Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - LatestIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
What makes you? Do you judge from the manner in which you are getting
along now? How many people are being born a year? About fifty
millions. How many are you converting a year; really, truthfully? Five
or six thousand. I think I have overestimated the number. Is orthodox
Christianity on the increase? No. There are a hundred times as many
unbelievers in orthodox Christianity as there were ten years ago. What
are you doing in the missionary World? How long is it since you
converted a Chinaman? A fine missionary religion, to send
missionaries, with their bibles and tracts, to China, but if a Chinaman
comes here, mob him, simply to show him the difference between the
practical and theoretical workings of the Christian religion. How long
since you have had a convert in India? In my judgment, never; there
never has been an intelligent Hindoo converted from the time the first
missionary put his foot upon that soil; and never, in my judgment, has
an intelligent Chinaman been converted since the first missionary
touched that shore. Where are they? We hear nothing of them, except in
the reports. They get money from poor old ladies, trembling on the
edge of the grave, and go and tell them stories how hungry the average
Chinaman is for a copy of the new testament, and paint the sad
condition of a gentleman in the interior of Africa, without the work of
Dr. McCosh, longing for a copy of the Princeton Review. In my
judgment, it is a book that would suit a savage. Thus money is scared
from the dying and frightened from the old and feeble. About how long
is it before this kingdom is to be established?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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