Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886Various
History
Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886
Various
Periodicals
Condescended to notice the ravings of Mr. Robert Ingersoll, at Boston
College Hall, on the evening of the 11th of November. We should be
pleased to publish a full report of the lecture, but our limits will not
permit us to do so. We merely give a few extracts: "Once upon a time
there was a person named Scholasticus, who suffered by death the loss of
his child, to whose obsequies came the people in great throngs. But our
friend, instead of receiving their expressions of condolence, hid
himself blushing in a corner, and, on being expostulated with, and asked
why he was ashamed, replied: 'To bury so small a child before so large
an assembly.' This lecture is the child, and the concourse is the
audience before me. I have been engaged on matters foreign to literary
and scientific pursuits, and have had no time to prepare a regular
lecture, but I think it will not need much time to demolish Mr.
Ingersoll. I will take his book on 'Orthodoxy,' in which he declares
that 'he knows that the clergy know that they know nothing.' Mr.
Ingersoll is not a philosopher, nor a theologian, though he may be, as
we hear, an orator of matchless voice and gesticulation. He is witty, as
any one may easily be who attacks what we most revere. Let us look at
his scholarship. He has no argument whatever, except the old objections
brought up in the schools. In the whole book there have been no
references nor authorities cited. His only method of reasoning is that
by interrogation, why? why? why? Suppose I answer I don't know! The
proper test of an argument is to put it in syllogistic form, which is
impossible with Mr. Ingersoll's arguments. Again, the very importance of
the subject demands a respectful and reverential treatment, which Mr.
Ingersoll denies it. I will try to make a synopsis of the work. Mr.
Ingersoll declares himself sincere in his belief, thereby insinuating
that they who believe in Christianity are hypocrites. Then follows an
examination of the Congregational and Presbyterian creeds, under the
supposition, absurdly false, '_ex uno disce omnes_.' 'Infidelity,' says
Mr. Ingersoll, 'will prevail over Christianity.' This does not prove
that Christianity is not the true religion, for infidelity may triumph
only because the intellect is obscured by passion. 'The Christian
religion,' says he, 'is supported only because of the contributions of
some men.' Would those men have supported it had they not firmly
believed in it? Again, Mr. Ingersoll says the Christian religion was
destroyed by Mohammed, and yet no one knows it. Nor were the crusades
unjust and destructive wars, for the land which they fought for was one
dearest to them; their Saviour died there. Was it not a just war? And
this war saved all Europe, for the power of Mohammed was rising rapidly
and was about to inundate all Europe. But the war was carried into the
enemy's country, and by the attack all Europe was saved. Again, we were
freed from the ignorance of the dark ages (dark, as I may say, only
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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