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
A few years ago, a gentleman by the name of Seabury, Samuel Seabury,
was sent over to England to get some apostolic succession. We hadn't a
drop in the house. It was necessary for the bishops of the English
church to put their hands upon his head. They refused; there was no
act of Parliament justifying--it. He had then to go to the Scotch
Bishops; and, had the Scotch Bishops refused, we never would have had
any apostolic succession in the new world. And God would have been
driven out of half the world; and the true church never could have been
founded. But the Scotch Bishops put their hands on his head, and now
we have an unbroken succession of heads and hands from St. Paul to the
last bishop.
In this country the Episcopal Church has done some good, and I want to
thank that Church. Having, on an average, less religion than the
others, on an average you have done more good to mankind. You
preserved some of the humanities. You did not hate music, you did not
absolutely despise painting, and you did not altogether abhor
architecture, and you finally admitted that it was no worse to keep
time with your feet than with your hands. And some went so far as to
say that people could play cards, and God would overlook it, or would
look the other way. For all these things accept my thanks.
When I was a boy, the other Churches looked upon dancing as probably
the mysterious sin against the Holy Ghost; and they used to teach that
when four boys got in a hay-mow, playing seven-up, that the Eternal God
stood whetting the sword of His eternal wrath waiting to strike them
down to the lowest hell. And so that Church has done some good.
After a while, in England, a couple of gentlemen, or a couple of men by
the name of Wesley and Whitfield, said: "If everybody is going to hell,
nearly, somebody ought to mention it." The Episcopal clergy said:
"Keep still; don't tear your gown." Wesley and Whitfield said: "This
frightful truth ought to be proclaimed from the housetops at every
opportunity, from the highway of every occasion." They were good,
honest men. They believed their doctrine. And they said: "If there is
a hell, and a Niagara of souls pouring over an eternal precipice of
ignorance, somebody ought to say something." They were right; somebody
ought, if such thing was true. Wesley was a believer in the Bible. He
believed in the actual presence of the Almighty. God used to do
miracles for him; used to put off a rain several days to give his
meeting a chance; used to cure his horse of lameness; used to cure Mr.
Wesley's headaches.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account