Books: Lectures Of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Vol. I
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Col. Robert Green Ingersoll >> Lectures Of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Vol. I
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The bible is not inspired, and ministers know nothing about another
world. They don't know. I am satisfied there is no world of eternal
pain. If there is a world of joy, so much the better. I have never put
out the faintest star of human hope that ever trembled in the night of
life. There was a time when I was not; after that I was; now I am.
And it is just as probable that I will live again as it was that I could
have lived before I did. Let it go. Ah! but what will life be? The
world will be here. Men and women will be here. The page of history
will be open. The walls of the world will be adorned with art, the
niches with sculpture; music will be here, and all there is of life and
joy. And there will be homes here, and the fireside, and there will be
a common hope without a common fear. Love will be here, and love is the
only bow on life's dark cloud. Love was the first to dream of
immortality. Love is the morning and evening star. It shines upon the
child; it sheds its radiance upon the peaceful tomb. Love is the
mother of beauty--the mother of melody, for music is its voice. Love is
the builder of every hope, the kindler of every fire on every hearth.
Love is the enchanter, the magician that changes worthless things to
joy, and makes right royal kings and queens out of common clay. Love is
the perfume of that wondrous flower the heart. Without that divine
passion, without that divine sway, we are less than beasts, and with it
earth is heaven and we are gods.
INGERSOLL'S ORATION AT A CHILD'S GRAVE.
In a remote corner of the Congressional Cemetery at Washington, a small
group of people with uncovered heads were ranged around a newly-opened
grave. They included Detective and Mrs. George O. Miller and family and
friends, who had gathered to witness the burial of the former's bright
little son Harry. As the casket rested upon the trestles there was a
painful pause, broken only by the mother's sobs, until the undertaker
advanced toward a stout, florid-complexioned gentleman in the party and
whispered to him, the words being inaudible to the lookers-on. This
gentleman was Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, a friend of the Millers, who had
attended the funeral--at their request. He shook his head when the
undertaker first addressed him, and then said suddenly, "Does Mrs.
Miller desire it?" The undertaker gave an affirmative nod. Mr. Miller
looked appealingly toward the distinguished orator, and then Colonel
Ingersoll advanced to the side of the grave, made a motion denoting a
desire for silence, and, in a voice of exquisite cadence, delivered one
of his characteristic eulogies for the dead.
The scene was intensely dramatic. A fine drizzling rain was falling,
and every head was bent, and every ear turned to catch the impassioned
words of eloquence and hope that fell from the lips of the famed orator.
Colonel Ingersoll was unprotected by either hat or umbrella. His
invocation thrilled his hearers with awe, each eye that had previously
been bedimmed with tears brightening, and sobs becoming hushed. The
colonel said:
My Friends: I know how vain it is to gild a grief with words, and yet I
wish to take from every grave its fear. Here in this world, where life
and death are equal kings, all should be brave enough to meet what all
have met. The future has been filled with fear, stained and polluted by
the heartless past. From the wondrous tree of life the buds and
blossoms fall with ripened fruit, and in the common bed of earth
patriarchs and babes sleep side by side. Why should we fear that which
will come to all that is? We cannot tell. We do not know which is the
greatest blessing, life or death. We cannot say that death is not good.
We do not know whether the grave is the end of this life or the door of
another, or whether the night here is not somewhere else a dawn.
Neither can we tell which is the more fortunate, the child dying in its
mother's arms before its lips have learned to form a word, or he who
journeys all the length of life's uneven road, painfully taking the last
slow steps with staff and crutch. Every cradle asks us "Whence?" and
every coffin "Whither?" The poor barbarian weeping above his dead can
answer the question as intelligently and satisfactorily as the robed
priest of the most authentic creed. The tearful ignorance of the one is
just as consoling as the learned and unmeaning words of the other. No
man standing where the horizon of a life has touched a grave has any
right to prophesy a future filled with pain and tears. It may be that
death gives all there is of worth to life. If those who press and
strain against our hearts could never die, perhaps that love would
wither from the earth. Maybe a common faith treads from out the paths
between our hearts the weeds of selfishness, and I should rather live
and love where death is king than have eternal life where love is not.
Another life is naught, unless we know and love again the ones who love
us here.
