2146 lines
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2146 lines
112 KiB
Plaintext
33 page printout
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INTERVIEWS
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Contents of this file page
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THE POLITICAL OUTLOOK. 1
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MR BEECHER, MOSES AND THE NEGRO. 4
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HADES, DELAWARE AND FREETHOUGHT. 8
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A REPLY TO THE REV. MR. LANSING. 13
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BEACONSFIELD, LENT AND REVIVALS. 15
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ANSWERING THE NEW YORK MINISTERS. 18
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GUITEAU AND HIS CRIME. 28
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DISTRICT SUFFRAGE. 32
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**** ****
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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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THE POLITICAL OUTLOOK.
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QUESTION: What phase will the Southern question assume in the
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next four years?
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ANSWER: The next Congress should promptly unseat ever member
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of Congress in whose district there was not a fair and honest
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election. That is the first hand work to be done. Let notice, in
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this way, be given to the whole country, that fraud cannot succeed.
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No man should be allowed to hold a seat by force or fraud. Just as
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||
soon as it is understood that fraud is useless it will be
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||
abandoned. In that way the honest voters of the country can be
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protected.
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An honest vote settles the Southern question, and Congress has
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the power to compel an honest vote, or to leave the dishonest
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districts without representation. I want this policy adopted, not
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only in the South, but in the North No man touched or stained with
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||
fraud should be allowed to hold his seat. Send such men home, and
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let them stay there until sent back by honest votes. The Southern
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||
question is a Northern question, and the Republican party must
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||
settle it for all time. We must have honest elections, or the
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||
Republic must fall. Illegal voting must be considered and punished
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||
as a crime.
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||
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Taking one hundred and seventy thousand as the basis of
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representation, the South, through her astounding increase of
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colored population, gains three electoral votes while the North and
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East lose three. Garfield was elected by the thirty thousand
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colored votes cast in New York.
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||
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QUESTION: Will the negro continue to be the balance of power.
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and if so, will it inure to his benefit?
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ANSWER: The more political power the colored man has the
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better he will be treated, and if he ever holds the balance of
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power he will be treated as well as the balance or our citizens. My
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||
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Bank of Wisdom
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Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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1
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THE POLITICAL OUTLOOK.
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||
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idea is that the colored man should stand on an equality with the
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||
white before the law; that he should honestly be protected in all
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||
his rights; that he should be allowed to vote, and that his vote
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||
should be counted. It is a simple question of honesty. The colored
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||
people are doing well; they are industrious; they are trying to get
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||
an education, and, on the whole, I think they are behaving fully as
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well as the whites. They are the most forgiving people in the
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||
world, and about the only real Christians in our country. They have
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||
suffered enough, and for one I am on their side. I think more of
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honest black people than of dishonest whites, to say the least of
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||
it.
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||
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QUESTION: Do you apprehend any trouble from the Southern
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||
leaders in this closing session of Congress, in attempts to force
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pernicious legislation?
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ANSWER: I do not. The Southern leaders know that the doctrine
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||
of State Sovereignty is dead. They know that they cannot depend
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||
upon the Northern Democrat, and they know that the best interests
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||
of the South can only be preserved by admitting that the war
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||
settled the questions and ideas fought for and against. They know
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||
that this country is a Nation, and that no party can possibly
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||
succeed that advocates anything contrary to that. My own opinion is
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||
that most of the Southern leaders are heartily ashamed of the
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||
course pursued by their Northern friends, and will take the first
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opportunity to say so.
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||
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||
QUESTION: In what light do you regard the Chinaman?
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||
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ANSWER: I am opposed to compulsory immigration, or cooley or
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||
slave immigration. If Chinamen are sent to this country by
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||
corporations or companies under contracts that amount to slavery or
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||
anything like or near it, then I am opposed to it. But I am not
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||
prepared to say that I would be opposed to voluntary immigration.
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||
I see by the papers that a new treaty has been agreed upon that
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will probably be ratified and be satisfactory to all parties. We
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||
ought to treat China with the utmost fairness. If our treaty is
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||
wrong, amend it, but do so according to the recognized usage of
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nations. After what has been said and done in this country I think
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||
there is very little danger of any Chinaman voluntarily coming
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||
here. By this time China must have an exceedingly exalted opinion
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of our religion, and of the justice and hospitality born of our
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||
most holy faith.
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||
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||
QUESTION: What is your opinion of making ex-Presidents
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||
Senators for life?
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||
|
||
ANSWER: I am opposed to it. I am against any man holding
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||
office for life. And I see no more reason for making ex-Presidents
|
||
Senators, than for making ex-Senators Presidents. To me the idea is
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||
preposterous. Why should ex-Presidents be taken care of? In this
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||
country labor is not disgraceful, and after a man has been
|
||
President he has still the right to be useful. I am personally
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||
acquainted with several men who will agree, in consideration of
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||
being elected to the presidency, not to ask for another office
|
||
during their natural lives. The people of this country should never
|
||
allow a great man to suffer. The hand, not of charity, but of
|
||
justice and generosity, should be forever open to those who have
|
||
performed great public service.
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
2
|
||
|
||
THE POLITICAL OUTLOOK.
|
||
|
||
But the ex-Presidents of the future may not all be great and
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||
good men, and bad ex-Presidents will not make good Senators. If the
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||
nation does anything, let it give a reasonable pension to ex-
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||
Presidents. No man feels like giving pension, power, or place to
|
||
General Grant simply because he was once President, but because he
|
||
was a great soldier and led the armies of the nation to victory.
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||
Make him a General, and retire him with the highest military title.
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||
Let him grandly wear the laurels he so nobly won, and should the
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||
sky at any time be darkened with a cloud of foreign war, this
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||
country will again hand him the sword. Such a course honors the
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||
nation and the man.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Are, we not entering upon the era of our greatest
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||
prosperity?
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||
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||
ANSWER: We are just beginning to be prosperous. The Northern
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||
Pacific Railroad is to be completed. Forty millions of dollars have
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||
just been raised by that company, and new States will soon be born
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||
in the great Northwest. The Texas Pacific will be pushed to San
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||
Diego, and in a few years we will ride in a Pullman car from
|
||
Chicago to the City of Mexico. The gold and silver mines are
|
||
yielding more and more, and within the last ten years more than
|
||
forty million acres of land have been changed from wilderness to
|
||
farms. This country is beginning to grow. We have just fairly
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||
entered upon what I believe will be the grandest period of national
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||
development and prosperity. With the Republican party in power;
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||
with good money; with unlimited credit; with the best land in the
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||
world; with ninety thousand miles of railway; with mountains of
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||
gold and silver; with hundreds of thousands of square miles of coal
|
||
fields; with iron enough for the whole world; with the best system
|
||
of common schools; with telegraph wires reaching every city and
|
||
town, so that no two citizens are an hour apart; with the
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||
telephone, that makes everybody in the city live next door, and
|
||
with the best folks in the world, how can we help prospering until
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||
the continent is covered with happy homes?
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: What do you think of civil service reform?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I am in favor of it. I want such civil service reform
|
||
that all the offices will be filled with good and competent
|
||
Republicans. The majority should rule, and the men who are in favor
|
||
of the views of the majority should hold the offices. I am utterly
|
||
opposed to the idea that a party should show its liberality at the
|
||
expense of its principles. Men holding office can afford to take
|
||
their chances with the rest of us. If they are Democrats, they
|
||
should not expect to succeed when their party is defeated. I
|
||
believe that there are enough good, honest Republicans in this
|
||
country to fill all the offices, and I am opposed to taking any
|
||
Democrats until the Republican supply is exhausted.
|
||
|
||
Men should not join the Republican party to get office, Such
|
||
men are contemptible to the last degree. Neither should a
|
||
Republican administration compel a man to leave the party to get a
|
||
Federal appointment. After a great battle has been fought I do not
|
||
believe that the victorious general should reward the officers of
|
||
the conquered army. My doctrine is, rewards for friends. --
|
||
|
||
The Commercial, Cincinnati, Ohio, December 6, 1880.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
3
|
||
|
||
MR BEECHER, MOSES AND THE NEGRO.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Mr. Beecher is here. Have you seen him?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: No, I did not meet Mr. Beecher. Neither did I hear him
|
||
lecture. The fact is, that long ago I made up my mind that under no
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||
circumstances would I attend any lecture or other entertainment
|
||
given at Lincoln Hall. First, because the hall has been denied me,
|
||
and secondly, because I regard it as exceedingly unsafe. The hall
|
||
is up several stories from the ground, and in case of the slightest
|
||
panic, in my judgment, many lives would be lost. Had it not been
|
||
for this, and for the fact that the persons owning it imagined that
|
||
because they had control, the brick and mortar had some kind of
|
||
holy and sacred quality, and that this holiness is of such a
|
||
wonderful character that it would not be proper for a man in that
|
||
hall to tell his honest thoughts, I would have heard him.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Then I assume that you and Mr. Beecher have made up?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: There is nothing to be made up so far as I know. Mr.
|
||
Beecher has treated me very well, and, I believe, a little too well
|
||
for his own peace of mind. I have been informed that some members
|
||
of Plymouth Church felt exceedingly hurt that their pastor should
|
||
so far forget himself as to extend the right hand of fellowship to
|
||
one who differs from him upon what they consider very essential
|
||
points in theology. You see I have denied with all my might, a
|
||
great many times, the infamous doctrine of eternal punishment. I
|
||
have also had the temerity to suggest that I did not believe that
|
||
a being of infinite justice and mercy was the author of all that I
|
||
find in the Old Testament. As, for instance, I have insisted that
|
||
God never commanded anybody to butcher women or to cut the throats
|
||
of prattling babes. These orthodox gentlemen have rushed to the
|
||
rescue of Jehovah by insisting that he did all these horrible
|
||
things. I have also maintained that God never sanctioned or upheld
|
||
human slavery; that he never would make one child to own and beat
|
||
another.
|
||
|
||
I have also expressed some doubts as to whether this same God
|
||
ever established the institution or polygamy. I have insisted that
|
||
that institution is simply infamous; that it destroys the idea of
|
||
home; that it turns to ashes the most sacred words in our language,
|
||
and leaves the world a kind of den in which crawl the serpents of
|
||
selfishness and lust. I have been informed that after Mr. Beecher
|
||
had treated me kindly a few members of his congregation objected,
|
||
and really felt ashamed that he had so forgotten himself. After
|
||
that, Mr. Beecher saw fit to give his ideas of the position I had
|
||
taken. ln this he was not exceedingly kind, nor was his justice
|
||
very conspicuous. But I cared nothing about that, not the least. As
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||
I have said before, whenever Mr. Beecher says a good thing I give
|
||
him credit. Whenever he does an unfair or unjust thing I charge it
|
||
to the account of his religion. I have insisted, and I still
|
||
insist, that Mr. Beecher is far better than his creed. I do not
|
||
believe that he believes in the doctrine of eternal punishment.
|
||
Neither do I believe that he believes in the literal truth of the
|
||
Scriptures. And, after all, if the Bible is not true, it is hardly
|
||
worth while to insist upon its inspiration. An inspired lie is no
|
||
better than an uninspired one. If the Bible is true it does not
|
||
need to be inspired, If it is not true, inspiration does not help
|
||
it. So that after all it is simply a question of fact. Is it true?
|
||
I believe: Mr. Beecher stated that one of my grievous faults was
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
4
|
||
|
||
MR BEECHER, MOSES AND THE NEGRO.
|
||
|
||
that I picked out the bad things in the Bible. How an infinitely
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||
good and wise God came to put bad things in his book Mr. Beecher
|
||
does not explain. I have insisted that the Bible is not inspired,
|
||
and, in order to prove that, have pointed out such passages as I
|
||
deemed unworthy to have been written even by a civilized man or a
|
||
savage. I certainly would not endeavor to prove that the Bible is
|
||
uninspired by picking out its best passages. I admit that there are
|
||
many good things in the Bible. The fact that there are good things
|
||
in it does not prove its inspiration, because there are thousands
|
||
of other books containing good things, and yet no one claims they
|
||
are inspired. Shakespeare's works contain a thousand times more
|
||
good things than the Bible; but no one claims he was an inspired
|
||
man. It is also true that there are many bad things in Shakespeare
|
||
-- many passages which I wish he had never written. But I can
|
||
excuse Shakespeare, because he did not rise absolutely above his
|
||
time. That is to say, he was a man; that is to say, he was
|
||
imperfect. If anybody claimed now that Shakespeare was actually
|
||
inspired, that claim would be answered by pointing to certain weak
|
||
or bad or vulgar passages in his works. But every Christian will
|
||
say that it is a certain kind of blasphemy to impute vulgarity or
|
||
weakness to God, as they are all obliged to defend the weak, the
|
||
bad and the vulgar, so long as they insist upon the inspiration of
|
||
the Bible. Now, I pursued the same course with the Bible that Mr.
