
||
combined? Is every man great in proportion to his genius? Was
|
||
Goldsmith, or was Sheridan, or was Burns, or was Byron, or was
|
||
Goethe, or was Napoleon, or was Alcibiades, no smaller, and was
|
||
Johnson, or was Howard, or was Washington, or was Phocion, or
|
||
Leonidas, no greater, than in proportion to his genius properly
|
||
so-called? How are we to find a common measure, again, for
|
||
different kinds of greatness; how weigh, for example, Dante against
|
||
Julius Casar? And I am speaking of greatness properly so called,
|
||
not of goodness properly so called. We might seem to be dealing
|
||
with a writer whose contempt for authority in general is fully
|
||
balanced, perhaps outweighed, by his respect for one authority in
|
||
particular.
|
||
|
||
The religions of the world, again, have in many cases given to
|
||
many men material for life-long study. The study of the Christian
|
||
Scriptures, to say nothing of Christian life and institutions, has
|
||
been to many and justly famous men a study "never ending, still
|
||
beginning"; not, like the world of Alexander, too limited for the
|
||
powerful faculty that ranged over it; but, on the contrary, opening
|
||
height on height, and with deep answering to deep, and with
|
||
increase of fruit ever prescribing increase of effort. But the
|
||
Reply has sounded all these depths, has found them very shallow,
|
||
and is quite able to point out (p. 490) the way in which the
|
||
Saviour of the world might have been a much greater teacher than He
|
||
actually was; had He said anything, for instance, of the family
|
||
relation, had He spoken against slavery and tyranny, had He issued
|
||
a sort of code Napoleon embracing education, progress, scientific
|
||
truth, and international law. This observation on the family
|
||
relation seems to me beyond even the usual measure of extravagance
|
||
when we bear in mind that, according to the Christian scheme, the
|
||
Lord of heaven and earth "was subject" (St. Luke ii. 51) to a human
|
||
mother and a reputed human father, and that He taught (according to
|
||
the widest and, I believe, the best opinion) the absolute
|
||
indissolubility of marriage. I might cite many other instances in
|
||
reply. But the broader and the true answer to the objection is,
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
13
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL - GLADSTONE DEBATE, 1
|
||
|
||
that the Gospel was promulgated to teach principles and not a code
|
||
that it included the foundation of a society in which those
|
||
principles were to be conserved, developed, and applied; and that
|
||
down to this day there is not a moral question of all those which
|
||
the Reply does or does not enumerate, nor is there a question of
|
||
duty arising in the course of life for any of us, that is not
|
||
determinable in all its essentials by applying to it as a
|
||
touchstone the principles declared in the Gospel. Is not, then, the
|
||
hiatus, which the Reply has discovered in the teaching of our Lord.
|
||
an imaginary hiatus? Nay, are the suggested improvements of that
|
||
teaching really gross deteriorations? Where would have been the
|
||
wisdom of delivering to an uninstructed population of a particular
|
||
age a codified religion, which was to serve for all nations, all
|
||
ages, all states of civilization? Why was not room to be left for
|
||
the career of human thought in finding out, and in working out, the
|
||
adaptation of Christianity to the ever varying movement of the
|
||
world? And how is it that they who will not admit that a revelation
|
||
is in place when it has in view the great and necessary work of
|
||
conflict against sin, are so free in recommending enlargements of
|
||
that Revelation for purposes, as to which no such necessity can be
|
||
pleaded?
|
||
|
||
I have known a person who, after studying the old classical or
|
||
Olympian religion for the third part of a century, at length began
|
||
to hope that he had some partial comprehension of it, some inkling
|
||
of what it meant. Woe is him that he was not conversant either with
|
||
the faculties or with the methods of the Reply, which apparently
|
||
can dispose in half an hour of any problem, dogmatic, historical,
|
||
or moral: and which accordingly takes occasion to assure us that
|
||
Buddha was "in many respects the greatest religious teacher this
|
||
world has ever known, the broadest, the most intellectual of them
|
||
all" (p. 491). On this I shall only say that an attempt to bring
|
||
Buddha and Buddhism into line together is far beyond my reach, but
|
||
that every Christian, knowing in some degree what Christ is, and
|
||
what He has done for the world, can only be the more thankful if
|
||
Buddha, or Confucius, or any other teacher has in any point, and in
|
||
any measure, come near to the outskirts of His ineffable greatness
|
||
and glory.