They who stand with breaking hearts around this little grave need have
no fear. The largest and the nobler faith in all that is, and is to be,
tells us that death, even at its worst, is only perfect rest. We know
that through the common wants of life, the needs and duties of each
hour, their grief will lessen day by day until at last these graves will
be to them a place of rest and peace--almost of joy. There is for them
this consolation: The dead do not suffer. If they live again their
lives will surely be as good as ours. We have no fear; we are all
children of the same mother and the same fate awaits us all. We, too,
have our religion, and it is this: "Help for the living, hope for the
dead."
INGERSOLL AT HIS BROTHER'S GRAVE.--A Most Exquisite, Yet One Of The
Most Sad And Mournful Sermons
The funeral of Hon. Ebon C. Ingersoll, brother of Col. Robert G.
Ingersoll, of Illinois, took place at his residence in Washington, D.C.,
June 2, 1879. The ceremonies were extremely simple, consisting merely
of viewing the remains by relatives and friends, and a funeral oration
by Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, brother of the deceased. A large number of
distinguished gentlemen were present, including Secretary Sherman,
Assistant Secretary Hawley, Senators Blaine, Vorhees, Paddock, Allison,
Logan, Hon. Thomas Henderson, Gov. Pound, Hon. Wm. M. Morrison, Gen.
Jeffreys, Gen. Williams, Col. James Fishback, and others. The pall-
bearers were Senators Blaine, Vorhees, David Davis, Paddock and Allison,
Col. Ward, H. Lamon, Hon. Jeremiah Wilson of Indiana, and Hon. Thomas A.
Boyd of Illinois.
Soon after Mr. Ingersoll began to read his eloquent characterization of
the dead, his eyes filled with tears. He tried to hide them behind his
eye-glasses, but he could not do it, and finally he bowed his head upon
the dead man's coffin in uncontrollable grief. It was after some delay
and the greatest efforts of self-mastery, that Col. Ingersoll was able
to finish reading his address, which was as follows:
My Friends: I am going to do that which the dead often promised he
would do for me. The loved and loving brother, husband, father, friend,
died where manhood's morning almost touches noon, and while the shadows
still were falling toward the west. He had not passed on life's highway
the stone that marks the highest point, but being weary for a moment he
lay down by the wayside, and, using his burden for a pillow, fell into
that dreamless sleep that kisses down his eyelids still. While yet in
love with life and raptured with the world, he passed to silence and
pathetic dust. Yet, after all, it may be best, just in the happiest,
sunniest hour of all the voyage, while eager winds are kissing every
sail, to dash against the unseen rock, and in an instant hear the
billows roar over a sunken ship. For, whether in mid-sea or among the
breakers of the farther shore, a wreck must mark at last the end of each
and all. And every life, no matter if its every hour is rich with love,
and every moment jeweled with a joy, will, at its close, become a
tragedy, as sad, and deep, and dark as can be woven of the warp and woof
of mystery and death. This brave and tender man in every storm of life
was oak and rock, but in the sunshine he was vine and flower. He was
the friend of all heroic souls. He climbed the heights and left all
superstitions far below, while on his forehead fell the golden dawning
of a grander day. He loved the beautiful and was with color, form and
music touched to tears. He sided with the weak, and with a willing hand
gave alms; with loyal heart and with the purest hand he faithful
discharged all public trusts. He was a worshiper of liberty and a
friend of the oppressed. A thousand times I have heard him quote the
words: "For justice all place a temple and all season summer." He
believed that happiness was the only good, reason the only torch,
justice the only worshiper, humanity the only religion, and love the
priest.
He added to the sum of human joy, and were every one for whom he did
some loving service to bring a blossom to his grave he would sleep
tonight beneath a wilderness of flowers. Life is a narrow vale between
the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look
beyond the heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of
our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there
comes no word; but in the night of death hope sees a star and listening
love can hear the rustle of a wing. He who sleeps here, when dying,
mistaking the approach of death for the return of health, whispered with
his latest breath, "I am better now." Let us believe, in spite of
doubts and dogmas and tears and fears that these dear words are true of
all the countless dead. And now, to you who have been chosen from among
the many men he loved to do the last sad office, for the dead, we give
his sacred dust. Speech can not contain our love. There was--there is
--no gentler, stronger, manlier man.
INGERSOLL'S LECTURE ON THE MISTAKES OF MOSES.
