The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII.: InterviewsIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII.: Interviews
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
The Greenback party seems to think credit is just as good as gold.
While the credit lasts this is so; but the trouble is, whenever it
is ascertained that the gold is gone or cannot be produced the
credit takes wings. The bill of a perfectly solvent bank may
circulate for years. Now, because nobody demands the gold on that
bill it doesn't follow that the bill would be just as good without
any gold behind it. The idea that you can have the gold whenever
you present the bill gives it its value. To illustrate: A poor
man buys soup tickets. He is not hungry at the time of purchase,
and will not be for some hours. During those hours the Greenback
gentlemen argue that there is no use of keeping any soup on hand
with which to redeem these tickets, and from this they further
argue that if they can be good for a few hours without soup, why
not forever? And they would be, only the holder gets hungry.
Until he is hungry, of course, he does not care whether any soup
is on hand or not, but when he presents his ticket he wants his
soup, and the idea that he can have the soup when he does present
the ticket gives it its value. And so I regard bank notes, without
gold and silver, as of the same value as tickets without soup.
--_The Post_, Washington, D. C., 1878.
THE PRE-MILLENNIAL CONFERENCE.
_Question_. What do you think of the Pre-Millennial Conference
that was held in New York City recently?
_Answer_. Well, I think that all who attended it were believers
in the Bible, and any one who believes in prophecies and looks to
their fulfillment will go insane. A man that tries from Daniel's
ram with three horns and five tails and his deformed goats to
ascertain the date of the second immigration of Christ to this
world is already insane. It all shows that the moment we leave
the realm of fact and law we are adrift on the wide and shoreless
sea of theological speculation.
_Question_. Do you think there will be a second coming?
_Answer_. No, not as long as the church is in power. Christ will
never again visit this earth until the Freethinkers have control.
He will certainly never allow another church to get hold of him.
The very persons who met in New York to fix the date of his coming
would despise him and the feeling would probably be mutual. In
his day Christ was an Infidel, and made himself unpopular by
denouncing the church as it then existed. He called them liars,
hypocrites, thieves, vipers, whited sepulchres and fools. From
the description given of the church in that day, I am afraid that
should he come again, he would be provoked into using similar
language. Of course, I admit there are many good people in the
church, just as there were some good Pharisees who were opposed to
the crucifixion.
--_The Express_, Buffalo, New York, Nov. 4th, 1878.
THE SOLID SOUTH AND RESUMPTION.
_Question_. Colonel, to start with, what do you think of the solid
South?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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