|
||
|
||
It is my fault or my misfortune to remark, in this Reply, an
|
||
inaccuracy of reference, which would of itself suffice to render it
|
||
remarkable. Christ, we are told (pp. 492, 500), denounced the
|
||
chosen people of God as "a generation of vipers." This phrase is
|
||
applied by the Baptist to the crowd who came to seek baptism from
|
||
him; but it is only applied by our Lord to Scribes or Pharisees
|
||
(Luke iii. 7, Matthew xxiii. 33, and xii. 34), who are so commonly
|
||
placed by Him in contrast with the people. The error is repeated in
|
||
the mention of whited sepulchers. Take again the version of the
|
||
story of Ananias and Sapphira. We are told (p. 494) that the
|
||
Aposdes conceived the idea "of having all things in common." In the
|
||
narrative there is no statement, no suggestion of the kind; it is
|
||
a pure interpolation (Acts iv. 32-7). Motives of a reasonable
|
||
prudence are stated as a matter of fact to have influenced the
|
||
offending couple -- another pure interpolation. After the
|
||
catastrophe of Ananias "the Apostles sent for his wife" -- a third
|
||
interpolation. I refer only to these points as exhibitions of an
|
||
habitual and dangerous inaccuracy, and without any attempt at
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
14
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL - GLADSTONE DEBATE, 1
|
||
|
||
present to discuss the case, in which the judgments of God are
|
||
exhibited on their severer side, and in which I cannot, like the
|
||
Reply, undertake summarily to determine for what causes the
|
||
Almighty should or should not take life, or delegate the power to
|
||
take it.
|
||
|
||
Again, we have (p. 486) these words given as a quotation from
|
||
the Bible:
|
||
|
||
"They who believe and are baptized shall be saved, and they
|
||
who believe not shall be damned: and these shall go away into
|
||
everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."
|
||
|
||
The second clause thus reads as if applicable to the persons
|
||
mentioned in the first; that is to say, to those who reject the
|
||
tidings of the Gospel. But instead of its being a continuous
|
||
passage, the latter section is brought out of another gospel (St.
|
||
Matthew's) and another connection; and it is really written, not of
|
||
those who do not believe, but those who refuse to perform offices
|
||
of charity to their neighbor in his need. It would be wrong to call
|
||
this intentional misrepresentation; but can it be called less than
|
||
somewhat reckless negligence?
|
||
|
||
It is a more special misfortune to find a writer arguing on
|
||
the same side with his critic, and yet for the critic not to be
|
||
able to agree with him. But so it is with reference to the great
|
||
subject of immortality, as treated in the Reply.
|
||
|
||
"The idea of immortality, that, like a sea, has ebbed and
|
||
flowed in the human heart, with its countless waves of hope and
|
||
fear beating against the shores and rocks of time and fate, was not
|
||
born of any book, nor of any creed, nor of any religion. It was
|
||
born of human affection; and it will continue to ebb and flow
|
||
beneath the mist and clouds of doubt and darkness, as long as love
|
||
kisses the lips of death" (p. 483).
|
||
|
||
Here we have a very interesting chapter of the history of
|
||
human opinion disposed of in the usual summary way, by a statement
|
||
which, as it appears to me, is developed out of the writer's inner
|
||
consciousness. If the belief in immortality is not connected with
|
||
any revelation or religion, but is simply the expression of a
|
||
subjective want, then plainly we may expect the expression of it to
|
||
be strong and clear in proportion to the various degrees in which
|
||
faculty is developed among the various races of mankind. But how
|
||
does the matter stand historically? The Egyptians were not a people
|
||
of high intellectual development, and yet their religious system
|
||
was strictly associated with, I might rather say founded on, the
|
||
belief in immortality. The ancient Greeks, on the other hand, were
|
||
a race of astonishing, perhaps unrivalled, intellectual capacity.