|
||
Beecher has pursued with me. Why did he want to pick out my bad
|
||
things? Is it possible that he is a kind of vulture that sees only
|
||
the carrion of another? After all has he not pursued the same
|
||
method with me that he blames me for pursuing in regard to the
|
||
Bible? Of course he must pursue that method. He could not object to
|
||
me and then point out passages that were not objectionable. If he
|
||
found fault he had to find faults in order to sustain his ground.
|
||
That is exactly what I have done with the Scriptures -- nothing
|
||
more and nothing less. The reason I have thrown away the Bible is
|
||
that in many places it is harsh, cruel, unjust, coarse, vulgar,
|
||
atrocious, infamous. At the same time, I admit that it contains
|
||
many passages of an excellent and splendid character -- many good
|
||
things, wise sayings, and many excellent and just laws.
|
||
|
||
But I would like to ask this: Suppose there were no passages
|
||
in the Bible except those upholding slavery, polygamy and wars of
|
||
extermination; would anybody then claim that it was the word of
|
||
God? I would like to ask if there is a Christian in the world who
|
||
would not be overjoyed to find that every one of these passages was
|
||
an interpolation? I would also like to ask Mr. Beecher if he would
|
||
not be greatly gratified to find that after God had written the
|
||
Bible the Devil had got hold of it, and interpolated all these
|
||
passages about slavery, polygamy, the slaughter of women and babes
|
||
and the doctrine of eternal punishment? Suppose, as a matter of
|
||
fact, the Devil did get hold of it; what part of the Bible would
|
||
Mr. Beecher pick out as having been written by the Devil? And if he
|
||
picks out these passages could not the Devil answer him by saying,
|
||
"You, Mr. Beecher, are like a vulture, a kind of buzzard, flying
|
||
through the tainted air of inspiration, and pouncing down upon the
|
||
carrion. Why do you not fly like a dove, and why do yon not have
|
||
the innocent ignorance of the dove, so that you could light upon a
|
||
carcass and imagine that you were surrounded by the perfume of
|
||
violets?" The fact is that good things in a book do not prove that
|
||
it is inspired, but the presence of bad things does prove that it
|
||
is not.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
5
|
||
|
||
MR BEECHER, MOSES AND THE NEGRO.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: What was the real difficulty between you and Moses,
|
||
Colonel, a man who has been dead for thousands of years?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: We never had any difficulty. I have always taken pains
|
||
to say that Moses had nothing to do with the Pentateuch. Those
|
||
books, in my judgment, were written several centuries after Moses
|
||
had become dust in his unknown sepulchre. No doubt Moses was quite
|
||
a man in his day, if he ever existed at all. Some people say that
|
||
Moses is exactly the same as "law-giver;" that is to say, as
|
||
Legislature, that is to say as Congress. Imagine some body in the
|
||
future as regarding the Congress of the United States as one
|
||
person! And then imagine that somebody endeavoring to prove that
|
||
Congress was always consistent But, whether Moses lived or not
|
||
makes but little difference to me. I presume he filled the place
|
||
and did the work that he was compelled to do, and although
|
||
according to the account God had much to say to him with regard to
|
||
the making of altars, tongs, snuffers and candlesticks, there is
|
||
much left for nature still to tell. Thinking of Moses as a man,
|
||
admitting that he was above his fellows that he was in his day and
|
||
generation a leader, and, in a certain narrow sense, a patriot,
|
||
that he was the founder of the Jewish people; that he found them
|
||
barbarians and endeavored to control them by thunder and lightning,
|
||
and found it necessary to pretend that he was in partnership with
|
||
the power governing the universe; that he took advantage of their
|
||
ignorance and fear, just as politicians do now, and as theologians
|
||
always will, still, I see no evidence that the man Moses was any
|
||
nearer to God than his descendants, who are still warring against
|
||
the Philistines in every civilized part of the globe. Moses was a
|
||
believe in slavery, in polygamy, in wars of extermination, in
|
||
religious persecution and intolerance and in almost every thing
|
||
that is now regarded with loathing, contempt and scorn. Jehovah of
|
||
whom he speaks violated, or commands the violation of at least nine
|
||
of the Ten Commandments he gave. There is one thing, however, that
|
||
can be said of Moses that cannot be said of any person who now
|
||
insists that he was inspired, and that is, he was in advance of his
|
||
time.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: What do you think of the Buckner Bill for the
|
||
colonization of the negroes in Mexico?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Where does Mr. Buckner propose to colonize the white
|
||
people, and what right has he to propose the colonization of six
|
||
millions of people? Should we not have other bills to colonize the
|
||
Germans, the Swedes, the Irish, and then, may be, another bill to
|
||
drive the Chinese into the sea? Where do we get the right to say
|
||
that the negroes must emigrate?
|
||
|
||
All such schemes will, in my judgment, prove utterly futile.
|
||
Perhaps the history of the world does not give an instance of the
|
||
emigration of six millions of people. Notwithstanding the treatment
|
||
that Ireland has received from England, which may be designated as
|
||
a crime of three hundred years, the Irish still love Ireland. All
|
||
the despotism in the world will never crush out of the Irish heart
|
||
the love of home -- the adoration of the old sod. The negroes of
|
||
the South have certainly suffered enough to drive them into other
|
||
countries; but after all, they prefer to stay where they were born.
|
||
They prefer to live where their ancestors were slaves, where
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
6
|
||
|
||
MR BEECHER, MOSES AND THE NEGRO.
|
||
|
||
fathers and mothers were sold and whipped; and I don't believe it
|
||
will be possible to induce a majority of them to leave that land.
|
||
Of course, thousands may leave, and in process of time millions may
|
||
go, but I don't believe emigration will ever equal their natural
|
||
increase. As the whites of the South become civilized the reason
|
||
for going will be less and less.
|
||
|
||
I see no reason why the white and black men cannot live
|
||
together in the same land, under the same flag. The beauty of
|
||
liberty is you cannot have it unless you give it away, and the more
|
||
you give away the more you have. I know that thy liberty is secure
|
||
only because others are free.
|
||
|
||
I am perfectly willing to live in a country with such men as
|
||
Frederick Douglas and Senator Bruce. I have always preferred a
|
||
good, clever black man to a mean white man, and I am of the opinion
|
||
that I shall continue in that preference. Now, if we could only
|
||
have a colonization bill that would get rid of all the rowdies, all
|
||
the rascals and hypocrites, I would like to see it carried out,
|
||
though some people might insist that it would amount to a
|
||
repudiation of the national debt and that hardly enough would be
|
||
left to pay the interest. No, talk as we will, the colored people
|
||
helped to save this Nation. They have been at all times and in all
|
||
places the friends of our flag; a flag that never really protected
|
||
them. And for my part, I am willing that they should stand forever
|
||
beneath that flag, the equal in rights of all other people.
|
||
Politically, if any black men are to be sent away, I want it
|
||
understood that each one is to be accompanied by a Democrat. so
|
||
that the balance of power, especially in New York, will not be
|
||
disturbed.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: I notice that leading Republican newspapers are
|
||
advising General Garfield to cut loose from the machine in
|
||
politics; what do you regard as the machine?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: All defeated candidates regard the persons who
|
||
defeated them as constituting a machine, and always imagine that
|
||
there is some wicked conspiracy at the bottom of the machine. Some
|
||
of the recent reformers regard the people who take part in the
|
||
early stages of a political campaign -- who attend caucuses and
|
||
primaries, who speak of politics to their neighbors, as members and
|
||
parts of the machine, and regard only those as good and reliable
|
||
American citizens who take no part whatever, simply reserving the
|
||
right to grumble after the work has been done by others. Not much
|
||
can be accomplished in politics without an organization, and the
|
||
moment an organization is formed, and, you might say, just a little
|
||
before, leading spirits will be developed. Certain men will take
|
||
the lead, and the weaker men will in a short time. unless they get
|
||
all the loaves and fishes, denounce the whole thing as a machine.
|
||
and, to show how thoroughly and honestly they detest the machine in
|
||
politics, will endeavor to organize a little machine themselves.
|
||
General Garfield has been in politics for many years. He knows the
|
||
principal men in both parties. He knows the men who have not only
|
||
done something, but who are capable of doing something, and such
|
||
men will not, in my opinion, be neglected. I do not believe that
|
||
General Garfield will do any act calculated to divide the
|
||
Republican party. No thoroughly great man carries personal
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
7
|
||
|
||
MR BEECHER, MOSES AND THE NEGRO.
|
||
|
||
prejudice into the administration of public affairs. Of course,
|
||
thousands of people will be prophesying that this man is to be
|
||
snubbed and another to be paid; but, in my judgment, after the 4th
|
||
of March most people will say that General Garfield has used his
|
||
power wisely and that he has neither sought nor shunned men simply
|
||
because he wished to pay debts -- either of love or hatred. --
|
||
|
||
Washington correspondent, Brooklyn Eagle, January 31, 1881.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
HADES, DELAWARE AND FREETHOUGHT.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Now that a lull has come in politics, I thought I
|
||
would come and see what is going on in the religious world?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Well, from what little I learn, there has not been
|
||
much going on during the last year. There are five hundred and
|
||
twenty-six Congregational Churches in Massachusetts, and two
|
||
hundred of these churches have not received a new member for an
|
||
entire year, and the others have scarcely held their own. In
|
||
Illinois there are four hundred and eighty-three Presbyterian
|
||
Churches, and they have now fewer members than they had in 1879,
|
||
and of the four hundred and eighty-three, one hundred and
|
||
eighty-three have not received a single new member for twelve
|
||
mouths. A report has been made, under the auspices of the Pan-
|
||
Presbyterian Council, to the effect that there are in the whole
|
||
world about three millions of Presbyterians. This is about one-
|
||
fifth of one per cent, of the inhabitants of the world. The
|
||
probability is that of the three million nominal Presbyterians, not
|
||
more than two or three hundred thousand actually believe the
|
||
doctrine, and of the two or three hundred thousand, not more than
|
||
five or six hundred have any true conception of what the doctrine
|
||
is. As the Presbyterian Church has only been able to induce one-
|
||
fifth of one percent. of the people to even call themselves
|
||
Presbyterians, about how long will it take, at this rate, to
|
||
convert mankind? The fact is, there seems to be a general lull
|
||
along the entire line, and just at present very little is being
|
||
done by the orthodox people to keep their fellow-citizens out of
|
||
hell.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Do you really think that the orthodox people now
|
||
believe in the old doctrine of eternal punishment, and that they
|
||
really think there is the kind of hell that our ancestors so
|
||
carefully described?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I am afraid that the old idea is dying out, and that
|
||
many Christians are slowly giving up the consolations naturally
|
||
springing from the old belief. Another terrible blow to the old
|
||
infamy is the fact that in the revised New Testament the consoling
|
||
word hell has been left out. I am informed that in the revised New
|
||
Testament the word Hades has been substituted. As nobody knows
|
||
exactly what Hades means, it will not be quite so easy to frighten
|
||
people at revivals by threatening them with something that they
|
||
don't clearly understand. After this, when the impassioned orator
|
||
cries out that all the unconverted will be sent to Hades, the poor
|
||
sinners, instead of getting frightened, will begin to ask each
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
8
|
||
|
||
HADES, DELAWARE AND FREETHOUGHT.
|
||
|
||
other what and where that is. It will take many years of preaching
|
||
to clothe that word in all the terrors and horrors, pains and
|
||
penalties and pangs of hell. Hades is a compromise. It is a
|
||
concession to the philosophy of our day. It is a graceful
|
||
acknowledgment to the growing spirit of investigation, that hell,
|
||
after all, is a barbaric mistake. Hades is the death of revivals.
|
||
It cannot be used in song. It won't rhyme with anything with the
|
||
same force that hell does. It is altogether more shadowy than hot.
