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

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"Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have
committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates even that man or that woman,
and shalt stone them with stones till they die." (Deut. xvii, 2-5.)

That is the religious liberty of the bible--that's it. And this god
taught that doctrine to the Jews, and said to them, "Any one that
teaches a different religion, kill him!" Now, let me ask, and I want to
do it reverently, if, as is contended, God gave these frightful laws to
the flesh, and come among the Jews, and taught a different religion, and
these Jews, in accordance with the laws which this same God gave them,
crucified him, did he not reap what he had sown? The mercy of all this
comes in what is called "the plan of salvation." What is that plan?
According to this great plan, the innocent suffer for the guilty to
satisfy a law.

What sort of a law must it be that would be satisfied with the suffering
of innocence? According to this plan, the salvation of the whole world
depends upon the bigotry of the Jews and the treachery of Judas.
According to the same plan, we all would have gone to eternal hell.
According to the same plan, there would have been no death in the world
if there had been no sin, and if there had been no death you and I would
not have been called into existence, and if we did not exist we could
not have been saved, so we owe our salvation to the bigotry of the Jews
and the treachery of Judas, and we are indebted to the devil for our
existence. I speak this reverently. It strikes me that what they call
the atonement is a kind of moral bankruptcy. Under its merciful
provisions man is allowed the privilege of sinning credit, and whenever
he is guilty of a mean action he says, "Charge it." In my judgment, this
kind of bookkeeping breeds extravagance in sin. Suppose we had a law in
New York that every merchant should give credit to every man who asked
it, under pain and penitentiary, and that every man should take the
benefit of the bankruptcy statute any Saturday night? Doesn't the credit
system in morals breed extravagance in sin? That's the question. Who's
afraid of punishment which is so far away? Whom does the doctrine of
hell stop? The great, the rich, the powerful? No; the poor, the weak,
the despised, the mean. Did you ever hear of a man going to hell who
died in New York worth a million of dollars, or with an income of
twenty-five thousand a year? Did you? Did you ever hear of a man going
to hell who rode in a carriage? Never. They are the gentlemen who talk
about their assets, and who say: "Hell is not for me; it is for the
poor. I have all the luxuries I want, give that to the poor." Who goes
to hell? Tramps!

Let me tell you a story. There was once a frightful rain, and all the
animals held a convention, to see whose fault it was, and the fox
nominated the lion for chairman. The wolf seconded the motion, and the
hyena said "that suits." When the convention was called to order the fox
was called upon to confess his sins. He stated, however, that it would
be much more appropriate for the lion to commence first. Thereupon the
lion said: "I am not conscious of having committed evil. It is true I
have devoured a few men, but for what other purpose were men made?" And
they all cheered, and were satisfied. The fox gave his views upon the
goose question, and the wolf admitted that he had devoured sheep, and
occasionally had killed a shepherd, "but all acquainted with the history
of my family will bear me out when I say that shepherds have been the
enemies of my family from the beginning of the world." Then way in the
rear there arose a simple donkey, with a kind of Abrahamic countenance.
He said: "I expect it's me. I had eaten nothing for three days except
three thistles. I was passing a monastery, the monks were at mass. The
gates were open leading to a yard full of sweet clover. I knew it was
wrong but I did slip in and I took a mouthful, but my conscience smote
me and I went out;" and all the animals shouted, "He's the fellow!" and
in two minutes they had his hide on the fence. That's the kind of people
that go to hell.