|
||
But not only did they, in prehistoric ages, derive their scheme of
|
||
a future world from Egypt; we find also that, with the lapse of
|
||
time and the advance of the Hellenic civilization, the constructive
|
||
ideas of the system lost all life and definite outline, and the
|
||
most powerful mind of the Greek philosophy, that of Aristotle, had
|
||
no clear perception whatever of a personal existence in a future
|
||
state.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
15
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL - GLADSTONE DEBATE, 1
|
||
|
||
The favorite doctrine of the Reply is the immunity of all
|
||
error in belief from moral responsibility. In the first page (p.
|
||
473) this is stated with reserve as the "innocence of honest
|
||
error." But why such a limitation? The Reply warms with its
|
||
subject; it shows us that no error can be otherwise than honest,
|
||
inasmuch as nothing which involves honesty, or its reverse, can,
|
||
from the constitution of our nature, enter into the formation of
|
||
opinion. Here is the full blown exposition (p. 476):
|
||
|
||
"The brain thinks without asking our consent. We believe, or
|
||
we disbelieve, without an effort of the will. Belief is a result.
|
||
It is the effect of evidence upon the mind. The scales turn in
|
||
spite of him who watches. There is no opportunity of being honest,
|
||
or dishonest, in the formation of an opinion. The conclusion is
|
||
entirely independent of desire."
|
||
|
||
The reasoning faculty is, therefore, wholly extrinsic to our
|
||
moral nature, and no influence is or can be received or imparted
|
||
between them. I know not whether the meaning is that all the
|
||
faculties of our nature are like so many separate departments in
|
||
one of the modern shops that supply all human wants; that will,
|
||
memory, imagination, affection, passion, each has its own separate
|
||
domain, and that they meet only for a comparison of results, just
|
||
to tell one another what they have severally been doing. It is
|
||
difficult to conceive, if this be so, wherein consists the
|
||
personality, or individuality or organic unity of man. It is not
|
||
difficult to see that while the Reply aims at uplifting human
|
||
nature, it in reality plunges us (p. 475) into the abyss of
|
||
degradation by the destruction of moral freedom. responsibility,
|
||
and unity. For we are justly told that "reason is the supreme and
|
||
final test. "Action may be merely instinctive and habitual, or it
|
||
may be consciously founded on formulated thought; but, in the cases
|
||
where it is instinctive and habitual, it passes over, so soon as it
|
||
is challenged, into the other category, and finds a basis for
|
||
itself in some form of opinion. But, says the Reply, we have no
|
||
responsibility for our opinions: we cannot help forming them
|
||
according to the evidence as it presents itself to us. Observe, the
|
||
doctrine embraces every kind of opinion, and embraces all alike,
|
||
opinion on subjects where we like or dislike. as well as upon
|
||
subjects where we merely affirm or deny in some medium absolutely
|
||
colorless. for, if a distinction be taken between the colorless and
|
||
the colored medium, between conclusions to which passion or
|
||
propensity or imagination inclines us, and conclusions to which
|
||
these have nothing to say, then the whole ground will be cut away
|
||
from under the feet of the Reply, and it will have to build again
|
||
ab initio. Let us try this by a test case. A father who has
|
||
believed his son to have been through life upright, suddenly finds
|
||
that charges are made from various quarters against his integrity.
|
||
Or a friend, greatly dependent for the work of his life on the
|
||
co-operation of another friend, is told that that comrade is
|
||
counter-working and betraying him. I make no assumption now as to
|
||
the evidence or the result; but I ask which of them could approach
|
||
the investigation without feeling a desire to be able to acquit?
|
||
And what shall we say of the desire to condemn? Would Elizabeth
|
||
have had no leaning towards finding Mary Stuart implicated in a
|
||
conspiracy? Did English judges and juries approach with an unbiased
|
||
mind the trials for the Popish plot? Were the opinions formed by
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
16
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL - GLADSTONE DEBATE, 1
|
||
|
||
the English Parliament on the Treaty of Limerick formed without the
|
||
intervention of the will? Did Napoleon judge according to the
|
||
evidence when he acquitted himself in the matter of the Duc
|
||
d'Enghien? Does the intellect sit in a solitary chamber, like
|
||
Galileo in the palace of the Vatican, and pursue celestial
|
||
observation all untouched, while the turmoil of earthly business is
|
||
raging everywhere around? According to the Reply, it must be a
|
||
mistake to suppose that there is anywhere in the world such a thing
|
||
as bias, or prejudice, or prepossession: they are words without
|
||
meaning in regard to our judgments, for, even if they could raise
|
||
a clamor from without, the intellect sits within, in an atmosphere
|
||
of serenity, and, like justice, is deaf and blind, as well as calm.
