The Ghosts, and Other LecturesIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
The Ghosts, and Other Lectures
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
There is another question still:--Will all the wounds of war be healed?
I answer, Yes. The Southern people must submit, not to the dictation of
the North, but to the Nation's will and to the verdict of mankind. They
were wrong, and the time will come when they will say that they are
victors who have been vanquished by the right. Freedom conquered them,
and freedom will cultivate their fields, educate their children, weave
for them the robes of wealth, execute their laws, and fill their land
with happy homes.
The soldiers of the Union saved the South as well as North. They made us
a Nation. Their victory made us free and rendered tyranny in every other
land as insecure as snow upon volcanoes' lips.
And now let us drink to the volunteers--to those who sleep in unknown,
sunken graves, whose names are only in the hearts of those they loved
and left--of those who only hear in happy dreams the footsteps of
return. Let us drink to those who died where lipless famine mocked at
want--to all the maimed whose scars give modesty a tongue--to all who
dared and gave to chance the care and keeping of their lives:--to all
the living and to all the dead--to Sherman, to Sheridan, and to Grant,
the laureled soldiers of the world, and last, to Lincoln, whose loving
life, like a bow of peace, spans and arches all the clouds of war.
A TRIBUTE TO THE Rev. ALEXANDER CLARK.
UPON the grave of the Reverend Alexander Clark I wish to place one
flower.
Utterly destitute of cold dogmatic pride that often passes for the
love of God; without the arrogance of the "elect"--simple, free, and
kind--this earnest man made me his friend by being mine. I forgot that
he was a Christian, and he seemed to forget that I was not, while each
remembered that the other was a man.
Frank, candid, and sincere, he practiced what he preached, and looked
with the holy eyes of charity upon the failings and mistakes of men. He
believed in the power of kindness, and spanned with divine sympathy the
hideous gulf that separates the fallen from the pure.
Giving freely to others the rights that he claimed for himself, it never
occurred to him that his God hated a brave and honest unbeliever. He
remembered that even an infidel has rights that love respects; that
hatred has no saving power, and that in order to be a Christian it is
not necessary to become less than a man. He knew that no one can be
maligned into kindness; that epithets cannot convince; that curses are
not arguments, and that the finger of scorn never points towards heaven.
With the generosity of an honest man, he accorded to all the fullest
liberty of thought, knowing, as he did, that in the realm of mind a
chain is but a curse.
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