Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - LatestIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
Here is the last Presbyterian joy: At the day of judgment the
righteous shall be caught up to heaven and shall stand at the right
hand of Christ and share with Him in judging the wicked. Then the
Presbyterian husband may have the ineffable pleasure of judging his
wife and condemning her to eternal hell, and the boy will say to his
mother, echoing the command of God: "Depart, thou accursed, into
everlasting torment!" Here will come a man who has not believed in
God. He was a soldier who took up arms to free the slaves and who
rotted to death in Andersonville prison rather than accept the offer of
his captors to fight against freedom. He loved his wife and his
children and his Home and his native country and all mankind, and did
all the good he knew. God will say to the Presbyterians, "What shall
We do to this man?"; and they will answer, "Throw him into hell."
Last night there was a fire in Philadelphia, and at a window fifty feet
above the ground Mr. King stood amid flame and smoke and pressed his
children to his breast one after the other, kissed them, and threw them
to the rescuers with a prayer. That was man. At the last day God
takes His children with a curse and hurls them into eternal fire.
That's your God as the Presbyterians describe Him. Do you believe that
God--if there is one--will ever damn me for thinking Him better than He
is? If this creed be true, God is the insane keeper of a mad house.
We have in this city a clergyman who contends that this creed gives a
correct picture of God, and furthermore says that God has the right to
do with us what He pleases--because He made us. If I could change this
lamp into a human being, that would not give me the right to torture
him, and if I did torture him and he cried out, "Why torturest thou
me?" and I replied, "Because I made you," he would be right in
replying, "You made me, therefore you are responsible for my
happiness." No God has a right to add to the sum of human misery. And
yet this minister believes an honest thought blasphemy. No doubt he is
perfectly honest. Otherwise he would have too much intellectual pride
to take the position he does. He says that the bible offers the only
restraint to the savage passions of man. In lands where there has been
no bible there have been mild and beneficent philosophers, like Buddha
and Confucius. Is it possible that the bible is the only restraint,
and yet the nations among whom these men lived have been as moral as
we? In Brooklyn and New York you have the bible, yet do you find that
the restraint is a great success? Is there a city on the globe which
lacks more in certain directions than some in Christendom, or even the
United States? What are the natural virtues of man? Honesty,
hospitality, mercy in the hour of victory, generosity--do we not find
these virtues among some savages? Do we find them among all
Christians? I am also told by these gentlemen that the time will come
when the infidel will be silenced by society.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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