|
||
It is not associated with brimstone and flame. It sounds somewhat
|
||
indistinct, somewhat lonesome, a little desolate, but not
|
||
altogether uncomfortable. For revival purposes, Hades is simply
|
||
useless, and few conversions will be made in the old way under the
|
||
revised Testament.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Do you really think that the church is losing
|
||
ground?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I am not, as you probably know, connected with any
|
||
orthodox organization, and consequently have to rely upon them for
|
||
my information. If they can be believed, the church is certainly in
|
||
an extremely bad condition. I find that the Rev. Dr. Cuyler, only
|
||
a few days ago, speaking of the religious condition of Brooklyn --
|
||
and Brooklyn, you know, has been called the City of Churches --
|
||
stated that the great mass of that Christian city was out of
|
||
Christ, and that more professing Christians went to the theatre
|
||
than to the prayer meeting. This, certainly, from their standpoint,
|
||
is a most terrible declaration. Brooklyn, you know, is one of the
|
||
great religious centers of the world -- a city in which nearly all
|
||
the people are engaged either in delivering or in hearing sermons;
|
||
a city filled with the editors of religious periodicals; a city of
|
||
prayer and praise; and yet, while prayer meetings are free, the
|
||
theatres, with the free list entirely suspended, catch more
|
||
Christians than the churches; and this happens while all the
|
||
pulpits thunder against the stage, and the stage remains silent as
|
||
to the pulpit. At the same meeting in which the Rev. Dr. Cuyler
|
||
made his astounding statements the Rev Mr. Pentecost was the bearer
|
||
of the happy news that four out of five persons living in the city
|
||
of Brooklyn were going down to hell with no God and with no hope.
|
||
If he had read the revised Testament he would have said "Hades,"
|
||
and the effect of the statement would have been entirely lost. If
|
||
four-fifths of the people of that great city are destined to
|
||
eternal pain, certainly we cannot depend upon churches for the
|
||
salvation of the world. At the meeting of the Brooklyn pastors they
|
||
were in doubt as to whether they should depend upon further
|
||
meetings, or upon a day of fasting and prayer for the purpose of
|
||
converting the city.
|
||
|
||
In my judgment, it would be much better to devise ways and
|
||
means to keep a good many people from fasting in Brooklyn. If they
|
||
had more meat, they could get along with less meeting. If fasting
|
||
would save a city, there are always plenty of hungry folks even in
|
||
that Christian town. The real trouble with the church of to-day is,
|
||
that it is behind the intelligence of the people. Its doctrines no
|
||
longer satisfy the brains of the nineteenth century; and if the
|
||
church proposes to hold its power, it must lose its superstitions.
|
||
The day of revivals is gone. Only the ignorant and unthinking can
|
||
hereafter be impressed by hearing the orthodox creed. Fear has in
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
9
|
||
|
||
HADES, DELAWARE AND FREETHOUGHT.
|
||
|
||
it no reformatory power, and the more intelligent the world grows
|
||
the more despicable and contemptible the doctrine of eternal misery
|
||
will become. The tendency of the age is toward intellectual
|
||
liberty, toward personal investigation. Authority is no longer
|
||
taken for truth. People are beginning to find that all the great
|
||
and good are not dead -- that some good people are alive, and that
|
||
the demonstrations of to-day are fully equal to the mistaken
|
||
theories of the past.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: How are you getting along with Delaware?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: First rate. You know I have been wondering where
|
||
Comegys came from, and at last I have made the discovery. I was
|
||
told the other day by a gentleman from Delaware that many years ago
|
||
Colonel Hazelitt died; that Colonel Hazelitt was an old
|
||
Revolutionary officer, and that when they were digging his grave
|
||
they dug up Comegys. Back of that no one knows anything of his
|
||
history. The only thing they know about him certainly, is, that he
|
||
has never changed one of his views since he was found, and that he
|
||
never will. I am inclined to think, however, that he lives in a
|
||
community congenial to him. For instance, I saw in a paper the
|
||
other day that within a radius of thirty miles around Georgetown,
|
||
Delaware, there are about two hundred orphan and friendless
|
||
children. These children, it seems, were indentured to Delaware
|
||
farmers by the managers of orphan asylums and other public
|
||
institutions in and about Philadelphia. It ia stated in the paper,
|
||
that:
|
||
|
||
Many of these farmers are rough task-masters. and if a boy
|
||
fails to perform the work of an adult, he is almost certain to be
|
||
cruelly treated, half starved, and in the coldest weather
|
||
wretchedly clad. If he does the work, his life is not likely to be
|
||
much happier, for as a rule he will receive more kicks than candy.
|
||
The result in either case is almost certain to be wrecked
|
||
constitutions, dwarfed bodies, rounded shoulders, and limbs
|
||
crippled or rendered useless by frost or rheumatism. The principal
|
||
diet of these boys is corn pone. A few days ago, Constable W.H.
|
||
Johnston went to the house of Rouben Taylor, and on entering the
|
||
sitting room his attention was attracted by the moans or its only
|
||
occupant. a little colored boy, who was lying on the hearth in
|
||
front of the fireplace. The boy's head was covered with ashes from
|
||
the fire, and he did not pay the slightest attention to the
|
||
visitor, until Johnston asked what made him cry. Then the little
|
||
fellow sat up and drawing an old rag off his foot said, "Look
|
||
there." The sight that met Johnston's eye was horrible beyond
|
||
description. The poor boy's feet were so horribly frozen that the
|
||
flesh had dropped off the toes until the bones protruded. The flesh
|
||
on the sides, bottoms and tops or his feet was swollen until the
|
||
skin cracked in many places, and the inflamed flesh was sloughing
|
||
off in great flakes. The frost-bitten flesh extended to his knees,
|
||
the joints of which were terribly inflamed. The right one had
|
||
already begun suppurating. This poor little black boy, covered with
|
||
nothing but a cotton shirt, drilling pants, a pair of nearly worn
|
||
out brogans and a battered old hat, on the morning of December
|
||
30th, the coldest day of the season, when the mercury was seventeen
|
||
degrees below zero, in the face of a driving snowstorm, was sent
|
||
half a mile from home to protect his master's unshucked corn from
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
10
|
||
|
||
HADES, DELAWARE AND FREETHOUGHT.
|
||
|
||
the depredations of marauding cows and crows. He remained standing
|
||
around in the snow until four o'clock, then he drove the cows home,
|
||
received a piece of cold corn pone, and was sent out in the snow
|
||
again to chop stove wood till dark. Having no bed, he slept that
|
||
night in front of the fireplace, with his frozen feet buried in the
|
||
ashes. Dr. C.H. Richards found it necessary to cut off the boy's
|
||
feet as far back aa the ankle and the instep.
|
||
|
||
This was but one case in several. Personally, I have no doubt
|
||
that Mr. Rubin Taylor entirely agrees with Chief Justice Comegys on
|
||
the great question of blasphemy, and probably nothing would so
|
||
gratify Mr. Rubin Taylor as to see some man in a Delaware jail for
|
||
the crime of having expressed an honest thought. No wonder that in
|
||
the State of Delaware the Christ of intellectual liberty has been
|
||
crucified between the pillory and the whipping-post. Of course I
|
||
know that there are thousands of most excellent people in that
|
||
State -- people who believe in intellectual liberty, and who only
|
||
need a little help -- and I am doing what I can in that direction
|
||
-- to repeal the laws that now disgrace the statute book of that
|
||
little commonwealth. I have seen many people from that State lately
|
||
who really wish that Colonel Hazelitt had never died.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: What has the press generally said with regard to the
|
||
action of Judge Comegys? Do they, so far as you know, justify his
|
||
charge?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: A great many papers having articles upon the subject
|
||
have been sent to me. A few of the religious papers seem to think
|
||
that the Judge did the best he knew, and there is one secular paper
|
||
called the Evening News, published at Chester, Pa., that thinks
|
||
"that the rebuke from so high a source of authority will have a
|
||
most excellent effect, and will check religious blasphemers from
|
||
parading their immoral creeds before the people." The editor of
|
||
this paper should at once emigrate to the State of Delaware, where
|
||
he probably belongs. He is either a native of Delaware, or most of
|
||
his subscribers are citizens of that country; or, it may be that he
|
||
is a lineal descendant of some Hessian, who deserted during the
|
||
Revolutionary war. Most of the newspapers in the United States are
|
||
advocates of mental freedom. Probably nothing on earth has been so
|
||
potent for good as an untrammeled, fearless press. Among the papers
|
||
of importance there is not a solitary exception. No leading journal
|
||
in the United States can be found upon the side of intellectual
|
||
slavery. Of course, a few rural sheets edited by gentlemen, as Mr.
|
||
Greeley would say, "whom God in his inscrutable wisdom had allowed
|
||
to exist," may be found upon the other side, and may be small
|
||
enough, weak enough and mean enough to pander to the lowest and
|
||
basest prejudices of their most ignorant subscribers. These editors
|
||
disgrace their profession and exert about the same influence upon
|
||
the heads as upon the pockets of their subscriber, that is to say,
|
||
they get little and give less.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Do you not think after all, the people who are in
|
||
favor of having you arrested for blasphemy, are acting in
|
||
accordance with the real spirit of the Old and New Testaments?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Of course, they act in exact accordance with many of
|
||
the commands in the Old Testament, and in accordance with several
|
||
passages in the New. At the same time, it may be said that they
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
11
|
||
|
||
HADES, DELAWARE AND FREETHOUGHT.
|
||
|
||
violate passages in both. If the Old Testament is true, and if it
|
||
is the inspired word of God, of course, an Infidel ought not to be
|
||
allowed to live; and if the New Testament is true, an unbeliever
|
||
should not be permitted to speak. There are many passages, though,
|
||
in the New Testament, that should protect even an Infidel. Among
|
||
them this: "Do unto others as ye would that others should do unto
|
||
you." But that is a passage that has probably had as little effect
|
||
upon the church as any other in the Bible. So far as I am
|
||
concerned, I am willing to adopt; that passage, and I am willing to
|
||
extend to every other human being every right that I claim for
|
||
myself. If the churches would act upon this principle, if they
|
||
would say -- every soul, every mind, may think and investigate for
|
||
itself; and around all, and over all, shall be thrown the sacred
|
||
shield of liberty, I should be on their side.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: How do you stand with the clergymen, and what is
|
||
their opinion of you and of your views?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Most of them envy me; envy my independence; envy my
|
||
success; think that I ought to starve; that the people should not
|
||
hear me; say that I do what I do for money, for popularity; that I
|
||
am actuated by hatred of all that is good and tender and holy in
|
||
human nature; think that I wish to tear down the churches, destroy
|
||
all morality and goodness, and usher in the reign of crime and
|
||
chaos. They know that shepherds are unnecessary in the absence of
|
||
wolves, and it is to their interest to convince their sheep that
|
||
they, the sheep, need protection. This they are willing to give
|
||
them for half the wool. No doubt, most of these ministers are
|
||
honest, and are doing what they consider their duty. Be this as it
|
||
may, they feel the power slipping from their hands. They know that
|
||
they are not held in the estimation they once were. They know that
|
||
the idea is slowly growing that they are not absolutely necessary
|
||
for the protection of society. They know that the intellectual
|
||
world cares little for what they say, and that the great tide of
|
||
human progress flows on careless of their help or hindrance. So
|
||
long as they insist on the inspiration of the Bible, they are
|
||
compelled to take the ground that slavery was once a divine
|
||
institution; they are forced to defend cruelties that would shock
|
||
the heart of a savage, and besides, they are bound to teach the
|
||
eternal horror of everlasting punishment.
|
||
|
||
They poison the minds of children; they deform the brain and
|
||
pollute the imagination by teaching the frightful and infamous
|
||
dogma of endless misery. Even the laws of Delaware shock the
|
||
enlightened public of to-day. In that State they simply fine and
|
||
imprison a man for expressing his honest thoughts; and yet, if the
|
||
churches are right, God will damn a man forever for the same
|
||
offence. The brain and heart of our time cannot be satisfied with
|
||
the ancient creeds. The Bible must be revised again. Most of the
|
||
creeds must be blotted out. Humanity must take the place of
|
||
theology. Intellectual liberty must stand in every pulpit. There
|
||
must be freedom in all the pews, and every human soul must have the
|
||
right to express its honest thought. --
|
||
|
||
Washington Correspondent, Brooklyn Eagle, March 19, 1881.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
12
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. MR. LANSING.
|
||
|
||
Rev. Isaac J. Lansing of Meriden, Conn., recently denounced
|
||
Col. Robert G. Ingersoll from the pulpit of the Meriden Methodist
|
||
Church, and had the Opera House closed against him. This led a
|
||
Union reporter to show Colonel Ingersoll what Mr. Lansing had said
|
||
and to interrogate him with the following results.
