_Answer_. A few years ago the Deists denied the inspiration of the Bible on account of its cruelty. At the same time they worshiped what they were pleased to call the God of Nature. Now we are convinced that Nature is as cruel as the Bible; so that, if the God of Nature did not write the Bible, this God at least has caused earthquakes and pestilence and famine, and this God has allowed millions of his children to destroy one another. So that now we have arrived at the question--not as to whether the Bible is inspired and not as to whether Jehovah is the real God, but whether there is a God or not. The intelligence of Christendom to-day does not believe in an inspired art or an inspired literature. If there be an infinite God, inspiration in some particular regard would be a patch--it would be the puttying of a crack, the hiding of a defect --in other words, it would show that the general plan was defective. _Question_. Do you consider any religion adequate? _Answer_. A good man, living in England, drawing a certain salary for reading certain prayers on stated occasions, for making a few remarks on the subject of religion, putting on clothes of a certain cut, wearing a gown with certain frills and flounces starched in an orthodox manner, and then looking about him at the suffering and agony of the world, would not feel satisfied that he was doing anything of value for the human race. In the first place, he would deplore his own weakness, his own poverty, his inability to help his fellow-men. He would long every moment for wealth, that he might feed the hungry and clothe the naked--for knowledge, for miraculous power, that he might heal the sick and the lame and that he might give to the deformed the beauty of proportion. He would begin to wonder how a being of infinite goodness and infinite power could allow his children to die, to suffer, to be deformed by necessity, by poverty, to be tempted beyond resistance; how he could allow the few to live in luxury, and the many in poverty and want, and the more he wondered the more useless and ironical would seem to himself his sermons and his prayers. Such a man is driven to the conclusion that religion accomplishes but little--that it creates as much want as it alleviates, and that it burdens the world with parasites. Such a man would be forced to think of the millions wasted in superstition. In other words, the inadequacy, the uselessness of religion would be forced upon his mind. He would ask himself the question: "Is it possible that this is a divine institution? Is this all that man can do with the assistance of God? Is this the best?" _Question_. That is a perfectly reasonable question, is it not, Colonel Ingersoll? _Answer_. The moment a man reaches the point where he asks himself this question he has ceased to be an orthodox Christian. It will not do to say that in some other world justice will be done. If God allows injustice to triumph here, why not there?