Books: Lectures Of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Vol. I

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INGERSOLL'S LECTURE ON TALMAGIAN THEOLOGY.

Ladies and Gentlemen: Nothing can be more certain than that no human
being can by any possibility control his thought. We are in this world
--we see, we hear, we feel, we taste; and everything in nature makes an
impression upon the brain, and that wonderful something, enthroned there
with these materials, weaves what we call thought, and the brain can no
more help thinking than the heart can help beating. The blood pursues
its old accustomed round without our will. The heart beats without
asking leave of us, and the brain thinks in spite of all that we can do.
This being true, no human being can justly be held responsible for his
thought any more than for the beating of his heart, any more than for
the course pursued by the blood, any more than for breathing air. And
yet for thousands of years thought has been thought to be a crime, and
thousands and millions have threatened us with eternal fire if we give
the product of that brain. Each brain, in my judgment, is a field where
nature sows the seeds of thought, and thought is the crop that man
reaps, and it certainly cannot be a crime to gather; it certainly
cannot be a crime to tell it, which simply amounts to the right to sell
your crop or to exchange your product for the product of some other
man's brain. That is all it is. Most brains--at least some--are rather
poor fields, and the orthodox worst of all. That field produces mostly
sorrel and mullin, while there are fields which, like the tropic world,
are filled with growth, and where you find the vine and palm, royal
children of the sun and brain. I then stand simply for absolute freedom
of thought--absolute; and I don't believe, if there be a God, that it
will be or can be pleasing to Him to see one of His children afraid to
express what he thinks. And, if I were God, I never would cease making
men until I succeeded in making one grand enough to tell his honest
opinion.

Now there has been a struggle, you know, a long time between the
believers in the natural and the supernatural--between gentlemen who are
going to reward us in another world and those who propose to make life
worth living here and now. In all ages the priest, the medicine man,
the magician, the astrologer, in other words, gentlemen who have traded
upon the fear and ignorance of their fellow-man in all countries--they
have sought to, make their living out of others. There was a time when
a God presided over every department of human interest, when a man about
to take a voyage bribed the priest of Neptune so that he might have a
safe journey, and when he came back, he paid more, telling the priest
that he was infinitely obliged to him; that he had kept waves from the
sea and storms in their caves. And so, when one was sick he went to a
priest; when one was about to take a journey he visited the priest of
Mercury; if he were going to war he consulted the representative of
Mars. We have gone along. When the poor agriculturist plowed his
ground and put in the seed he went to the priest of some god and paid
him to keep off the frost. And the priest said he would do it; "but,"
added the priest, "you must have faith." If the frost came early he
said, "You didn't have faith." And besides all that he says to him:
"Anything that has happened badly, after all, was for your good." Well,
we found out, day by day, that a good boat for the purpose of navigating
the sea was better than prayers, better than the influence of priests;
and you had better have a good captain attending to business than
thousands of priests ashore praying.

We also found that we could cure some diseases, and just as soon as we
found that we could cure diseases we dismissed the priest. We have left
him out now of all of them, except it may be cholera and smallpox. When
visited by a plague some people get frightened enough to go back to the
old idea--go back to the priest, and the priest says: "It has been sent
as a punishment." Well, sensible people began to look about; they saw
that the good died as readily as the bad; they saw that this disease
would attack the dimpled child in the cradle and allow the murderer to
go unpunished; and so they began to think in time that it was not sent
as a punishment; that it was a natural result; and so the priest
stepped out of medicine.

In agriculture we need him no longer; he has nothing to do with the
crops. All the clergymen in this world can never get one drop of rain
out of the sky; and all the clergymen in the civilized world could not
save one human life if they tried it.

Oh, but they say, "We do not expect a direct answer to prayer; it is the
reflex action we are after." It is like a man endeavoring to lift
himself up by the straps of his boots; he will never do it, but he will
get a great deal of useful exercise.

