Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - LatestIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
The Presbyterian confession says this corruption was in all men. It was
born with them, it lived through their life, and after death survived
in the children. Well, can't man help himself? No, I'll show you,
God's got him. Listen to this. [Reads extracts.] So that a natural
man is not only dead in sin and unable to accomplish salvation, but he
is also incapable of preparing himself therefore. Absolutely incapable
of taking a trick. He is saved, if at all, completely by the mercy of
God. If that's the case, then why doesn't He convert us all? Oh, He
doesn't. He wishes to send the most of us to hell--to show His justice.
Elect infants dying in infancy are regenerate. So also are all persons
incapable of unbelief. That includes insane persons and idiots,
because an idiot is incapable of unbelief. Idiots are the only fellows
who've got the dead wood on God. Then according to this, the man who
has lived according to the light of nature, doing the best he knew how
to make this earth happy, will be damned by God because he never heard
of His son. Whose fault is it that an infinite God does not advertise?
Something wrong about that. I am inclined to think that the
Presbyterian church is wrong. I find here how utterly unpardonable sin
is. There is no sin so small but it is punished with hell, and away
you go straight to the deepest burning pit unless your heart has been
purified by this confession of faith--unless this snake has crawled in
there and made itself a nest. Why should we help religion? I would
like people to ask themselves that question. An infinite God, by
practicing a reasonable economy, can get along without assistance.
Loudly this confession proclaims that salvation comes from Christ
alone. What, then, becomes of the savage who, having never known the
name of Christ, has lived according to the light of nature, kind and
heroic and generous, and possessed of and cultivating all the natural
virtues? He goes to hell. God, you see, loves us. If He had not
loved us what would He have done? The light of nature then shows that
God is good and therefore to be feared--on account of his goodness, to
be served and honored without ceasing. And yet this creed says that on
the last day God will damn anyone who has walked according to this
light. It's blasphemy to walk by the light of nature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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