Now and then some one asks me why I am endeavoring to interfere with the
religious faith of others, and why I try to take from the world the
consolation naturally arising from a belief in eternal fire. And I
answer, I want to do what little I can to make my country truly free.
I want to broaden the intellectual horizon of our people. I want it so
that we can differ upon all those questions, and yet grasp each other's
hands in genuine friendship. I want in the first place to free the
clergy. I am a great friend of theirs, but they don't seem to have
found it out generally. I want it so that every minister will be not a
parrot, not an owl sitting upon the limb of the tree of knowledge and
hooting the hoots that have been hooted for eighteen hundred years. But
I want it so that each one can be an investigator, a thinker; and I
want to make his congregation grand enough so that they will not only
allow him to think, but will demand that he shall think, and give to
them the honest truth of his thought. As it is now, ministers are
employed like attorneys--for the plaintiff or the defendant. If a few
people know of a young man in the neighborhood maybe who has not a good
constitution,--he may not be healthy enough to be wicked--a young man
who has shown no decided talent--it occurs to them to make him a
minister. They contribute and send him to some school. If it turns out
that that young man has more of the man in him than they thought, and he
changes his opinion, everyone who contributed will feel himself
individually swindled--and they will follow that young man to the grave
with the poisoned shafts of malice and slander. I want it so that every
one will be free--so that a pulpit will not be a pillory. They have in
Massachusetts, at a place called Andover, a kind of minister factory;
and every professor in that factory takes an oath once in every five
years--that is as long as an oath will last--that not only has he not
during the last five years, but so help him God, he will not during the
next five years intellectually advance; and probably there is no oath
he could easier keep. Since the foundation of that institution there
has not been one case of perjury. They believe the same creed they
first taught when the foundation stone was laid, and now when they send
out a minister they brand him as hardware from Sheffield and Birmingham.
And every man who knows where he was educated knows his creed, knows
every argument of his creed, every book that he reads, and just what he
amounts to intellectually, and knows he will shrink and shrivel, and
become solemnly stupid day after day until he meets with death. It is
all wrong; it is cruel. Those men should be allowed to grow. They
should have the air of liberty and the sunshine of thought.
I want to free the schools of our country. I want it so that when a
professor in a college finds some fact inconsistent with Moses, he will
not hide the fact. I wish to see an eternal divorce and separation
between church and schools. The common school is the bread of life, but
there should be nothing taught except what somebody knows; and anything
else should not be maintained by a system of general taxation. I want
its professors so that they will tell everything they find; that they
will be free to investigate in every direction, and will not be
trammeled by the superstitions of our day. What has religion to do with
facts? Nothing. Is there any such thing as Methodist mathematics,
Presbyterian botany, Catholic astronomy or Baptist biology? What has
any form of superstition or religion to do with a fact or with any
science? Nothing but to hinder, delay or embarrass. I want, then, to
free the schools; and I want to free the politicians, so that a man
will not have to pretend he is a Methodist, or his wife a Baptist, or
his grandmother a Catholic; so that he can go through a campaign, and
when he gets through will find none of the dust of hypocrisy on his
knees.
I want the people splendid enough that when they desire men to make laws
for them, they will take one who knows something, who has brains enough
to prophesy the destiny of the American Republic, no matter what his
opinions may be upon any religious subject. Suppose we are in a storm
out at sea, and the billows are washing over our ship, and it is
necessary that some one should reef the topsail, and a man presents
himself. Would you stop him at the foot of the mast to find out his
opinion on the five points of Calvinism? What has that to do with it?
Congress has nothing to do with baptism or any particular creed, and
from what little experience I have had in Washington, very little to do
with any kind of religion whatever. Now I hope, this afternoon, this
magnificent and splendid audience will forget that they are Baptists or
Methodists, and remember that they are men and women. These are the
highest titles humanity can bear--and every title you add, belittles
them. Man is the highest; woman is the highest. Let us remember that
our views depend largely upon the country in which we happen to live.
Suppose we were born in Turkey most of us would have been Mohammedans;
and when we read in the book that when Mohammed visited heaven he became
acquainted with an angel named Gabriel, who was so broad between his
eyes that it would take a smart camel three hundred days to make the
journey, we probably would have believed it. If we did not, people
would say: "That young man is dangerous; he is trying to tear down the
fabric of our religion. What do you propose to give us instead of that
angel? We cannot afford to trade off an angel of that size for nothing."