The missionary goes to some pagan land, and there he finds a man praying
to a god of stone, and it excites the wrath of the missionary. I ask you
tonight, does not that stone god answer prayer just as well as ours?
Does he not cause rain? Does he not delay frost? Does he not snatch
the ones that we love from the grasp of death precisely the same as
ours? Yet we have ministers that are still engaged in that business.
They tell us that they have been "called;" that they do not go at their
profession as other people do, but they are "called;" that God, looking
over the world, carefully selects His priests, His ministers, and His
exhorters.

I don't know. They say their calling is sacred. I say to you tonight
that every kind of business that is honest that a man engages in for the
purpose of feeding his wife and children, for the purpose of building up
his home, for the purpose of feeding and clothing the ones he loves--
that business is sacred. They tell us that statesmen and poets,
philosophers, heroes, and scientists and inventors come by chance; that
all other departments depend entirely upon luck; but when God wants
exhorters He selects.

They also tell us that it is infinitely wicked to attack the Christian
religion, and when I speak of the Christian religion I do not refer
especially to the Christianity of the new testament; I refer to the
Christianity of the orthodox church, and when I refer to the clergy I
refer to the clergy of the orthodox church. There was a time when men
of genius were in the pulpits of the orthodox church; that time is
past. When you find a man with brains now occupying an orthodox pulpit
you will find him touched with heresy--every one of them.

How do they get most of these ministers? There will be a man in the
neighborhood not very well--not having constitution enough to be wicked,
and it instantly suggests itself to everybody who sees him that he would
make an excellent minister. There are so many other professions, so
many cities to be built, so many railways to be constructed, so many
poems to be sung, so much music to be composed, so many papers to edit,
so many books to read, so many splendid things, so many avenues to
distinction and glory, so many things beckoning from the horizon of the
future to every great and splendid man that the pulpit has to put up
with the leavings--ravelings, selvage.

These preachers say, "How can any man be wicked and infamous enough to
attack our religion and take from the world the solace of orthodox
Christianity?" What is that solace? Let us be honest. What is it? If
the Christian religion be true, the grandest, greatest, noblest of the
world are now in hell, and the narrowest and meanest are now in heaven.
Humboldt, the Shakespeare of science, the most learned man of the most
learned nation, with a mind grand enough to grasp not simply this globe,
but this constellation--a man who shed light upon the whole earth--a man
who honored human nature, and who won all his victories on the field of
thought--that man, pure and upright, noble beyond description, if
Christianity be true, is in hell this moment. That is what they call
"solace"--"tidings of great joy." LaPlace, who read the heavens like an
open book, who enlarged the horizon of human thought, is there too.
Beethoven, Master of melody and harmony, who added to the joy of human
life, and who has borne upon the wings of harmony and melody millions of
spirits to the height of joy, with his heart still filled with melody--
he is in hell today. Robert Burns, poet of love and liberty, and from
his heart, like a spring gurgling and running down the highways, his
poems have filled the world with music. They have added luster to human
love. That man who, in four lines, gave all the philosophy of life--

To make a happy fireside clime
For weans and wife
Is the true pathos and
Sublime Of human life

--he is there with the rest.

Charles Dickens, whose genius will be a perpetual shield, saving
thousands and millions of children from blows, who did more to make us
tender with children than any other writer that ever touched a pen--he
is there with the rest, according to our Christian religion. A little
while ago there died in this country a philosopher--Ralph Waldo Emerson
--a man of the loftiest ideal, a perfect model of integrity, whose mind
was like a placid lake and reflected truths like stars. If the
Christian religion be true, he is in perdition today. And yet he sowed
the seeds of thought, and raised the whole world intellectually. And
Longfellow, whose poems, tender as the dawn, have gone into millions of
homes, not an impure, not a stained word in them all; but he was not a
Christian. He did not believe in the "tidings of great joy." He didn't
believe that God so loved the world that He intended to damn most
everybody. And now he has gone to his reward. And Charles Darwin--a
child of nature--one who knew more about his mother than any other child
she ever had. What is philosophy? It is to account for phenomena by
which we are surrounded--that is, to find the hidden cord that unites
everything. Charles Darwin threw more light upon the problem of human
existence than all the priests who ever lived from Melchisedec to the
last exhorter. He would have traversed this globe on foot had it been
possible to have found one new fact or to have corrected one error that
he had made. No nobler man has lived--no man who has studied with more
reverence (and by reverence I mean simply one who lives and studies for
the truth)--no man who studied with more reverence than he. And yet,
according to orthodox religion, Charles Darwin is in hell. Consolation!

