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
Various reasons are given for punishing the wicked; first, that God
will vindicate his injured majesty. Well, I am glad of that! Second, He
will glorify his justice--think of that. Third, He will show and
glorify his grace. Every time the saved shall look upon the damned in
hell it will cause in them a lively and admiring sense of the grace of
God. Every look upon the damned will double the ardor and the joy of
the saints in heaven. Can the believing husband in heaven look down
upon the torments of the unbelieving wife in hell and then feel a
thrill of joy? That's the old doctrine--not of our days; we are too
civilized for that. O, but it is the doctrine that if you saw your wife
in hell--the wife you love, who, in your last sickness, nursed you,
that, perhaps supported you by her needle when you were ill; the wife
who watched by your couch night and day, and held your corpse in her
loving arms when you were dead--the sight would give you great joy.
That doctrine is not preached to-day. They do not preach that the sight
would give you joy; but they do preach that it will not diminish your
happiness. That is the doctrine of every orthodox minister in New York,
and I repeat that I have no respect for men who preach such doctrines.
The sight of the torments of the damned in hell will increase the
ecstasy of the saints forever! On this principle man never enjoys a
good dinner so much as when a fellow-creature is dying of famine before
his eyes, or he never enjoys the cheerful warmth of his own fireside so
greatly as when a poor and abandoned wretch is dying on his doorstep.
The saints enjoy the ecstasy and the groans of the tormented are music
to them. I say here to-night that you cannot commit a sin against an
infinite being. I can sin against my brother or my neighbor, because I
can injure them. There can be no sin where there is no injury. Neither
can a finite being commit infinite sin.
An old saint believed that hell was in the interior of the earth, and
that the rotation of the earth was caused by the souls trying to get
away from the fire. The old church at Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare's
home, in adorned with pictures of hell and the like. One of the
pictures represents resurrection morning. People are getting out of
their graves, and devils are catching hold of their heels. In one place
there is a huge brass monster, and devils are driving scores of lost
souls into his mouth. Over hot fires hang caldrons with fifty or sixty
people in each, and devils are poking the fires. People are hung up on
hooks by their tongues, and devils are lashing them. Up in the right
hand corner are some of the saved, with grins on their faces stretching
from ear to ear. They seem to say: "Aha, what did I tell you?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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