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. MR. LANSING.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Did you favor the sending of obscene matter through
|
||
the mails as alleged by the Rev. Mr. Lansing?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Of course not, and no honest man ever thought that I
|
||
did. This charge is too malicious and silly to be answered. Mr.
|
||
Lansing knows better. He has made this charge many times and he
|
||
will make it again.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Is it a fact that there are thousands of clergymen
|
||
in the country whom you would fear to meet in fair debate?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: No; the fact is I would like to meet them all in one.
|
||
The pulpit is not burdened with genius. There are a few great men
|
||
engaged in preaching, but they are not orthodox. I cannot conceive
|
||
that a Freethinker has anything to fear from the pulpit, except
|
||
misrepresentation. Of course, there are thousand of ministers too
|
||
small to discuss with -- ministers who stand for nothing in the
|
||
church -- and with such clergymen I cannot afford to discuss
|
||
anything. If the Presbyterians, or the Congregationalists, or the
|
||
Methodists would select some man, and endorse him as their
|
||
champion, I would like to meet him in debate. Such a man I will pay
|
||
to discuss with me. I will give him most excellent wages, and pay
|
||
all the expenses of the discussion besides. There is but one safe
|
||
course for ministers -- they must assert. They must declare. They
|
||
must swear to it and stick to it, but they must not try to reason.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: You have never seen Rev. Mr. Lansing. To the people
|
||
of Meriden and thereabouts he is well-known. Judging from what has
|
||
been told you of his utterances and actions, what kind of a man
|
||
would you take him to be?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I would take him to be a Christian. He talks like one,
|
||
and he acts like one. If Christianity is right, Lansing is right.
|
||
If salvation depends upon belief, and if unbelievers are to be
|
||
eternally damned, then an Infidel has no right to speak. He should
|
||
not be allowed to murder the souls of his fellow-men. Lansing does
|
||
the best he knows how. He thinks that God hates an unbeliever, and
|
||
he tries to act like God. Lansing knows that he must have the right
|
||
to slander a man whom God is to eternally damn.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Mr. Lansing speaks of you as a wolf coming with
|
||
fangs sharpened by three hundred dollars a night to tear the lambs
|
||
of his flock. What do you say to that?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: All I have to say is, that I often get three times
|
||
that amount, and sometimes much more. I guess his lambs can take
|
||
care of themselves. I am not very fond of mutton anyway. Such talk
|
||
Mr. Lansing ought to be ashamed of. The idea that he is a shepherd
|
||
-- that he is on guard -- is simply preposterous. He has few sheep
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
13
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. MR. LANSING.
|
||
|
||
in his congregation that know as little on the wolf question as he
|
||
does. He ought to know that his sheep support him -- his sheep
|
||
protect him; and without the sheep poor Lansing would be devoured
|
||
by the wolves himself.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Shall you sue the Opera House management for breach
|
||
of contract?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I guess not; but I may pay Lansing something for
|
||
advertising my lecture. I suppose Mr. Wilcox (who controls the
|
||
Opera House) did what he thought was right. I hear that he is a
|
||
good man. He probably got a little frightened and began to think
|
||
about the day of judgment, He could not help it, and I cannot help
|
||
laughing at him.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Those in Meriden who most strongly oppose you are
|
||
radical Republicans. Is it not a fact that you possess the
|
||
confidence and friendship of some of the most respected leaders of
|
||
that party?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I think that all the respectable ones are friends of
|
||
mine. I am a Republican because I believe in the liberty of the
|
||
body, and I am an Infidel because I believe in the liberty of the
|
||
mind. There is no need of freeing cages. Let us free the birds. If
|
||
Mr. Lansing knew me, he would be a great friend. He would probably
|
||
annoy me by the frequency and length of his visits.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: During the recent presidential campaign did any
|
||
clergymen denounce you for your teachings, that you are aware of?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Some did, but they would not if they had been running
|
||
for office on the Republican ticket.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: What is most needed in our public men?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Hearts and brains.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Would people be any more moral solely because of a
|
||
disbelief in orthodox teaching and in the Bible as an inspired
|
||
book, in your opinion?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Yes; if a man really believes that God once upheld
|
||
slavery; that he commanded soldiers to kill women and babes; that
|
||
he believed in polygamy; that he persecuted for opinion's sake;
|
||
that he will punish forever, and that he hates an unbeliever, the
|
||
effect in my judgment will be bad. It always has been bad. This
|
||
belief built the dungeons of the Inquisition. This belief made the
|
||
Puritan murder the Quaker. and this belief has raised the devil
|
||
with Mr. Lansing.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Do you believe there will ever be a millennium, and
|
||
if so how will it come about?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: It will probably start in Meriden, as I have been
|
||
informed that Lansing is going to leave.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
14
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. MR. LANSING.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Is there anything else bearing upon the question at
|
||
issue or that would make good reading, that I have forgotten, that
|
||
you would like to say?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Yes. Good-bye. --
|
||
|
||
The Sunday Union, New Haven, Conn. April 10, 1881.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
BEACONSFIELD, LENT AND REVIVALS.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: What have you to say about the attack of Dr. Buckley
|
||
on you, and your lecture?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I never heard of Dr. Buckley until after I had
|
||
lectured in Brooklyn. He seems to think that it was extremely ill
|
||
bred in me to deliver a lecture on the "Liberty of Man, Woman and
|
||
Child, "during Lent. Lent is just as good as any other part of the
|
||
year, and no part can be too good to do good. It was not a part of
|
||
my object to hurt the feelings of the Episcopalians and Catholics.
|
||
If they think that there is some subtle relation between hunger and
|
||
heaven, or that faith depends upon, or is strengthened by famine,
|
||
or that veal, during Lent, is the enemy of virtue, or that beef
|
||
breeds blasphemy, while fish feeds faith -- of course, all this is
|
||
nothing to me. They have a right to say that vice depends on
|
||
victuals, sanctity on soup, religion on rice and chastity on
|
||
cheese, but they have no right to say that a lecture on liberty is
|
||
an insult to them because they are hungry. I suppose that Lent was
|
||
instituted in memory of the Savior's fast. At one time it was
|
||
supposed that only a divine being could live forty days without
|
||
food. This supposition has been overthrown.
|
||
|
||
It has been demonstrated by Dr. Tanner to be utterly without
|
||
foundation. What possible good did it do the world for Christ to go
|
||
without food for forty days? Why should we follow such an example?
|
||
As a rule, hungry people are cross, contrary, obstinate, peevish
|
||
and unpleasant. A good dinner puts a man at peace with all the
|
||
world -- makes him generous, good natured and happy. He feels like
|
||
kissing his wife and children. The future looks bright. He wants to
|
||
help the needy. The good in him predominates, and he wonders that
|
||
any man was ever stingy or cruel. Your good cook is a civilizer,
|
||
and without good food, well prepared, intellectual progress is
|
||
simply impossible. Most of the orthodox creeds were born of bad
|
||
cooking. Bad food produced dyspepsia, and dyspepsia produced
|
||
Calvinism, and Calvinism is the cancer of Christianity. Oatmeal is
|
||
responsible for the worst features of Scotch Presbyterianism. Half
|
||
cooked beans account for the religion of the Puritans. Fried bacon
|
||
and saleratus biscuit underlie the doctrine of State Rights. Lent
|
||
is a mistake, fasting is a blunder, and bad cooking is a crime.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: It is stated that you went to Brooklyn while Beecher
|
||
and Talmage were holding revivals, and that you did so for the
|
||
purpose of breaking them up. How is this?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I had not the slightest idea of interfering with the
|
||
revivals. They amounted to nothing. They were not alive enough to
|
||
be killed. Surely one lecture could not destroy two revivals.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
15
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. MR. LANSING.
|
||
|
||
Still, I think that if all the persons engaged in the revivals had
|
||
spent the same length of time in cleaning the streets, the good
|
||
result would have been more apparent. The truth is, that the old
|
||
way of converting people will have to be abandoned. The Americans
|
||
are getting hard to scare, and a revival without the "scare" is
|
||
scarcely worth holding. Such maniacs as Hammond and the "Boy
|
||
Preacher" fill asylums and terrify children. After saying what he
|
||
has about hell, Mr. Beecher ought to know that he is not the man to
|
||
conduct a revival. A revival sermon with hell left out -- with the
|
||
brimstone gone -- with the worm that never dies, dead, and the
|
||
Devil absent is the broadest farce. Mr. Talmage believes in the
|
||
ancient way. With him hell is a burning reality. He can hear the
|
||
shrikes and groans. He is of that order of mind that rejoices in
|
||
these things. If he could only convince others, he would be a great
|
||
revivalist. He cannot terrify, he astonishes, He is the clown of
|
||
the horrible -- one of Jehovah's jesters, I am not responsible for
|
||
the revival failure in Brooklyn. I wish I were. I would have the
|
||
happiness of knowing that I had been instrumental in preserving the
|
||
sanity of my fellow-men.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: How do you account for these attacks?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: It was not so much what I said that excited the wrath
|
||
of the reverend gentlemen as the fact that I had a great house.
|
||
They contrasted their failure with my success. The fact is, the
|
||
people are getting tired of the old ideas. They are beginning to
|
||
think for themselves. Eternal punishment seems to them like eternal
|
||
revenge. They see that Christ could not atone for the sins of
|
||
others; that belief ought not to be rewarded and honest doubt
|
||
punished forever; that good deeds are better than bad creeds, and
|
||
that liberty is the rightful heritage of every soul.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Were you an admirer of Lord Beaconsfield?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: In some respects. He was on our side during the war,
|
||
and gave it as his opinion that the Union would be preserved. Mr.
|
||
Gladstone congratulated Jefferson Davis on having founded a new
|
||
nation. I shall never forget Beaconsfield for his kindness, nor
|
||
Gladstone for his malice. Beaconsfield was an intellectual gymnast,
|
||
a political athlete, one of the most adroit men in the world. He
|
||
had the persistence of his race. In spite of the prejudices of
|
||
eighteen hundred years, he rose to the highest position that can be
|
||
occupied by a citizen. During his administration England again
|
||
became a Continental power and played her game of European chess.
|
||
I have never regarded Beaconsfield as a man controlled by
|
||
principle, or by his heart. He was strictly a politician. He always
|
||
acted as though he thought the clubs were looking at him. He knew
|
||
all the arts belonging to his trade. He would have succeeded
|
||
anywhere, if by "succeeding" is meant the attainment of position
|
||
and power. But after all, such men are splendid failures. They give
|
||
themselves and others a great deal of trouble -- they wear the
|
||
tinsel crown of temporary success and then fade from public view.
|
||
They astonish the pit, they gain the applause of the galleries, but
|
||
when the curtain falls there is nothing left to benefit mankind.
|
||
Beaconsfield held convictions somewhat in contempt. He had the
|
||
imagination of the East united with the ambition of an Englishman.
|
||
With him, to succeed was to have done right.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
16
|
||
|
||
A REPLY TO THE REV. MR. LANSING.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: What do you think of him as an author?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Most of his characters are like himself -- puppets
|
||
moved by the string of self-interest. The men are adroit, the women
|
||
mostly heartless. They catch each other with false bait. They have
|
||
great worldly wisdom. Their virtue and vice are mechanical. They
|
||
have hearts like clocks -- filled with wheels and springs. The
|
||
author winds them up. In his novels Disraeli allows us to enter the
|
||
greenroom of his head. We see the ropes, the pulleys and the old
|
||
masks. In all things, in politics and in literature, he was cold,
|
||
cunning, accurate, able and successful. His books will, in a little
|
||
while, follow their author to their grave. After all, the good will
|
||
live longest. --
|
||
|
||
Washington Correspondent, Brooklyn Eagle, April 24, 1881.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
Ever since Colonel Ingersoll began the delivery of his lecture
|
||
called The Great Infidels, the ministers of the country have made
|
||
him the subject of special attack. One week ago last Sunday the
|
||
majority of the leading ministers in New York made replies to
|
||
Ingersoll's last lecture. What he has to say to these replies will
|
||
be found in a interview with Colonel Ingersoll. No man is harder to
|
||
pin down for a long talk than the Colonel. He is so beset with
|
||
visitors and eager office seekers anxious for his help, that he can
|
||
hardly find five minutes unoccupied during an entire day. Through
|
||
the shelter of a private room and the guardianship of a stout
|
||
colored servant, the Colonel was able to escape the crowd of
|
||
seekers after his personal charity long enough to give him time to
|
||
answer some of the ministerial arguments advanced against him in
|
||
New York.
|
||
|
||
ANSWERING THE NEW YORK MINISTERS.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Have you seen the attacks made upon you by certain
|
||
ministers of New York, published in the Harold last Sunday?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Yes, I read, or heard read, what was in Monday's
|
||
Harold. I do not know that you could hardly call them attacks. They
|
||
are substantially a repetition of what the pulpit has been saying
|
||
for a great many hundred years, and what the pulpit will say just
|
||
so long as men are paid for suppressing truth and for defending
|
||
superstition. One of these gentlemen tells the lambs of his flock
|
||
that three thousand men and a few women -- probably with quite an
|
||
emphasis on the word "Few" -- gave one dollar each to hear their
|
||
Maker cursed and their Savior ridiculed. Probably nothing is so
|
||
hard for the average preacher to bear as the fact that people are
|
||
not only willing to hear the other side, but absolutely anxious to
|
||
pay for it. The dollar that these people paid hurt their feelings
|
||
vastly more than what was said after they were in. Of course, it is
|
||
a frightful commentary on the average intellect of the pulpit that
|
||
a minister cannot get so large an audience when he preaches for
|
||
nothing, as an Infidel can draw at a dollar a head. If I depended
|
||
upon a contribution box, or upon passing a saucer that would come
|
||
back to the stage enriched with a few five cent pieces, eight or
|
||
ten dimes, and a lonesome quarter, these gentlemen would, in all
|
||
probability, imagine Infidelity was not to be feared.