So, if Christianity be true, Shakespeare, the greatest man who ever
touched this planet, within whose brain were the fruits of all thought
past, the seeds of all to be--Shakespeare, who was an intellectual ocean
toward which all rivers ran, and from which now the isles and continents
of thought received their dew and rain--that man who has added more to
the intelligence of the world than any other who ever lived--that man,
whose creations will live as long as man has imagination, and who has
given more happiness upon the stage and more instruction than has flown
from all the pulpits of this earth--that man is in hell, too. And
Harriet Martineau, who did as much for English liberty as any man, brave
and free--she is there. "George Eliot," the greatest woman the English-
speaking people ever produced--she is with the rest. And this is called
"Tidings of great joy."

Who are in heaven? How could there be much of a heaven without the men
I have mentioned--the great men that have endeavored to make the world
grander--such men as Voltaire, such men as Diderot, such men as the
encyclopedists, such men as Hume, such men as Bruno, such men as Thomas
Paine? If Christianity is true, that man who spent his life in breaking
chains is now wearing the chains of God; that man who wished to break
down the prison walls of tyranny is now in the prison of the most
merciful Christ. It will not do. I can hardly express to you today my
contempt for such a doctrine; and if it be true, I make my choice
today, and I prefer hell.

Who is in heaven? John Calvin! John Knox! Jonathan Edwards!
Torquemada--the builders of dungeons, the men who have obstructed the
march of the human race. These are the men who are in heaven; and who
else? Those who never had brain enough to harbor a doubt. And they ask
me: How can you be wicked enough to attack the Christian religion?"

"Oh," but they say, "God will never forgive you if you attack the
orthodox religion." Now, when I read the history of this world, and
when I think of the experience of my fellow-men, when I think of the
millions living in poverty, and when I know that in the very air we
breathe and in the sunlight that visits our homes there lurks an
assassin ready to take our lives, and even when we believe we are in the
fullness health and joy, they are undermining us with their contagion--
when I know that we are surrounded by all these evils, and when I think
of what man has suffered, I do not wonder if God can forgive man, but I
often ask myself, "Can man forgive God?"

There is another thing. Some of these ministers have talked about me,
and have made it their business to say unpleasant things. Among others
the Rev. Mr. Talmage, of Brooklyn--a man of not much imagination, but of
most excellent judgment--charges that I am a "blasphemer." A frightful
charge! Terrible, if true! What is blasphemy? It is a sin, as I
understand, against God. Is God infinite? He is, so they say; He is
infinite; absolutely conditionless? Can I injure the conditionless?
No. Can I sin against anything that I cannot injure? No. That is a
perfectly plain proposition. I can injure my fellow-man, because he is
a conditioned being, and I can help to change those conditions. He must
have air; he must have food, he must have clothing; he must have
shelter; but God is conditionless, and I cannot by any possibility
affect Him. Consequently I cannot sin against Him. But I can sin
against my fellow-man, so that I ought to be a thousand times more
careful of doing injustice than of uttering blasphemy. There is no
blasphemy but injustice, and there is no worship except the practice of
justice. It is a thousand times more important that we should love our
fellow-men than that we should love God. It is better to love wife and
children than to love Jesus Christ, He is dead; they are alive. I can
make their lives happy and fill all their hours with the fullness of
joy. That is my religion; and the holiest temple ever erected beneath
the stars is the home; the holiest altar is the fireside.

What is this blasphemy? First, it is a geographical question. There
was a time when it was blasphemy in Jerusalem to say that Christ was
God. In this country it is now blasphemy to say that He was not. It is
blasphemy in Constantinople to deny that Mahomet was the Prophet of God;
it is blasphemy here to say that he was. It is a geographical question;
you cannot tell whether it is blasphemy or not without looking at the
map. What is blasphemy? It is what the mistake says about the fact.
It is what the last year's leaf says about this year's bud. It is the
last cry of the defeated priest. Blasphemy is the little breast-work
behind which hypocrisy hides; behind which mental impotency feels safe.
There is no blasphemy but the avowal of thought, and he who speaks what
he thinks blasphemes.