Or if we had been born in India, we would have believed in a god with
three heads. Now we believe in three gods with one head. And so we
might make a tour of the world and see that every superstition that
could be imagined by the brain of man has been in some place held to be
sacred.
Now some one says, "The religion of my father and mother is good enough
for me." Suppose we all said that, where would be the progress of the
world? We would have the rudest and most barbaric religion--religion
which no one could believe. I do not believe that it is showing real
respect to our parents to believe something simply because they did.
Every good father and every good mother wish their children to find out
more than they knew every good father wants his son to overcome some
obstacle that he could not grapple with and if you wish to reflect
credit on your father and mother, do it by accomplishing more than they
did, because you live in a better time. Every nation has had what you
call a sacred record, and the older the more sacred, the more
contradictory and the more inspired is the record. We, of course, are
not an exception, and I propose to talk a little about what is called
the Pentateuch, a book, or a collection of books, said to have been
written by Moses. And right here in the commencement let me say that
Moses never wrote one word of the Pentateuch--not one word was written
until he had been dust and ashes for hundreds of years. But as the
general opinion is that Moses wrote these books, I have entitled this
lecture "The Mistakes of Moses." For the sake of this lecture, we will
admit that he wrote it. Nearly every maker of religion has commenced by
making the world; and it is one of the safest things to do, because no
one can contradict as having been present, and it gives free scope to
the imagination. These books, in times when there was a vast difference
between the educated and the ignorant, became inspired and people bowed
down and worshiped them.
I saw a little while ago a Bible with immense oaken covers, with hasps
and clasps large enough almost for a penitentiary, and I can imagine how
that book would be regarded by barbarians in Europe when not more than
one person in a dozen could read and write. In imagination I saw it
carried into the cathedral, heard the chant of the priest, saw the
swinging of the censer and the smoke rising; and when that Bible was put
on the altar I can imagine the barbarians looking at it and wondering
what influence that book could have on their lives and future. I do not
wonder that they imagined it was inspired. None of them could write a
book, and consequently when they saw it they adored it; they were
stricken with awe; and rascals took advantage of that awe.
Now they say that the book is inspired. I do not care whether it is or
not; the question is: Is it true? If it is true it doesn't need to be
inspired. Nothing needs inspiration except a falsehood or a mistake. A
fact never went into partnership with a miracle. Truth scorns the
assistance of wonders. A fact will fit every other fact in the
universe, and that is how you can tell--whether it is or not a fact. A
lie will not fit anything except a lie made for the express purpose;
and, finally, some one gets tired of lying, and the last lie will not
fit the next fact, and then there is a chance for inspiration. Right
then and there a miracle is needed. The real question is, in the light
of science, in the light of the brain and heart of the nineteenth
century, is this book true? The gentleman who wrote it begins by
telling us that God made the universe out of nothing. That I cannot
conceive; it may be so, but I cannot conceive it. Nothing in the light
of raw material, is, to my mind, a decided and disastrous failure. I
cannot imagine of nothing being made into something, any more than I can
of something being changed back into nothing. I cannot conceive of
force aside from matter, because force to be force must be active, and
unless there is matter there is nothing for force to act upon, and
consequently it cannot be active. So I simply say I cannot comprehend
it. I cannot believe it. I may roast for this, but it is my honest
opinion. The next thing he proceeds to tell us is that God divided the
darkness from the light, and right here let me say when I speak about
God I simply mean the being described by the Jews. There may be in
immensity a being beneath whose wing the universe exists, whose every
thought is a glittering star, but I know nothing about Him,--not the
slightest,--and this afternoon I am simply talking about the being
described by the Jewish people. When I say God, I mean Him. Moses
describes God dividing the light from the darkness. I suppose that at
that time they must have been mixed. You can readily see how light and
darkness can get mixed. They must have been entities. The reason I
think so is because in that same book I find that darkness overspread
Egypt so thick that it could be felt, and they used to have on
exhibition in Rome a bottle of the darkness that once overspread Egypt.
The gentleman who wrote this in imagination saw God dividing light from
the darkness. I am sure the man who wrote it, believed darkness to be
an entity, a something, a tangible thing that can be mixed with light.