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
17
|
||
|
||
ANSWERING THE NEW YORK MINISTERS.
|
||
|
||
The churches were all open on that Sunday, and all could go
|
||
who desired. Yet they were not full, and the pews were nearly as
|
||
empty of people as the pulpit of ideas. The truth is, the story is
|
||
growing old, the ideas somewhat moss-covered, and everything has a
|
||
wrinkled and withered appearance. This gentleman says that these
|
||
people went to hear their Maker cursed and their Savior ridiculed.
|
||
Is it possible that in a city where so many steeples pierce the
|
||
air, and hundreds of sermons are preached every Sunday, there are
|
||
three thousand men, and a few women, so anxious to hear "their
|
||
Maker cursed and their Savior ridiculed" that they are willing to
|
||
pay a dollar each? The gentleman knew that nobody cursed anybody's
|
||
Maker. He knew that the statement was utterly false and without the
|
||
slightest foundation. He also knew that nobody had ridiculed the
|
||
savior of anybody, but, on the contrary, that I had paid a greater
|
||
tribute to the character of Jesus Christ than any minister in New
|
||
York has the capacity to do. Certainly it is not cursing the Maker
|
||
of anybody to say that the God described in the Old Testament is
|
||
not the real God. Certainly it is not cursing God to declare that
|
||
the real God never sanctioned slavery or polygamy, or commanded
|
||
wars of extermination, or told a husband to separate from his wife
|
||
if she differed with him in religion. The people who say these
|
||
things of God -- if there is any God at all -- do what little there
|
||
is in their power, unwittingly of course, to destroy his
|
||
reputation. But I have done something to rescue the reputation of
|
||
the Deity from the slanders of the pulpit. If there is any God, I
|
||
expect to find myself credited on the heavenly books for my defence
|
||
of him. I did say that our civilization is due not to piety, but to
|
||
Infidelity. I did say that every great reformer had been denounced
|
||
as an Infidel in his day and generation. I did say that Christ was
|
||
an Infidel, and that he was treated in his day very much as the
|
||
orthodox preachers treat an honest man now. I did say that he was
|
||
tried for blasphemy and crucified by bigots. I did say that he
|
||
hated and despised the church of his time, and that he denounced
|
||
the most pious people of Jerusalem as thieves and vipers. And I
|
||
suggested that should he come again he might have occasion to
|
||
repeat the remarks that he then made. At the same time I admitted
|
||
that there are thousands and thousands of Christians who are
|
||
exceedingly good people. I never did pretend that the fact that a
|
||
man was a Christian even tended to show that he was a bad man.
|
||
Neither have I ever insisted that the fact that a man is an Infidel
|
||
even tends to show what, in other respects, his character is. But
|
||
I always have said, and I always expect to say, that a Christian
|
||
who does not believe in absolute intellectual liberty is a curse to
|
||
mankind, and that an Infidel who does believe in absolute
|
||
intellectual liberty is a blessing to this world. We cannot expect
|
||
all Infidels to he good, nor all Christians to be bad, and we might
|
||
make some mistakes even if we selected these people ourselves. It
|
||
is admitted by the Christians that Christ made a great mistake when
|
||
he selected Judas. This was a mistake of over eight per cent.
|
||
|
||
Chaplain Newman takes pains to compare some great Christians
|
||
with some great Infidels. He compares Washington with Julian, and
|
||
insists, I suppose, that Washington was a great Christian.
|
||
Certainly he is not very familiar with the history of Washington,
|
||
or he never would claim that he was particularly distinguished in
|
||
his day for what is generally known as vital piety. That he went
|
||
through the ordinary forms of Christianity nobody disputes. That he
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
18
|
||
|
||
ANSWERING THE NEW YORK MINISTERS.
|
||
|
||
listened to sermons without paying any particular attention to
|
||
them, no one will deny. Julian, of course, was somewhat prejudiced
|
||
against Christianity, but that he was one of the greatest men of
|
||
antiquity no one acquainted with the history of Rome can honestly
|
||
dispute. When he was made emperor he found at the palace hundreds
|
||
of gentlemen who acted as barbers, hair-combers, and brushers for
|
||
the emperor. He dismissed them all, remarking that he was able to
|
||
wash himself. These dismissed office-holders started the story that
|
||
he was dirty in his habits, and a minister of the nineteenth
|
||
century was found silly enough to believe the story. Another thing
|
||
that probably got him into disrepute in that day, he had no private
|
||
chaplains. As a matter of fact, Julian was forced to pretend that
|
||
he was a Christian in order to save his life. The Christians of
|
||
that day were of such a loving nature that any man who differed
|
||
with them was forced to either fall a victim to their ferocity or
|
||
seek safety in subterfuge. The real crime that Julian committed,
|
||
and the only one that has burned itself into the very heart and
|
||
conscience of the Christian world, is, that he transferred the
|
||
revenues of Christian churches to heathen priests. Whoever stands
|
||
between a priest and his salary will find that he has committed the
|
||
unpardonable sin commonly known as the sin against the Holy Ghost.
|
||
|
||
This gentleman also compares Luther with Voltaire. If he will
|
||
read the life of Luther by Lord Brougham, he will find that in his
|
||
ordinary conversation he was exceedingly low and vulgar, and that
|
||
no respectable English publisher could be found who would soil
|
||
paper with the translation. If he will take the pains to read an
|
||
essay by Macaulay, he will find that twenty years after the death
|
||
of Luther there were more Catholics than when he was born. And that
|
||
twenty years after the death of Voltaire there were millions less
|
||
than when he was born. If he will take just a few moments to think,
|
||
he will find that the last victory of Protestantism was won in
|
||
Holland; that there has never been one since, and will never be
|
||
another. If he would really like to think, and enjoy for a few
|
||
moments the luxury of having an idea, let him ponder for a little
|
||
while over the instructive fact that languages having their root in
|
||
the Latin have generally been spoken in Catholic countries; and
|
||
that those languages having their root in the ancient German are
|
||
now mostly spoken by people of Protestant proclivities. It may
|
||
occur to him, after thinking of this a while, that there is
|
||
something deeper in the question than he has as yet perceived.
|
||
Luther's last victory, as I said before, was in Holland; but the
|
||
victory of Voltaire goes on from day to day. Protestantism is not
|
||
holding its own with Catholicism, even in the United States. I saw
|
||
the other day the statistics, I believe, of the city of Chicago,
|
||
showing that, while the city had increased two or three hundred per
|
||
cent., Protestantism had lagged behind at the rate of twelve per
|
||
cent. I am willing for one, to have the whole question depend upon
|
||
a comparison of the worth and work of Voltaire and Luther. It may
|
||
be, too, that the gentleman forgot to tell us that Luther himself
|
||
gave consent to a person high in office to have two wives, but
|
||
prudently suggested to him that he had better keep it as still as
|
||
possible. Luther was, also, a believer in a personal Devil. He
|
||
thought that deformed children had been begotten by an evil spirit.
|
||
On one occasion he told a mother that, in his judgment, she had
|
||
better drown her child; that he had no doubt the Devil was its
|
||
father. This same Luther made this observation: "Universal
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
19
|
||
|
||
ANSWERING THE NEW YORK MINISTERS.
|
||
|
||
toleration is universal error, and universal error is universal
|
||
hell." From this you will see that he was an exceedingly good man,
|
||
but mistaken upon many questions. So, too, he laughed at the
|
||
Copernican system, and wanted to know if these fool astronomers
|
||
could undo the work of God. He probably knew as little about
|
||
science as the reverend gentlemen does about history.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Does he compare any other Infidels with Christians?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Oh, yes; he compares Lord Bacon with Diderot. I have
|
||
never claimed that Diderot was a saint. I have simply insisted that
|
||
he was a great man; that he was grand enough to say that
|
||
"incredulity is the beginning of philosophy;" that he had sense
|
||
enough to know that the God described by the Catholics and
|
||
Protestants of his day was simply an impossible monster; and that
|
||
he also had the brain to see that the little selfish heaven
|
||
occupied by a few monks and nuns and idiots that they had fleeced,
|
||
was hardly worth going to; in other words, that he was a man of
|
||
common sense, greatly in advance of his time, and that he did what
|
||
he could to increase the sum of human enjoyment to the end that
|
||
there might be more happiness in this world.
|
||
|
||
The gentleman compares him with Lord Bacon, and yet, if he
|
||
will read the trials of that day -- I think in the year 1620 -- he
|
||
will find that the Christian Lord Bacon, the pious Lord Bacon, was
|
||
charged with receiving pay for his opinions, and, in some
|
||
instances, pay from both sides; that the Christian Lord Bacon, at
|
||
first upon his honor as a Christian lord, denied the whole
|
||
business; that afterward the Christian Lord Bacon, upon his honor
|
||
as a Christian lord, admitted the truth of the whole business, and
|
||
that, therefore, the Christian Lord Bacon was convicted and
|
||
sentenced to pay a fine of forty thousand pounds, and rendered
|
||
infamous and incapable of holding any office. Now, understand me,
|
||
I do not think Bacon took bribes because he was a Christian,
|
||
because there have been many Christian judges perfectly honest;
|
||
but, if the statement of the reverend gentleman, of New York is
|
||
true, his being a Christian did not prevent his taking bribes. And
|
||
right here allow me to thank the gentleman with all my heart for
|
||
having spoken of Lord Bacon in this connection. I have always
|
||
admired the genius of Bacon, and have always thought of his fall
|
||
with an aching heart, and would not now have spoken of his crime
|
||
had not his character been flung in my face by a gentleman who asks
|
||
his God to kill me for having expressed my honest thought.
|
||
|
||
The same gentleman compares Newton with Spinoza. In the first
|
||
place, there is no ground of parallel. Newton was a very great man
|
||
and a very justly celebrated mathematician. As a matter of fact, he
|
||
is not celebrated for having discovered the law of gravitation.
|
||
That was known for thousands of years before he was born; and if
|
||
the reverend gentleman would read a little more he would find that
|
||
Newton's discovery was not that there is such a law as gravitation,
|
||
but that bodies attract each other "with a force proportional
|
||
directly to the quantity of matter they contain, and inversely to
|
||
the squares of their distances." I do not think he made the
|
||
discoveries on account of his Christianity. Laplace was certainly
|
||
in many respects as great a mathematician and astronomer, but he
|
||
was not a Christian.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
20
|
||
|
||
ANSWERING THE NEW YORK MINISTERS.
|
||
|
||
Descartes was certainly not much inferior to Newton as a
|
||
mathematician, and thousands insist that he was his superior; yet
|
||
he was not a Christian. Euclid, if I remember right, was not a
|
||
Christian, and yet he had quite a turn for mathematics. As a matter
|
||
of fact, Christianity got its idea of algebra from the Mohammedans,
|
||
and, without algebra, astronomical knowledge of to-day would have
|
||
been impossible. Christianity did not even invent figures. We got
|
||
those from the Arabs. The very word "algebra" is Arabic. The
|
||
decimal system, I believe, however, was due to a German, but
|
||
whether he was a Christian or not, I do not know.
|
||
|
||
We find that the Chinese calculated eclipses long before
|
||
Christ was born; and, exactness being the rule at that time, there
|
||
is an account of two astronomers having been beheaded for failing
|
||
to tell the coming of an eclipse to the minute; yet they were not
|
||
Christians. There is another fact connected with Newton, and that
|
||
is that he wrote a commentary on the Book of Revelation. The
|
||
probability is that a sillier commentary was never written. It was
|
||
so perfectly absurd and laughable that some one -- I believe it was
|
||
Voltaire -- said that while Newton had excited the envy of the
|
||
intellectual world by his mathematical accomplishments, it had
|
||
gotten even with him the moment his commentaries were published.
|
||
Spinoza was not a mathematician, particularly. He was a
|
||
metaphysician, an honest thinker, whose influence is felt and will
|
||
be felt so long as these great questions have the slightest
|
||
interest for the human brain.
|
||
|
||
He also compares Chalmers with Hume. Chalmers gained his
|
||
notoriety from preaching what are known as the astronomical
|
||
sermons, and, I suppose, was quite a preacher in his day.
|
||
|
||
But Hume was a thinker, and his works will live for ages after
|
||
Mr. Chalmers' sermons will have been forgotten. Mr. Chalmers has
|
||
never been prominent enough to have been well known by many people.