That I have had the hardihood--it doesn't take much--to attack the
sacred scriptures. I have simply given my opinion; and yet they tell
me that that book is holy--that you can take rags, make pulp, put ink
on it, bind it in leather, and make something holy. The Catholics have
a man for a pope; the Protestants have a book. The Catholics have the
best of it. If they elect an idiot he will not live forever, and it is
impossible for us to get rid of the barbarisms in our book. The
Catholics said, "We will not let the common people read the bible."
That was right. If it is necessary to believe it in order to get to
heaven no man should run the risk of reading it. To allow a man to read
the bible on such conditions is to set a trap for his soul. The right
way is never to open it, and when you get to the day of judgment, and
they ask you if you believe it say "Yes, I have never read it." The
Protestant gives the book to a poor man and says: "Read it. You are at
liberty to read it." "Well, suppose I don't believe it, when I get
through?" "Then you will be damned." No man should be allowed to read it
on those conditions. And yet Protestants have done that infinitely
cruel thing. If I thought it was necessary to believe it I would say
never read another line in it but just believe it and stick to it. And
yet these people really think that there is something miraculous about
the book. They regard it as a fetish--a kind of amulet--a something
charmed, that will keep off evil spirits, or bad luck, stop bullets, and
do a thousand handy-things for the preservation of life.

I heard a story upon that subject. You know that thousands of them are
printed in the Sunday-school books. Here is one they don't print. There
was a poor man who had belonged to the church, but he got cold, and he
rather neglected it, and he had bad luck in his business, and he went
down and down and down until he hadn't a dollar--not a thing to eat;
and his wife said to him, "John, this comes of you having abandoned the
church, this comes of your having done away with family worship. Now, I
beg of you, let's go back." Well, John said it wouldn't do any harm to
try. So he took down the bible, blew the dust off it, read a little
from a chapter, and had family worship. As he was putting it up he
opened it again, and there was a $10 bill between the leaves. He rushed
out to the butcher's and bought meat, to the grocer's and bought tea and
bread, and butter and eggs, and rushed back home and got them cooked,
and the house was filled with the perfume of food; and he sat down at
the table, tears in every eye and a smile on every face. She said, "What
did I tell you?" Just then there was a knock on the door, and in came a
constable, who arrested him for passing a $10 counterfeit bill.