The next thing that he informs us is that God divided the waters above
the firmament from those below the firmament. The man who wrote that
believed the firmament to be a solid affair. And that is what the gods
did. You recollect the gods came down and made love to the daughters of
men--and I never blamed them for it. I have never read a description of
any heaven I would not leave on the same errand. That is where the gods
lived. There is where they kept the water. It was solid. That is the
reason the people prayed for rain. They believed that an angel could
take a lever, raise a window and let out the desired quantity. I find
in the Psalms that "He bowed the heavens and came down;" and we read
that the children of men built a tower to reach the heavens and climb
into the abode of the gods. The man who wrote that believed the
firmament to be solid. He knew nothing about the laws of evaporation.
He did not know that the sun wooed with amorous kiss the waves of the
sea, and that, disappointed, their vaporous sighs changed to tears and
fell again as rain. The next thing he tells us is that the grass began
to grow; and the branches of the trees laughed into blossom, and the
grass ran up the shoulder of the hills, and yet not a solitary ray of
light had left the eternal quiver of the sun. Not a blade of grass had
ever been touched by a gleam of light. And I do not think that grass
will grow to hurt without a gleam of sunshine. I think the man who
wrote that simply made a mistake, and is excusable to a certain degree.
The next day he made the sun and moon--the sun to rule the day and the
moon to rule the night. Do you think the man who wrote that knew
anything about the size of the sun? I think he thought it was about
three feet in diameter, because I find in some book that the sun was
stopped a whole day, to give a general named Joshua time to kill a few
more Amalekites; and the moon was stopped also. Now it seems to me
that the sun would give light enough without stopping the moon; but as
they were in the stopping business they did it just for devilment. At
another time, we read, the sun was turned ten degrees backward to
convince Hezekiah that he was not going to die of a boil. How much
easier it would have been to cure the boil. The man who wrote that
thought the sun was two or three feet in diameter, and could be stopped
and pulled around like the sun and moon in a theatre. Do you know that
the sun throws out every second of time as much heat as could be
generated by burning eleven thousand millions tons of coal? I don't
believe he knew that, or that he knew the motion of the earth. I don't
believe he knew that it was turning on its axis at the rate of a
thousand miles an hour, because if he did, he would have understood the
immensity of heat that would have been generated by stopping the world.
It has been calculated by one of the best mathematicians and astronomers
that to stop the world would cause as much heat as it would take to burn
a lump of solid coal three times as big as the globe. And yet we find
in that book that the sun was not only stopped, but turned back ten
degrees, simply to convince a gentleman that he was not going to die of
a boil. They will say I will be damned if I do not believe that, and I
tell them I will if I do.
Then he gives us the history of astronomy, and he gives it to us in five
words: "He made the stars also." He came very near forgetting the
stars. Do you believe that the man who wrote that knew that there are
stars as much larger than this earth as this earth is larger than the
apple which Adam and Eve are said to have eaten. Do you believe that he
knew that this world is but a speck in the shining, glittering universe
of existence? I would gather from that that he made the stars after he
got the world done. The telescope, in reading the infinite leaves of
the heavens, has ascertained that light travels at the rate of 192,000
miles per second, and it would require millions of years to come from
some of the stars to this earth. Yet the beams of those stars mingle in
our atmosphere, so that if those distant orbs were fashioned when this
world began, we must have been whirling in space not six thousand, but
many millions of years. Do you believe the man who wrote that as a
history of astronomy really knew that this world was but a speck
compared with millions of sparkling orbs? I do not. He then proceeds
to tell us that God made fish and cattle, and that man and woman were
created male and female. The first account stops at the second verse of
the second chapter. You see, the Bible originally was not divided into
chapters; the first Bible that was ever divided into chapters in our
language was made in the year of grace 1550. The Bible was originally
written in the Hebrew language, and the Hebrew language at that time had
no vowels in writing. It was written with consonants, and without being
divided into chapters or into verses, and there was no system of
punctuation whatever. After you go home tonight write an English
sentence or two with only consonants close together, and you will find
that it will take twice as much inspiration to read it as it did to
write it. When the Bible was divided into verses and chapters, the
divisions were not always correct, and so the division between the first
and second chapter of Genesis is not in the right place. The second
account of the creation commences at the third verse and it differs from
the first in two essential points. In the first account man is the last
made; in the second man is made before the beasts. In the first
account, man is made "male and female"; in the second only a male is
made, and there is no intention of making a woman whatever.
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