|
||
He may have been an exceedingly good man, and derived, during his
|
||
life, great consolation from a belief in the damnation of infants.
|
||
|
||
Mr. Newman also compares Wesley with Thomas Paine. When Thomas
|
||
Paine was in favor of human liberty, Wesley was against it. Thomas
|
||
Paine wrote a pamphlet called "Common Sense," urging the colonies
|
||
to separate themselves from Great Britain. Wesley wrote a treatise
|
||
on the other side. He was the enemy of human liberty; and if his
|
||
advice could have been followed we would have been the colonies of
|
||
Great Britain still. We never would have had a President in need of
|
||
a private chaplain. Mr. Wesley had not a scientific mind. He
|
||
preached a sermon once on the cause and cure of earthquakes, taking
|
||
the ground that earthquakes were caused by sins, and that the only
|
||
way to stop them was to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. He also
|
||
laid down some excellent rules for rearing children, that is, from
|
||
a Methodist standpoint. His rules amounted to about this:
|
||
|
||
First. Never give them what they want.
|
||
|
||
Second. Never give them what you intend to give them, at the
|
||
time they want it.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
21
|
||
|
||
ANSWERING THE NEW YORK MINISTERS.
|
||
|
||
Third. Break their wills at the earliest possible moment. Mr.
|
||
Wesley made every family an inquisition, every father and mother
|
||
inquisitors, and all the children helpless victims. One of his
|
||
homes would give an exceedingly vivid idea of hell. At the same
|
||
time, Mr. Wesley was a believer in witches and wizards, and knew
|
||
all about the Devil. At his request God performed many miracles. On
|
||
several occasions he cured his horse of lameness. On others,
|
||
dissipated Mr Wesley's headaches. Now and then he put off rain on
|
||
account of a camp meeting, and at other times stopped the wind
|
||
blowing at the special request of Mr. Wesley. I have no doubt that
|
||
Mr. Wesley was honest in all this, -- just as honest as he was
|
||
mistaken. And I also admit that he was the founder of a church that
|
||
does extremely well in new countries, and that thousands of
|
||
Methodists have been exceedingly good men. But I deny that he ever
|
||
did anything for human liberty. While Mr. Wesley was fighting the
|
||
Devil and giving his experience with witches and wizards, Thomas
|
||
Paine helped to found a free nation. helped to enrich the air with
|
||
another flag. Wesley was right on one thing, though. He was opposed
|
||
to slavery, and, I believe, called it the sum of all villainies. I
|
||
have always been obliged to him for that. I do not think he said it
|
||
because he was a Methodist; but Methodism, as he understood it, did
|
||
not prevent his saying it, and Methodism as others understood it,
|
||
did not prevent men from being slaveholders, did not prevent them
|
||
from selling babes from mothers, and in the name of God beating the
|
||
naked hack of toil. I think, on the whole, Paine did more for the
|
||
world than Mr. Wesley. The difference between an average Methodist
|
||
and an average Episcopalian is not worth quarreling about. But the
|
||
difference between a man who believes in despotism and one who
|
||
believes in liberty is almost infinite. Wesley changed
|
||
Episcopalians into Methodists; Paine turned lickspittles into men.
|
||
Let it be understood, once for all, that I have never claimed that
|
||
Paine was perfect. I was very glad that the reverend gentleman
|
||
admitted that he was a patriot and the foe of tyrants; that he
|
||
sympathized with the oppressed, and befriended the helpless; that
|
||
he favored religious toleration, and that he weakened the power of
|
||
the Catholic Church. I am glad that he made these admissions.
|
||
Whenever it can be truthfully said of a man that he loved his
|
||
country, hated tyranny, sympathized with the oppressed, and
|
||
befriended the helpless, nothing more is necessary. If God can
|
||
afford to damn such a man, such a man can afford to be damned.
|
||
While Paine was the foe of tyrants, Christians were the tyrants.
|
||
When he sympathized with the oppressed, the oppressed were the
|
||
victims of Christians. When he befriended the helpless, the
|
||
helpless were the victims of Christians. Paine never founded an
|
||
inquisition; never tortured a human being; never hoped that
|
||
anybody's tongue would be paralyzed, and was always opposed to
|
||
private chaplains.
|
||
|
||
It might be well for the reverend gentleman to continue his
|
||
comparisons, and find eminent Christians to put, for instance,
|
||
along with Humboldt, the Shakespeare of science; somebody by the
|
||
side of Darwin, as a naturalist; some gentleman in England to stand
|
||
with Tyndall, or Huxley; some Christian German to stand with
|
||
Haeckel and Helmholtz. May-be he knows some Christian statesman
|
||
that he would compare with Gambetta. I would advise him to continue
|
||
his parallels.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
22
|
||
|
||
ANSWERING THE NEW YORK MINISTERS.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: What have you to say of the Rev. Dr. Fulton?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: The Rev. Dr. Fulton is a great friend of mine. I am
|
||
extremely sorry to find that he still believes in a personal Devil,
|
||
and I greatly regret that he imagines that this Devil has so much
|
||
power that he can take possession of a human being and deprive God
|
||
of their services. It is in sorrow and not in anger, that I find
|
||
that he still believes in this ancient superstition. I also regret
|
||
that he imagines that I am leading young men to eternal ruin. It
|
||
occurs to me that if there is an infinite God, he ought not to
|
||
allow anybody to lead young men to eternal ruin. If anything I have
|
||
said, or am going to say, has a tendency to lead young men to
|
||
eternal ruin, I hope that if there is a God with the power to
|
||
prevent me, he will use it. Dr. Fulton admits that in politics I am
|
||
on the right side. I presume he makes this concession because he is
|
||
a Republican. I am in favor of universal education, of absolute
|
||
intellectual liberty. I am in favor, also, of equal rights to all.
|
||
As I have said before we have spent millions and millions of
|
||
dollars and rivers of blood to free the bodies of men; in other
|
||
words, we have been freeing the cages. My proposition now is to
|
||
give a little liberty to the birds. I am not willing to stop where
|
||
a man can simply reap the fruit of his hand. I wish him, also, to
|
||
enjoy the liberty of his brain. I am not against any truth in the
|
||
New Testament. I did say that I objected to religion because it
|
||
made enemies and not friends. The Rev. Dr. says that is one reason
|
||
why he likes religion. Dr. Fulton tells me that the Bible is the
|
||
gift of God to man. He also tells me that the Bible is true, and
|
||
that God is its author. If the Bible is true and God is its author,
|
||
then God was in favor of slavery four thousand years ago. He was
|
||
also in favor of polygamy and religious intolerance. In other
|
||
words, four thousand years ago he occupied the exact position the
|
||
Devil is supposed to occupy now. If the Bible teaches anything it
|
||
teaches man to enslave his brother, that is to say, if his brother
|
||
is a heathen. The God of the Bible always hated heathens. Dr.
|
||
Fulton also says that the Bible is the basis of all law. Yet, if
|
||
the Legislature of New York would re-enact next winter the Mosaic
|
||
code, the members might consider themselves lucky if they were not
|
||
hung upon their return home. Probably Dr. Fulton thinks that had it
|
||
not been for the Ten Commandments, nobody would ever have thought
|
||
that stealing was wrong. I have always had an idea that men
|
||
objected to stealing because the industrious did not wish to
|
||
support the idle; and I have a notion that there has always been a
|
||
law against murder, because a large majority of people have always
|
||
objected to being murdered. If he will read his Old Testament with
|
||
care, he will find that God violated most of his own commandments
|
||
except that "Thou shalt worship no other God before me," and, may-
|
||
be, the commandment against work on the Sabbath day. With these two
|
||
exceptions I am satisfied that God himself violated all the rest.
|
||
He told his chosen people to rob the Gentiles: that violated the
|
||
commandment against stealing. He said himself that he had sent out
|
||
lying spirits; that certainly was a violation of another
|
||
commandment. He ordered soldiers to kill men, women and babes; that
|
||
was a violation of another. He also told them to divide the maidens
|
||
among the soldiers; that was a substantial violation of another.
|
||
One of the commandments was that you should not covet your
|
||
neighbor's property. In that commandment you will find that a man's
|
||
wife is put on an equality with his ox. Yet his chosen people were
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
23
|
||
|
||
ANSWERING THE NEW YORK MINISTERS.
|
||
|
||
allowed not only to covet the property of the Gentiles, but to take
|
||
it. If Dr. Fulton will read a little more, he will find that all
|
||
the good laws in the Decalogue had been in force in Egypt a century
|
||
before Moses was born. He will find that like laws and many better
|
||
ones were in force in India and China, long before Moses knew what
|
||
a bulrush was. If he will think a little while, he will find that
|
||
one of the Ten Commandments, the one on the subject of graven
|
||
images, was bad. The result of that was that Palestine never
|
||
produced a painter, or a sculptor, and that no Jew became famous in
|
||
art until long after the destruction of Jerusalem. A commandment
|
||
that robs a people of painting and statuary is not a good one The
|
||
idea of the Bible being the basis of law is almost too silly to be
|
||
seriously refuted. I admit that I did say that Shakespeare was the
|
||
greatest man who ever lived; and Dr. Fulton says in regard to this
|
||
statement, "What foolishness! He then proceeds to insult his
|
||
audience by telling them that while many of them have copies of
|
||
Shakespeare's works in their houses, they have not read twenty
|
||
pages of them. This fact may account for their attending his church
|
||
and being satisfied with that sermon. I do not believe to-day that
|
||
Shakespeare is more influential than the Bible, but what influence
|
||
Shakespeare has, is for good. No man can read it without having his
|
||
intellectual wealth increased. When you read it, it is not
|
||
necessary to throw away your reason. Neither will you be damned if
|
||
you do not understand it. It is a book that appeals to everything
|
||
in the human brain. In that book can be found the wisdom of all
|
||
ages. Long after the Bible has passed out of existence, the name of
|
||
Shakespeare will lead the intellectual roster of the world. Dr.
|
||
Fulton says there is not one word in the Bible that teaches that
|
||
slavery or polygamy is right. He also states that I know it. If
|
||
language has meaning -- if words have sense, or the power to convey
|
||
thought, -- what did God mean when he told the Israelites to buy of
|
||
the heathen round about, and that the heathen should be their
|
||
bondmen and bondmaids forever?
|
||
|
||
What did God mean when he said, If a man strike his servant so
|
||
that he dies, he should not be punished, because his servant was
|
||
his money. Passages like these can be quoted beyond the space that
|
||
any paper is willing to give. Yet the Rev. Dr. Fulton denies that
|
||
the Old Testament upholds slavery. I would like to ask him if the
|
||
Old Testament is in favor of religious toleration? If God wrote the
|
||
Old Testament and afterward came upon the earth as Jesus Christ,
|
||
and taught a new religion, and the Jews crucified him was this not
|
||
in accordance with his own law, and was he not, after all, the
|
||
victim of himself?
