Men, Women, and Gods; and Other Lectures — John Shaqi
Men, Women, and Gods; and Other LecturesGardener, Helen H. (Helen Hamilton)
Religion
Men, Women, and Gods; and Other Lectures
Gardener, Helen H. (Helen Hamilton)
Free thought
You may not live until that to-morrow; I may not live until that
to-morrow; but it is as sure to come as it is certain that the old
tenets have yielded one by one before the irresistible march of an age
of intelligence and freedom, in which a priest or a Church can no longer
be judge, jury, and counsel.
Not long ago I heard two gentlemen--one a very devout Christian--talking
about what use the Church could make of Col. Ingersoll's teachings. One
said he was such a moral man, and always insisted so strongly upon right
action in this world, that it was a pity he did not have more faith. He
said, "What a power he would be in the Church! What a preacher he would
make! He would be a second St. Paul--I have been praying for years for
his conversion." "Well," said the other, "you needn't waste your time
any longer; softening of the brain doesn't run in Robert's family."
KNOWLEDGE NOT A CRIME.
Let man rid himself of the pernicious idea that knowledge is a crime,
and then let only the man who is afraid to enter the world of thought go
back to his native paradise of ignorance and rest. Let him cling to his
old ideas. Humanity can do better without such a man, and humanity will
be better without him. The time is past when his type is needed, and let
us hope that it is nearly past when it can be found. He may have been
abreast of the time in 1840, but his grave was dug, his epitaph written,
in 1841. Science did not wait for him, and the world forgot his name!
Do you think the world has any farther use for the man who can gravely
tell those stories about Samson, for instance, as truth--as the word of
God? Do you think they do honor to the most attenuated intellect? Now
just stop and think of it. Just think of one thousand able-bodied men
(1,000 is a good many men) quietly standing around waiting for Sampson
to knock them on the head with a bone! And how does the durability of
that bone strike you?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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