Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I: Including His Answers to the Clergy, His Oration at His Brother's Grave, Etc., Etc.Ingersoll, Robert Green
Religion
Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I: Including His Answers to the Clergy, His Oration at His Brother's Grave, Etc., Etc.
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
Then there is another gentleman here. His name is Herford. He says it
is not fair to apply the test of truth to the Bible--I don't think it
is myself. He says although Moses upheld slavery, that he improved it.
They were not quite so bad as they were before, and Heaven justified
slavery at that time. Do you believe that God ever turned the arms of
children into chains of slavery? Do you believe that God ever said to
a man: "You can't have your wife unless you will be a slave? You can
not have your children unless you will lose your liberty; and unless
you are willing to throw them from your heart forever, you can not be
free?" I want Mr. Herford to state whether he loves such a God. Be
honor bright about it. Don't begin to talk about civilization or what
the church has done or will do. Just walk right up to the rack and say
whether you love and worship a God that established slavery. Honest!
And love and worship a God that would allow a little babe to be torn
from the breast of its mother and sold into slavery. Now tell it fair,
Mr. Herford, I want you to tell the ladies in your congregation that
you believe in a God that allowed women to be given to the soldiers.
Tell them that, and then if you say it was not the God of Moses, then
don't praise Moses any more. Don't do it. Answer these questions.
INGERSOLL GATLING GUN TURNED ON DR. RYDER
Then here is another gentleman, Mr. Ryder, the Rev. Mr. Ryder, and he
says that Calvinism is rejected by a majority of Christendom. He is
mistaken. There is what they call the Evangelical Alliance. They met
in this country in 1875 or 1876, and there were present representatives
of all the evangelical churches in the world, and they adopted a creed,
and that creed is that man is totally depraved. That creed is that
there is an eternal, universal Hell, and that every man that does not
believe in a certain way is bound to be damned forever, and that there
is only one way to be saved, and that is by faith, and by faith alone;
and they would not allow anybody to be represented there that did not
believe that, and they would not allow a Unitarian there, and would not
have allowed Dr. Ryder there, because he takes away from the Christian
world the consolation naturally arising from the belief in Hell.
Dr. Ryder is mistaken. All the orthodox religion of the day is
Calvinism. It believes in the fall of man. It believes in the
atonement. It believes in the eternity of Hell, and it believes in
salvation by faith; that is to say, by credulity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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