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: What about the other ministers?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Well, I see in the Harold that some ten have said they
|
||
would reply to me. I have selected the two, simply because they
|
||
came first. I think they are about as poor as any; and you know it
|
||
is natural to attack those who are the easiest answered. All these
|
||
ministers are now acting as my agents, and are doing me all the
|
||
good they can by saying all the bad things about me they can think
|
||
of. They imagine that their congregations have not grown, and they
|
||
talk to them as though they were living in the seventeenth instead
|
||
of the nineteenth century. The truth is, the pews are beyond the
|
||
Pulpit, and the modern sheep are now protecting the shepherds.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
24
|
||
|
||
ANSWERING THE NEW YORK MINISTERS.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Have you noticed a great change in public sentiment
|
||
in the last three or four years?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Yes, I think there are ten times as many Infidels
|
||
to-day as there were ten years ago. I am amazed at the great change
|
||
that has taken place in public opinion. The churches are not
|
||
getting along well. There are hundreds and hundreds who have not
|
||
had a new member in a year. The young men are not satisfied with
|
||
the old ideas. They find that the church, after all, is opposed to
|
||
learning; that it is the enemy of progress; that it says to every
|
||
young man, "Go slow. Don't allow your knowledge to puff you up.
|
||
Recollect that reason is a dangerous thing. You had better be a
|
||
little ignorant here for the sake of being an angel hereafter, than
|
||
quite a smart young man and get damned at last." The church warns
|
||
them against Humboldt and Darwin, and tells them how much nobler it
|
||
is to come from mud than from monkeys; that they were made from
|
||
mud. Every college professor is afraid to tell what he thinks, and
|
||
every student detects the cowardice. The result is that the young
|
||
men have lost confidence in the creeds of the day and propose to do
|
||
a little thinking for themselves. They still have a kind of tender
|
||
pity for the old folks, and pretend to believe some things they do
|
||
not, rather than hurt grandmother's feelings. In the presence of
|
||
the preachers they talk about the weather and other harmless
|
||
subjects, for fear of bruising the spirit of their pastor. Every
|
||
minister likes to consider himself as a brave shepherd leading the
|
||
lambs through the green pastures and defending them at night from
|
||
Infidel wolves. All this he does for a certain share of the wool.
|
||
Others regard the church as a kind of social organization, as a
|
||
good way to get into society. They wish to attend sociables, drink
|
||
tea, and contribute for the conversion of the heathen. It is always
|
||
so pleasant to think that there is somebody worse than you are,
|
||
whose reformation you can help pay for. I find, too, that the young
|
||
women are getting tired of the old doctrines, and that everywhere,
|
||
all over this country, the power of the pulpit wanes and weakens.
|
||
I find in my lectures that the applause is just in proportion to
|
||
the radicalism of the thought expressed. Our war was a great
|
||
educator, when the whole people of the North rose up grandly in
|
||
favor of human liberty. For many years the great question of human
|
||
rights was discussed from every stump. Every paper was filled with
|
||
splendid sentiments. An application of these doctrines -- doctrines
|
||
born in war -- will forever do away with the bondage of
|
||
superstition. When man has been free in body for a little time, he
|
||
will become free in mind, and the man who says, "I have an equal
|
||
right with other men to work and reap the reward of my labor," will
|
||
say, "I have, also, an equal right to think and reap the reward of
|
||
my thought."
|
||
|
||
In old times there was a great difference between a clergyman
|
||
and a layman. The clergyman was educated; the peasant was ignorant.
|
||
The tables have been turned. The thought of the world is with the
|
||
laymen. They are the intellectual pioneers, the mental leaders, and
|
||
the ministers are following on behind, predicting failure and
|
||
disaster, signing for the good old times when their word ended
|
||
discussion. There is another good thing, and that is the revision
|
||
of the Bible. Hundreds of passages have been found to be
|
||
interpolations, and future revisers will find hundreds more. The
|
||
foundation crumbles. That book, called the basis of all law and
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
25
|
||
|
||
ANSWERING THE NEW YORK MINISTERS.
|
||
|
||
civilization, has to be civilized itself. We have outgrown it. Our
|
||
laws are better; our institutions grander; our objects and aims
|
||
nobler and higher.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Do many people write to you upon this subject; and
|
||
what spirit do they manifest?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Yes, I get a great many anonymous letters -- some
|
||
letters in which God is asked to strike me dead, others of an
|
||
exceedingly insulting character, others almost idiotic, others
|
||
exceedingly malicious, and others insane, others written in an
|
||
exceedingly good spirit, winding up with the information that I
|
||
must certainly be damned. Others express wonder that God allowed me
|
||
to live at all, and that, having made the mistake, he does not
|
||
instantly correct it by killing me. Others prophesy that I will yet
|
||
be a minister of the gospel; but, as there has never been any
|
||
softening of the brain in our family, I imagine that the prophecy
|
||
will never be fulfilled. Lately, on opening a letter and seeing
|
||
that it is upon this subject, and without a signature, I throw it
|
||
aside without reading. I have so often found them to be so grossly
|
||
ignorant, insulting and malicious, that as a rule I read them no
|
||
more.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Of the hundreds of people who call upon you nearly
|
||
every day to ask your help, do any of them ever discriminate
|
||
against you on account of your Infidelity?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: No one who has asked a favor of me objects to my
|
||
religion, or, rather, to my lack of it. A great many people do come
|
||
to me for assistance of one kind and another. But I have never yet
|
||
asked a man or woman whether they were religious or not, to what
|
||
church they belonged, or any questions upon the subject. I think I
|
||
have done favors for persons of most denominations. It never occurs
|
||
to me whether they are Christians or Infidels. I do not care. Of
|
||
course, I do not expect that Christians will treat me the same as
|
||
though I belonged to their church. I have never expected it. In
|
||
some instances I have been disappointed. I have some excellent
|
||
friends who disagree with me entirely upon the subject of religion.
|
||
My real opinion is that secretly they like me because I am not a
|
||
Christian, and those who do not like me envy me the liberty I
|
||
enjoy. --
|
||
|
||
New York correspondent, Chicago Times, May 29, 1881.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
Our "Royal Bob" was found by The Gazette, in the gloaming of
|
||
a delicious evening, during the past week, within the open portals
|
||
of his friendly residence, dedicated by the gracious presence
|
||
within to a simple and cordial hospitality, to the charms of
|
||
friendship and the freedom of an abounding comradeship. With
|
||
intellectual and untrammered life, a generous, wise and genial
|
||
host, whoever enters finds a welcome, seasoned with kindly wit and
|
||
Attic humor, a poetic insight and a delicious frankness which
|
||
renders an evening there a veritable symposium. The wayfarer who
|
||
passes is charmed, and he who comes frequently, goes always away
|
||
with delighted memories.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
26
|
||
|
||
GUITEAU AND HIS CRIME.
|
||
|
||
What matters it that we differ? such as he and his make our
|
||
common life the sweeter. An hour or two spent in the attractive
|
||
parlors of the Ingersoll homestead, amid the rare group, lends a
|
||
newer meaning to the idea of home and a more secure beauty of the
|
||
fact of family life. During the past exciting three weeks Colonel
|
||
Ingersoll has been a busy man. He holds no office. No position
|
||
could lend him an additional crown and even recognition is no
|
||
longer necessary. But it has been well that amid the first fierce
|
||
fury of anger and excitement, and the subsequent more bitter if not
|
||
as noble outpouring of fiction's suspicions and innuendoes, that so
|
||
manly a man, so sagacious a counsellor, has been enabled to hold so
|
||
positive a balance. Cabinet officials, legal functionaries,
|
||
detectives, citizens -- all have felt the wise, humane instincts,
|
||
and the capacious brain of this marked man affecting and
|
||
influencing for this fair equipoise and calmer judgement.
|
||
|
||
Conversing freely on this evening of this visit, Colonel
|
||
Ingersoll, in the abundance of his pleasure at the White House
|
||
news, submitted to be interviewed, and with the following results.
|
||
|
||
GUITEAU AND HIS CRIME.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: By-the-way, Colonel, you knew Guiteau slightly, we
|
||
believe. Are you aware that it has been attempted to show that some
|
||
money loaned or given him by yourself was really what he purchased
|
||
the pistol with?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I knew Guiteau slightly; I saw him for the first time
|
||
a few days after the inauguration. He wanted a consulate, and asked
|
||
me to give him a letter to Secretary Blaine. I refused, on the
|
||
ground that I didn't know him. Afterwards he wanted me to lend him
|
||
twenty-five dollars, and I declined. I never loaned him a dollar in
|
||
the world. If I had, I should not feel that I was guilty of trying
|
||
to kill the President. On the principle that one would hold the man
|
||
guilty who had innocently loaned the money with which he bought the
|
||
pistol, you might convict the tailor who made his clothes. If he
|
||
had had no clothes he would not have gone to the depot naked, and
|
||
the crime would not have been committed. It is hard enough for the
|
||
man who did lend him the money to lose that, without losing his
|
||
reputation besides. Nothing can exceed the utter absurdity of what
|
||
has been said upon this subject.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: How did Guiteau impress you and what have you
|
||
remembered, Colonel, of his efforts to reply to your lectures?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I do not know that Guiteau impressed me in any way. He
|
||
appeared like most other folks in search of a place or employment.
|
||
I suppose he was in need. He talked about the same as other people,
|
||
and claimed that I ought to help him because he was from Chicago.
|
||
The second time he came to see me he said that he hoped I had no
|
||
prejudice against him on account of what he had said about me. I
|
||
told him that I never knew he had said anything against me. I
|
||
suppose now that he referred to what he had said in his lectures.
|
||
He went about the country replying to me. I have seen one or two of
|
||
his lectures. He used about the same arguments that Mr. Black uses
|
||
in his reply to my article in the North American Review, and
|
||
denounced me in about the same terms. He is undoubtedly a man who
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
27
|
||
|
||
GUITEAU AND HIS CRIME.
|
||
|
||
firmly believes in the Old Testament, and has no doubt concerning
|
||
the New. I understand that he puts in most of his time now reading
|
||
the Bible and rebuking people who use profane language in his
|
||
presence.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: You most certainly do not see any foundation a for
|
||
the accusations of preachers like Sunderland, Newman and Power, et
|
||
al, that the teaching of a secular liberalism has had anything to
|
||
do with the shaping of Guiteau's character or the actions of his
|
||
vagabond life or the inciting to his murderous deeds?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I do not think that the sermon of Mr. Power was in
|
||
good taste. It is utterly foolish to charge the "Stalwarts" with
|
||
committing or inciting the crime against the life of the President.
|
||
Ministers, though, as a rule, know but little of pubic affairs, and
|
||
they always account for the actions of people they do not like or
|
||
agree with, by attributing to them the lowest and basest motives.
|
||
This is the fault of the pulpit -- always has been, and probably
|
||
always will be. The Rev. Dr. Newman of New York, tells us that the
|
||
crime of Guiteau shows three things: First, that ignorant men
|
||
should not be allowed to vote; second, that foreigners should not
|
||
be allowed to vote; and third, that there should not be so much
|
||
religious liberty.
|
||
|
||
It turns out, first, that Guiteau is not an ignorant man;
|
||
second, that he is not a foreigner; and third, that he is a
|
||
Christian. Now, because an intelligent American Christian tries to
|
||
murder the President, this person says we ought to do something
|
||
with ignorant foreigners and Infidels. This is about the average
|
||
pulpit logic. Of course, all the ministers hate to admit that
|
||
Guiteau was a Christian; that he belonged to the Young Men's
|
||
Christian Association, or at least was generally found in their
|
||
rooms; that he was the follower of Moody and Sankey, and probably
|
||
instrumental in the salvation of a great many souls. I do not blame
|
||
them for wishing to get rid of this record. What I blame them for
|
||
is that they are impudent enough to charge the crime of Guiteau
|
||
upon Infidelity. Infidels and Atheists have often killed tyrants.
|
||
They have often committed crimes to increase the liberty of
|
||
mankind; but the history of the world will not show an instance
|
||
where an Infidel or an Atheist has assassinated any man in the
|
||
interest of human slavery. Of course, I am exceedingly glad that
|
||
Guiteau is not an Infidel. I am glad that he believes the Bible,
|
||
glad that he has delivered lectures against what he calls
|
||
Infidelity, and glad that he has been working for years with the
|
||
missionaries and evangelists of the United States. He is a man of
|
||
small brain, badly balanced. He believes the Bible to be the word
|
||
of God. Be believes in the reality of heaven and hell. He believes
|
||
in the miraculous. He is surrounded by the supernatural, and when
|
||
a man throws away his reason, of course no one can tell what he
|
||
will do. He is liable to become a devotee or an assassin, a saint
|
||
or a murderer; he may die in a monastery or in a penitentiary.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: According to your view, then, the species of
|
||
fanaticism taught in sectarian Christianity, by which Guiteau was
|
||
led to assert that Garfield dead would be better off than living --
|
||
being in Paradise -- is more responsible than office seeking or
|
||
political factionalism for his deed?
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
28
|
||
|
||
GUITEAU AND HIS CRIME.
