The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 06 (of 12): Dresden Edition—DiscussionsIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 06 (of 12): Dresden Edition—Discussions
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
After the examination has been completed, and my intellect convinced,
the evidence being sufficient to prove that Christianity is a divine
revelation, nevertheless I am not yet a Christian. All this sifting
brings me to the conclusion of a chain of reasoning; but I am not yet
a believer. The last act of reason has brought me to the brink of the
first act of faith. They are generically distinct and separable. The
acts of reason are intellectual, and jealous of the interference of the
will. The act of faith is an imperative act of the will, founded on and
justified by the process and conviction of the intellect. Hitherto I
have been a critic: henceforward, if I will, I become a disciple.
It may here be objected that no man can so far suspend the inclination
of the will when the question is, has God indeed spoken to man or no? is
the revealed law of purity, generosity, perfection, divine, or only the
poetry of imagination? Can a man be indifferent between two such sides
of the problem? Will he not desire the higher and better side to be
true? and if he desire, will he not incline to the side that he desires
to find true? Can a moral being be absolutely indifferent between two
such issues? and can two such issues be equally attractive to a moral
agent? Can it be indifferent and all the same to us whether God has
made Himself and His will known to us or not? Is there no attraction
in light, no repulsion in darkness? Does not the intrinsic and eternal
distinction of good and evil make itself felt in spite of the will?
Are we not responsible to "receive the truth in the love of it?"
Nevertheless, evidence has its own limits and quantities, and cannot be
made more or less by any act of the will. And yet, what is good or bad,
high or mean, lovely or hateful, ennobling or degrading, must attract
or repel men as they are better or worse in their moral sense; for an
equilibrium between good and evil, to God or to man, is impossible.
The last act of my reason, then, is distinct from my first act of
faith precisely in this: so long as I was uncertain I suspended the
inclination of my will, as an act of fidelity to conscience and of
loyalty to truth; but the process once complete, and the conviction once
attained, my will imperatively constrains me to believe, and I become a
disciple of a Divine revelation.
My friend next tells me that there are Christian Scriptures, and I go
through precisely the same process of critical examination and final
conviction, the last act of reasoning preceding, as before, the first
act of faith.
He then tells me that there is a Church claiming to be divinely founded,
divinely guarded, and divinely guided in its custody of Christianity and
of the Christian Scriptures.
Once more I have the same twofold process of reasoning and of believing
to go through.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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