|
||
|
||
In addition to all other faults, I hold that this philosophy,
|
||
or phantasm of philosophy, is eminently retrogressive. Human
|
||
nature, in its compound of flesh and spirit, becomes more, complex
|
||
with the progress of civilization; with the steady multiplication
|
||
of wants, and of means for their supply. With complication,
|
||
introspection has largely extended, and I believe that, as
|
||
observation extends its field, so far from isolating the
|
||
intelligence and making it autocratic, it tends more and more to
|
||
enhance and multiply the infinitely subtle, as well as the broader
|
||
and more palpable modes, in which the interaction of the human
|
||
faculties is carried on. Who among us has not had occasion to
|
||
observe, in the course of his experience, how largely the
|
||
intellectual power of a man is affected by the demands of life on
|
||
his moral powers, and how they open and grow, or dry up and
|
||
dwindle, according to the manner in which those demands are met.
|
||
|
||
Genius itself, however purely a conception of the intellect,
|
||
is not exempt from the strong influences of joy and suffering, love
|
||
and hatred, hope and fear, in the development of its powers. It may
|
||
be that Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe, basking upon the whole in the
|
||
sunshine of life, drew little supplementary force from its trials
|
||
and agitations. But the history of one not less wonderful than any
|
||
of these, the career of Dante, tells a different tale; and one of
|
||
the latest and most searching investigators of his history
|
||
(Scartazzini, Dante Alighieri, seine zeit, sein leben, und werkes,
|
||
B. II. Ch. 5, p. 119; also pp. 438, 9. Biel, 1869) tells, and shows
|
||
us, how the experience of his life co-operated with his
|
||
extraordinary natural gifts and capabilities to make him what he
|
||
was. Under the three great heads of love, belief, and patriotism,
|
||
his life was a continued course of ecstatic or agonizing trials.
|
||
The strain of these trials was discipline; discipline was
|
||
experience; and experience was elevation. No reader of his greatest
|
||
work will, I believe, hold with the Reply that his thoughts,
|
||
conclusions, judgments, were simple results of an automatic
|
||
process, in which the will and affections had no share, that
|
||
reasoning operations are like the whir of a clock running down, and
|
||
we can no more arrest the process or alter the conclusion than the
|
||
wheels can stop the movement or the noise. (note-1)
|
||
|
||
The doctrine taught in the Reply, that belief is, as a
|
||
general, nay, universal law, independent of the will, surely
|
||
proves, when examined, to be a plausibility of the shallowest kind.
|
||
Even in arithmetic, if a boy, through dislike of his employment,
|
||
and consequent lack of attention, brings out a wrong result for his
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
17
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL - GLADSTONE DEBATE, 1
|
||
|
||
sum, it can hardly be said that his conclusion is absolutely and in
|
||
all respects independent of his will. Moving onward, point by
|
||
point, toward the center of the argument, I will next take an
|
||
illustration from mathematics. It has (I apprehend) been
|
||
demonstrated that the relation of the diameter to the circumference
|
||
of a circle is not susceptible of full numerical expression. Yet,
|
||
from time to time, treatises are published which boldly announce
|
||
that they set forth the quadrature of the circle. do not deny that
|
||
this may be purely intellectual error; but would it not, on the
|
||
other hand, be hazardous to assert that no grain of egotism or
|
||
ambition has ever entered into the composition of any one of such
|
||
treatises? I have selected these instances as, perhaps, the most
|
||
favorable that can be found to the doctrine of the Reply. But the
|
||
truth is that, if we set aside matters of trivial import, the
|
||
enormous majority of human judgments are those into which the
|
||
biassing power of likes and dislikes more or less largely enters.