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Guiteau seemed to think that the killing of the
|
||
President would only open the gates of Paradise to him, and that,
|
||
after all, under such circumstances, murder was hardly a crime.
|
||
This same kind of reasoning is resorted to in the pulpit to account
|
||
for death. If Guiteau had succeeded in killing the President,
|
||
hundreds of ministers would have said, "After all, it may be that
|
||
the President has lost nothing; it may be that our loss is his
|
||
eternal gain; and although it seems to us cruel that Providence
|
||
should allow a man like him to be murdered, still, it may have been
|
||
the very kindest thing that could have been done for him." Guiteau
|
||
reasoned in this way, and probably convinced himself, judging from
|
||
his own life, that this world was, after all, of very little worth.
|
||
We are apt to measure others by ourselves. Of course, I do not
|
||
think that Christianity is responsible for this crime. Superstition
|
||
may have been, in part -- probably was. But no man believes in
|
||
Christianity because he thinks it sanctions murder. At the same
|
||
time, an absolute belief in the Bible sometimes produces the worst
|
||
form of murder. Take that of Mr. Freeman, of Poeasset, who stabbed
|
||
his little daughter to the heart in accordance with what he
|
||
believed to be the command of God. This poor man imitated Abraham;
|
||
and, for that matter, Jehovah himself. There have been in the
|
||
history of Christianity thousands and thousands of such instances,
|
||
and there will probably be many thousands more that have been and
|
||
will be produced by throwing away our own reason and taking the
|
||
word of some one else -- often a word that we do not understand.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: What is your opinion as to the effect of praying for
|
||
the recovery of the President, and have you any confidence that
|
||
prayers are answered?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: My opinion as to the value of prayer is well known. I
|
||
take it that every one who prays for the President shows at least
|
||
his sympathy and good will. Personally, I have no objection to
|
||
anybody's praying. Those who think that prayers are answered should
|
||
pray. For all who honestly believe this, and who honestly implore
|
||
their Deity to watch over, protect, and save the life of the
|
||
President, I have only the kindest feelings.
|
||
|
||
It may be that a few will pray to be seen of men; but I
|
||
suppose that most people on a subject like this are honest.
|
||
Personally, I have not the slightest idea of the existence of the
|
||
supernatural. Prayer may affect the person who prays. It may put
|
||
him in such a frame of mind that he can better bear disappointment
|
||
than if he had not prayed; but I cannot believe that there is any
|
||
being who hears and answers prayer.
|
||
|
||
When we remember the earthquakes that have devoured, the
|
||
pestilences that have covered the earth with corpses, and all the
|
||
crimes and agonies that have been inflicted upon the good and weak
|
||
by the bad and strong, it does not seem possible that anything can
|
||
be accomplished by prayer. I do not wish to hurt the feelings of
|
||
anyone, but I imagine that I have a right to my own opinion. If the
|
||
President gets well it will be because the bullet did not strike an
|
||
absolutely vital part; it will be because he has been well cared
|
||
for; because he has had about him intelligent and skillful
|
||
physicians, men who understood their profession. No doubt he has
|
||
received great support from the universal expression of sympathy
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
29
|
||
|
||
GUITEAU AND HIS CRIME.
|
||
|
||
and kindness. The knowledge that fifty millions of people are his
|
||
friends has given him nerve and hope. Some of the ministers, I see,
|
||
think that God was actually present and deflected the ball. Another
|
||
minister tells us that the President would have been assassinated
|
||
in a church, but that God determined not to allow so frightful a
|
||
crime to be committed in so sacred an edifice. All this sounds to
|
||
me like perfect absurdity -- simple noise. Yet, I presume that
|
||
those who talk in this way are good people and believe what they
|
||
say. Of course, they can give no reason why God did not deflect the
|
||
ball when Lincoln was assassinated. The truth is, the pulpit first
|
||
endeavors to find out the facts, and then to make a theory to fit
|
||
them. Whoever believes in a special providence must, of necessity,
|
||
be illogical and absurd; because it is impossible to make any
|
||
theological theory that some facts will not contradict.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Won't yon give us, then, Colonel, your analysis of
|
||
this act, and the motives leading to it?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I think Guiteau wanted an office and was refused. He
|
||
became importunate. He was, substantially, put out of the White
|
||
House. He became malicious. He made up his mind to be revenged.
|
||
This, in my judgment, is the diagnosis of his case. Since he has
|
||
been in jail he has never said one word about having been put out
|
||
of the White House; he is lawyer enough to know we must not furnish
|
||
any ground for malice He is a miserable, malicious and worthless
|
||
wretch, infinitely egotistical, imagines that he did a great deal
|
||
toward the election of Garfield, and upon being refused the house
|
||
a serpent of malice coiled in his heart, and he determined to be
|
||
revenged. That is all!
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Do you, in any way, see any reason or foundation for
|
||
the severe and bitter criticisms made against the Stalwart leaders
|
||
in connection with this crime. As you are well known to be a friend
|
||
of the administration, while not unfriendly to Mr. Conkling and
|
||
those acting with him, would you mind giving the public your
|
||
opinion on this point?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Of course, I do not hold Arthur, Conkling and Platt
|
||
responsible for Guiteau's action. In the first excitement a
|
||
thousand unreasonable things were said; and when passion has
|
||
possession of the brain, suspicion is a welcome visitor.
|
||
|
||
I do not think that any friend of the administration really
|
||
believes Conkling, Platt and Arthur responsible in the slightest
|
||
degree. Conkling wished to prevent the appointment of Robertson.
|
||
The President stood by his friend. One thing brought on another,
|
||
Mr. Conkling petulantly resigned, and made the mistake of his life.
|
||
There was a good deal of feeling, but, of course, no one dreamed
|
||
that the wretch, Guiteau, was lying in wait for the President's
|
||
life. In the first place, Guiteau was on the President's side, and
|
||
was bitterly opposed to Conkling. Guiteau did what he did from
|
||
malice and personal spite. I think the sermon preached last Sunday
|
||
in the Campbellite Church was unwise, ill advised, and calculated
|
||
to make enemies instead of friends. Mr. Conkling has been beaten.
|
||
He has paid for the mistake he made. If he can stand it, I can; and
|
||
why should there be any malice on the subject? Exceedingly good men
|
||
have made mistakes, and afterward corrected them.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
30
|
||
|
||
GUITEAU AND HIS CRIME.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Is it not true, Colonel Ingersoll, that the lesson
|
||
of this deed is to point the real and overwhelming need of re-
|
||
knitting and harmonizing the factions?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: There is hardly faction enough left for "knitting."
|
||
The party is in harmony now. All that is necessary is to stop
|
||
talking. The people of this country care very little as to who
|
||
holds any particular office. They wish to have the Government
|
||
administrated in accordance with certain great principles, and they
|
||
leave the fields, the shops, and the stores once in four years, for
|
||
the purpose of attending to that business. In the meantime,
|
||
politicians quarrel about offices. The people go on. They plow
|
||
fields, they build homes, they open mines, they enrich the world,
|
||
they cover our country with prosperity, and enjoy the aforesaid
|
||
quarrels. But when the time comes, these gentlemen are forgotten.
|
||
|
||
Principles take the place of politicians, and the people
|
||
settle these questions for themselves. --
|
||
|
||
Sunday Gazette, Washington, D.C., July 24, 1881.
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
DISTRICT SUFFRAGE.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: You have heretofore incidentally expressed yourself
|
||
on the matter of local suffrage in the District of Columbia. Have
|
||
you any objections to giving your present views of the question?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I am still in favor of suffrage in the District. The
|
||
real trouble is, that before any substantial relief can be reached,
|
||
there must be a change in the Constitution of the United States.
|
||
The mere right to elect aldermen and mayors and policemen is of no
|
||
great importance. It is a mistake to take all political power from
|
||
the citizens of the District. Americans want to help rule the
|
||
country. The District ought to have at least one Representative in
|
||
Congress, and should elect one presidential elector. The people
|
||
here should have a voice. They should feel that they are a part of
|
||
this country. They should have the right to sue in all Federal
|
||
courts, precisely as though they were citizens of a State. This
|
||
city ought to have half a million of inhabitants. Thousands would
|
||
come here every year from every part of the Union, were it not for
|
||
the fact that they do not wish to become political nothings. They
|
||
think that citizenship is worth something, and they preserve it by
|
||
staying away from Washington. This city is a "flag of truce" where
|
||
wounded and dead politicians congregate; the Mecca of failures, the
|
||
perdition of claimants, the purgatory of seekers after place, and
|
||
the heaven only of those who neither want nor do anything. Nothing
|
||
is manufactured, no solid business is done in this city, and there
|
||
never will be until energetic, thrifty people wish to make it their
|
||
home, and they will not wish that until the people of the District
|
||
have something like the rights and political prospects of other
|
||
citizens. It is hard to see why the right to representation should
|
||
be taken from citizens living at the Capital of the Nation. The
|
||
believers in free government should believe in a free capital.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
31
|
||
|
||
DISTRICT SUFFRAGE.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Are there any valid reasons why the constitutional
|
||
limitations to the elective franchise in the District of Columbia
|
||
should not be removed by an amendment to that instrument?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I cannot imagine one. If our Government is founded
|
||
upon a correct principle there can be no objection urged against
|
||
suffrage in the District that cannot, with equal force, be urged
|
||
against every part of the country. If freedom is dangerous here, it
|
||
is safe nowhere. If a man cannot be trusted in the District, he is
|
||
dangerous in the State. We do not trust the place where the man
|
||
happens to be; we trust the man. The people of this District cannot
|
||
remain in their present condition without becoming dishonored. The
|
||
idea of allowing themselves to be governed by commissioners, in
|
||
whose selection they have no part, is monstrous. The people here
|
||
beg, implore, request, ask, pray, beseech, intercede, crave, urge,
|
||
entreat, supplicate, memorialize and most humbly petition, but they
|
||
neither vote nor demand. They are not allowed to enter the Temple
|
||
of Liberty; they stay in the lobby or sit on the steps.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: They say Paris is France, because her electors or
|
||
citizens control that municipality. Do you foresee any danger of
|
||
centralization in the full enfranchisement of the citizens of
|
||
Washington?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: There was a time when the intelligence of France was
|
||
in Paris. The country was besotted, ignorant, Catholic; Paris was
|
||
alive, educated, Infidel, full of new theories, of passion and
|
||
heroism. For two hundred years Paris was an athlete chained to a
|
||
corpse. The corpse was the rest of France. It is different now, and
|
||
the whole country is at last filling with light. Besides, Paris has
|
||
two millions of people. It is filled with factories. It is not only
|
||
the intellectual center, but the center of money and business as
|
||
well. Let the Corps Legislatif meet anywhere, and Paris will
|
||
continue to be in a certain splendid sense -- France. Nothing like
|
||
that can ever happen here unless you expect Washington to outstrip
|
||
New York, Philadelphia and Chicago. If allowing the people of the
|
||
District of Columbia to vote was the only danger to the Republic,
|
||
I should be politically the happiest of men. I think it somewhat
|
||
dangerous to deprive even one American citizen of the right to
|
||
govern himself.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: Would you have Government clerks and officials
|
||
appointed to office here given the franchise in the District? and
|
||
should this, if given, include the women clerks?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: Citizenship should be determined here as in the
|
||
States. Clerks should not be allowed to vote unless their intention
|
||
is to make the District their home. When I make a government I
|
||
shall give one vote to each family. The unmarried should not be
|
||
represented except by parents. Let the family be the unit of
|
||
representation Give each hearthstone a vote.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: How do you regard the opposition of the local clergy
|
||
and of the Bourbon Democracy to enfranchising the citizens of the
|
||
District?
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
32
|
||
|
||
DISTRICT SUFFRAGE.
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: I did not know that the clergy did oppose it. If, as
|
||
you say, they do oppose it because they fear it will extend the
|
||
liquor traffic, I think their reason exceedingly stupid. You cannot
|
||
make men temperate by shutting up a few of the saloons and leaving
|
||
others wide open. Intemperance must be met with other weapons. The
|
||
church ought not to appeal to force. What would the clergy of
|
||
Washington think should the miracle of Cana be repeated in their
|
||
day? Had they been in that country, with their present ideas, what
|
||
would they have said? After all there is a great deal of philosophy
|
||
in the following: "Better have the whole world voluntarily drunk
|
||
then sober on compulsion." Of course the Bourbons object. Objecting
|
||
is the business of a Bourbon. He always objects. If he does not
|
||
understand the question he objects because he does not, and if he
|
||
does understand he objects because he does. With him the reason for
|
||
objecting is the fact that he does.
|
||
|
||
QUESTION: What effect, if any, would the complete franchise to
|
||
our citizens have upon real estate and business in Washington?
|
||
|
||
ANSWER: If the people here had representation according to
|
||
numbers -- if the avenues to political preferment were open -- if
|
||
men here could take part in the real government of the country, if
|
||
they could bring with them all their rights, this would be a great
|
||
and splendid Capital. We ought to have here a University, the best
|
||
in the world, a library second to none, and here should be gathered
|
||
the treasures of American art. The Federal Government has been
|
||
infinitely economical in the direction of information. I hope the
|
||
time will come when our Government will give as much to educate two
|
||
men as to kill one. --
|
||
|
||
The Capital, Washington, D.C., December 18, 1881.
|
||
|
||
|
||
**** ****
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Reproducible Electronic Publishing can defeat censorship.
|
||
|
||
The Bank of Wisdom is a collection of the most thoughtful,
|
||
scholarly and factual books. These computer books are reprints of
|
||
suppressed books and will cover American and world history; the
|
||
Biographies and writings of famous persons, and especially of our
|
||
nations Founding Fathers. They will include philosophy and
|
||
religion. all these subjects, and more, will be made available to
|
||
the public in electronic form, easily copied and distributed, so
|
||
that America can again become what its Founders intended --
|
||
|
||
The Free Market-Place of Ideas.
|
||
|
||
The Bank of Wisdom is always looking for more of these old,
|
||
hidden, suppressed and forgotten books that contain needed facts
|
||
and information for today. If you have such books please contact
|
||
us, we need to give them back to America.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
33
|
||
|