They tell me that I ought not to attack the bible--that I have
misrepresented it, and among other things that I have said that,
according to the bible, the world was made of nothing. Well, what was
it made of? They say God created everything. Consequently, there must
have been nothing when He commenced. If he didn't make it of nothing,
what did he make it of? Where there was, nothing, He made something.
Yes; out of what? I don't know. This doctor of divinity, and I should
think such a divinity would need a doctor, says that God made the
universe out of His omnipotence. Why not out of His omniscience, or His
omnipresence? Omnipotence is not a raw material. It is the something
to work raw material with. Omnipotence is simply all powerful, and what
good would strength do with nothing? The weakest man ever born could
lift as much nothing as God. And he could do as much with it after he
got it lifted. And yet a doctor of divinity tells me that this world was
made of omnipotence. And right here let me say I find even in the mind
of the clergymen the seeds of infidelity. He is trying to explain
things. That is a bad symptom. The greater the miracle the greater the
reward for believing it. God cannot afford to reward a man for
believing anything reasonable. Why, even the scribes and Pharisees
would believe a reasonable thing. Do you suppose God is to crown you
with eternal joy and give you a musical instrument for believing
something where the evidence is clear? No, sir. The larger the miracle
the more grace. And let me advise the ministers of Chicago and of this
country, never to explain a miracle; it cannot be explained. If you
succeed in explaining it, the miracle is gone. If you fail you are gone.
My advice to the clergy is, use assertion; just say "it is so," and the
larger the miracle the greater the glory reaped by the eternal. And yet
this man is trying to explain, pretending that He had some raw material
of some kind on hand. And then I objected to the fact that He didn't
make the sun until the fourth day, and that, consequently, the grass
could not have grown--could not have thrown its mantle of green over the
shoulders of the hill--and that the trees would not blossom and cast
their shade upon the sod without some sunshine; and what does this man
say? Why, that the rocks, when they crystallized, emitted light, even
enough to raise a crop by. And he says "vegetation might have depended
on the glare of volcanoes in the moon." What do you think would be the
fate of agriculture depending on the "glare of volcanoes in the moon?"
Then he says "the aurora borealis." Why, you couldn't raise cucumbers
by the aurora borealis. And he says "liquid rivers of molten granite."
I would like to have a farm on that stream. He guesses everything of
the kind except lightning-bugs and foxfire. Now, think of that
explanation in the last half of the nineteenth century by a minister.
The truth is, the gentleman who wrote the account knew nothing of
astronomy--knew as little as the modern preacher does--just about the
same; and if they don't know more about the next world than they do
about this, it is hardly worth while talking with them on the subject.
There was a time, you know, when the minister was the educated man in
the country, and when, if you wanted to know anything, you asked him.
Now you do if you don't. So I find this man expounding the flood, and
he says it was not very wet. He begins to doubt whether God had water
enough to cover the whole earth. Why not stand by his book? He says
that some of the animals got into the ark to keep out of the wet. I
believe that is the way the Democrats got to the polls last Tuesday.

Another divine says that God would have drowned them all, but it was
purely for the sake of economy that He saved any of them. Just think of
that! According to this Christian religion all the people in the world
were totally depraved through the fall, and God found he could not do
anything with them, so he drowned them. Now, if God wanted to get up a
flood big enough to drown sin, why did He not get up a flood big enough
to drown the snake? That was His mistake. Now, these people say that
if Jonah had walked rapidly up and down the whale's belly he would have
avoided the action of its gastric-juice. Imagine Jonah sitting in the
whale's mouth, on the back of a molar-tooth; and yet this doctor of
divinity would have us believe that the infinite God of the universe was
sitting under his gourd and made the worm that was at the root of
Jonah's vine. Great business.

David is said to have been a man after God's own heart, and if you will
read the twenty-eighth chapter of Chronicles you will find that David
died full of years and honors. So I find in the great book of prophecy,
concerning Solomon: "He shall reign in peace and quietness, he shall be
my son, and I shall be his father, and I will preserve his Kingdom."
Was that true?

It won't do. But they say God couldn't do away with slavery suddenly,
nor with polygamy all at once--that He had to do it gradually--that if
He had told this man you mustn't have slaves, and one man that he must
have one wife, and one wife that she must have one husband, He would
have lost the control over them notwithstanding all the miraculous
power. Is it not wonderful that when they did all these miracles nobody
paid any attention to them? Isn't it wonderful that, in Egypt, when
they performed these wonders--when the waters were turned into blood,
when the people were smitten with disease and covered with the horrible
animals--isn't it wonderful that it had no influence on them? Do you
know why all these miracles didn't affect the Egyptians? They were
there at the time. Isn't it wonderful, too, that the Jews who had been
brought from bondage--had followed a cloud by day and a pillar of fire
by night--who had been miraculously fed, and for whose benefit water had
leaked from the rocks and followed them up and down hill through all
their journeying--isn't it wonderful, when they had seen the earth open
and their companions swallowed, when they had seen God Himself write in
robes of flames from Sinai's crags, when they had seen Him talking face
to face with Moses--isn't it a little wonderful that He had no more
influence over them? They were there at the time. And that is the
reason they didn't mind it--they were there. And yet, with all these
miracles, this God could not prevent polygamy and slavery. Was there no
room on the two tables of stone to put two more commandments? Better
have written them on the back, then. Better have left the others all
off and put these two on. Man shall not enslave his brother, (you shall
not live on unpaid labor), and the one man shall have the one wife. If
these two had been written and the other ten left off, it would have
been a thousand times better for this world.

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