|
||
I admit, indeed, that the illative faculty works under rules upon
|
||
which choice and inclination ought to exercise no influence
|
||
whatever. But even if it were granted that in fact the faculty of
|
||
discourse is exempted from all such influence within its own
|
||
province, yet we come no nearer to the mark, because that faculty
|
||
has to work upon materials supplied to it by other faculties; it
|
||
draws conclusions according to premises, and the question has to be
|
||
determined whether our conceptions set forth in those premises are
|
||
or are not influenced by moral causes. For, if they be so
|
||
influenced, then in vain will be the proof that the understanding
|
||
has dealt loyally and exactly with the materials it had to work
|
||
upon; inasmuch as, although the intellectual process be normal in
|
||
itself, the operation may have been tainted ab initio by coloring
|
||
and distorting influences, which have falsified the primary
|
||
conceptions.
|
||
|
||
Let me now take an illustration from the extreme opposite
|
||
quarter to that which I first drew upon, The system called
|
||
Thuggism, represented in the practice of the Thugs, taught that the
|
||
act, which we describe as murder, was innocent. Was this an honest
|
||
error? Was it due, in its authors as well as in those who blindly
|
||
followed them, to an automatic process of thought, in which the
|
||
will was not consulted, and which accordingly could entail no
|
||
responsibility? If it was, then it is plain that the whole
|
||
foundations, not of belief, but of social morality, are broken up.
|
||
If it was not, then the sweeping doctrine of the present writer on
|
||
the necessary blamelessness of erroneous conclusions tumbles to the
|
||
ground like a house of cards at the breath of the child who built
|
||
it.
|
||
|
||
In truth, the pages of the Reply, and the Letter which has
|
||
more recently followed it,* themselves demonstrate that what the
|
||
writer has asserted wholesale he overthrows and denies in detail.
|
||
"You will admit," says the Reply (p. 477), "that he, who now
|
||
persecutes for opinion's sake is infamous." But why? Suppose he
|
||
thinks that
|
||
|
||
* North American Rieview for January, 1888, "Another letter to
|
||
Dr. Field." by persecution he can bring a man from soul-destroying
|
||
falsehood to soul-saving truth, this opinion may reflect on his
|
||
intellectual debility: but that is his misfortune, not his fault.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
18
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL - GLADSTONE DEBATE, 1
|
||
|
||
His brain has thought without asking his consent; he has believed
|
||
or disbelieved without an effort of the will (p. 476). Yet the very
|
||
writer, who has thus established his title to think, is the first
|
||
to hurl at him an anathema for thinking. And again, in the Letter
|
||
to Dr. Field (N. A. R., vol. 146, p. 33), "the dogma of eternal
|
||
pain" is described as "that infamy of infamies." I am not about to
|
||
discuss the subject of future retribution. If I were, it would be
|
||
my first duty to show that this writer has not adequately
|
||
considered either the scope of his own arguments (which in no way
|
||
solve the difficulties he presents) or the meaning of his words;
|
||
and my second would be to recommend his perusal of what Bishop
|
||
Butler has suggested on this head. But I am at present on ground
|
||
altogether dinerent. I am trying another issue. This author says we
|
||
believe or disbelieve without the action of the will, and,
|
||
consequently, belief or disbelief is not the proper subject of
|
||
praise or blame. And yet, according to the very same authority, the
|
||
dogma of eternal pain is what? -- not "an error of errors," but an
|
||
"infamy of infamies;" and though to hold a negative may not be a
|
||
subject of moral reproach, yet to hold the affirmative may. Truly
|
||
it may be asked, is not this a fountain which sends forth at once
|
||
sweet waters and bitter?
|
||
|
||
Once more. I wiil pass away from tender ground, and will
|
||
endeavor to lodge a broader appeal to the enlightened judgment of
|
||
the author. Says Odysseus in the Illiad (B. II.) greek greek and
|
||
more greek: and a large part of the world, stretching this
|
||
sentiment beyond its originai meaning, have held that the root of
|
||
civil power is not in the community, but in its head. In opposition
|
||
to this doctrine, the American written Constitution, and the entire
|
||
American tradition, teach the right of a nation to self-government.
|
||
And these propositions, which have divided and still divide the
|
||
world, open out respectively into vast systems of irreconcilable
|
||
ideas and laws, practices and habits of mind. Will any rational
|
||
man, above all will any American, contend that these conflicting
|
||
systems have been adopted, upheld, and enforced on one side and the
|
||
other, in the daylight of pure reasoning only, and that moral, or
|
||
immoral, causes have had nothing to do with their adoption? That
|
||
the intellect has worked impartially, like a steam-engine, and that
|
||
selfishness, love of fame, love of money, love of power, envy,
|
||
wrath, and malice, or again bias, in its least noxious form, have
|
||
never had anything to do with generating the opposing movements, or
|
||
the frightful collisions in which they have resulted? If we say
|
||
that they have not, we contradict the universal judgment of
|
||
mankind. If we say they have, then mental processes are not
|
||
automatic, but may be influenced by the will and by the passions,
|
||
affections, habits, fancies that sway the will; and this writer
|
||
will not have advanced a step toward proving the universal
|
||
innocence of error, until he has shown that propositions of
|
||
religion are essentially unlike almost all other propositions, and
|
||
that no man ever has been, or from the nature of the case can be,
|
||
affected in their acceptance or rejection by moral causes. (note-2)
|
||
|
||
To sum up. There are many passages in these noteworthy papers,
|
||
which, taken by themselves, are calculated to command warm
|
||
sympathy. Towards the close of his final, or latest letter, the
|
||
writer expresses himself as follows (N. A. R., vol. 146, p. 46.):
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
19
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL - GLADSTONE DEBATE, 1
|
||
|
||
"Neither in the interest of truth, nor for the benefit of man,
|
||
is it necessary to assert what we do not know. No cause is great
|
||
enough to demand a sacrifice of candor. The mysteries of life and
|
||
death, of good and evil, have never yet been solved." How good, how
|
||
wise are these words! But coming at the close of the controversy,
|
||
have they not some of the ineffectual features of a death-bed
|
||
repentance? They can hardly be said to represent in all points the
|
||
rules under which the pages preceding them have been composed; or
|
||
he, who so justly says that we ought not to assert what we do not
|
||
know, could hardly have laid down the law as we find it a few pages
|
||
earlier (ibid, p. 40) when it is pronounced that "an infinite God
|
||
has no excuse for leaving his children in doubt and darkness."
|
||
Candor and upright intention are indeed every where manifest amidst
|
||
the flashing corruscations which really compose the staple of the
|
||
anicles. Candor and upright intention also impose upon a
|
||
commentator the duty of formulating his animadversions. I sum them
|
||
up under two heads. Whereas we are placed in an atmosphere of
|
||
mystery, relieved only by a little sphere of light round each of
|
||
us, like a clearing in an American forest (which this writer has so
|
||
well described), and rarely can see farther than is necessary for
|
||
the direction of our own conduct from day to day, we find here,
|
||
assumed by a particular person, the character of an universal judge
|
||
without appeal. And whereas the highest self-restraint is necessary
|
||
in these dark but, therefore, all the more exciting inquiries, in
|
||
order to maintain the ever quivering balance of our faculties, this
|
||
rider chooses to ride an unbroken horse, and to throw the reins
|
||
upon his neck. I have endeavored to give a sample of the results.
|
||
|
||
W. E. Gladstone.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
(note-1) I possess the confession of an illiterate criminal,
|
||
made, I think, in 1834, under the following circumstances: The new
|
||
poor law had just been passed in England, and it required persons
|
||
needing relief to go into the workhouse as a condition of receiving
|
||
it. In some parts of the country, this provision produced a
|
||
profound popular panic. The man in question was destitute at the
|
||
time. He was (I think) an old widower with four very young sons. He
|
||
rose in the night and strangled them all, one after another, with
|
||
a blue handkerchief, not from want of fatherly affection, but to
|
||
keep them out of the workhouse. The confession of this peasant,
|
||
simple in phrase, but intensely impassioned, strongly reminds me of
|
||
the Ugolino of Dante, and make some approach to its sublimity.
|
||
Such, in given circumstances, is the effect of moral agony on
|
||
mental power.
|
||
|
||
(note-2) The chief part of these observations were written
|
||
before I had received the January number of the REVIEW, with Col.
|
||
Ingersoll's additional letter to Dr. Field, who can defend himself,
|
||
and at Calvin, whose ideas I certainly cannot undertake to defend
|
||
all along the line. I do not see that the Letter adds to those, the
|
||
most salient, points of the earlier article which I have endeavored
|
||
to select for animadversion.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
20
|
||
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