Now this doctrine of hell, that has been such a comfort to my race,
which so many ministers are pleading for, has been defended for ages by
the fathers of the church. Your preacher says that the sovereignty of
God implies that He has an absolute, unlimited and independent right to
dispose of His creatures as He will, because He made them. Has He?
Suppose I take this book and change it immediately into a servient human
being. Would I have a right to torture it because I made it? No; on the
contrary, I would say, having brought you into existence, it is my duty
to do the best for you I can. They say God has a right to damn me
because He made me. I deny it. Another one says God is not obliged to
save even those who believe in Christ, and that he can either bestow
salvation upon his children or retain it without any diminution of his
glory. Another one says God may save any sinner whatsoever, consistently
with his justice. Let a natural person--and I claim to be one--moral or
immoral, wise or unwise; let him be as just as he can, no matter what
his prayers may be, what pains he may have taken to be saved, or
whatever circumstances he may be in. God, according to this writer, can
deny him salvation, without the least disparagement of His glory. His
glories will not be in the least obscured--there is no natural man, be
his character what it may, but God may cast down to hell without being
charged with unfair dealing in any respect with regard to that man.
Theologians tell us that God's design in the creation was simply to
glorify himself. Magnificent object!

"The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured
out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be
tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels,
and in the presence of the Lamb." (Rev. xiv, 1-10.)

Do you know nobody would have had an idea of hell in this world if it
hadn't been for volcanoes? They were looked upon as the chimneys of
hell. The idea of eternal fire never would have polluted the imagination
of man but for them. An eminent theologian, describing hell, says:
"There is no recounting the millions of ages the damned shall suffer.
All arithmetic ends here"--and all sense, too! "They shall have nothing
to do in passing away this eternity but to conflict with torments. God
shall have no other use or employment for them." These words were said
by gentlemen who died Christians, and who are now in the harp business
in the world to come. Another declares there is nothing to keep any man
or Christian out of hell except the mere pleasure of God, and their
pains never grow any easier by their becoming accustomed to them. It is
also declared that the devil goes about like a lion, ready to doom the
wicked. Did it never occur to you what a contradiction it is to say that
the devil will persecute his own friends? He wants all the recruits he
can get; why then should he persecute his friends? In my judgment he
should give them the best hell affords.

It is in the very nature of things that torments inflicted have no
tendency to bring a wicked man to repentance. Then why torment him if it
will not do him good? It is simply unadulterated revenge. All the
punishment in the world will not reform a man, unless he knows that he
who inflicts it upon him does it for the sake of reformation, and really
and truly loves him, and has his good at heart. Punishment inflicted for
gratifying the appetite makes man afraid, but debases him.

Various reasons are given for punishing the wicked; first, that God will
vindicate his injured majesty. Well, I am glad of that! Second, He will
glorify his justice--think of that. Third, He will show and glorify his
grace. Every time the saved shall look upon the damned in hell it will
cause in them a lively and admiring sense of the grace of God. Every
look upon the damned will double the ardor and the joy of the saints in
heaven. Can the believing husband in heaven look down upon the torments
of the unbelieving wife in hell and then feel a thrill of joy? That's
the old doctrine--not of our days; we are too civilized for that. O, but
it is the doctrine that if you saw your wife in hell--the wife you love,
who, in your last sickness, nursed you, that, perhaps supported you by
her needle when you were ill; the wife who watched by your couch night
and day, and held your corpse in her loving arms when you were dead--the
sight would give you great joy. That doctrine is not preached to-day.
They do not preach that the sight would give you joy; but they do preach
that it will not diminish your happiness. That is the doctrine of every
orthodox minister in New York, and I repeat that I have no respect for
men who preach such doctrines. The sight of the torments of the damned
in hell will increase the ecstasy of the saints forever! On this
principle man never enjoys a good dinner so much as when a fellow-
creature is dying of famine before his eyes, or he never enjoys the
cheerful warmth of his own fireside so greatly as when a poor and
abandoned wretch is dying on his doorstep. The saints enjoy the ecstasy
and the groans of the tormented are music to them. I say here to-night
that you cannot commit a sin against an infinite being. I can sin
against my brother or my neighbor, because I can injure them. There can
be no sin where there is no injury. Neither can a finite being commit
infinite sin.

An old saint believed that hell was in the interior of the earth, and
that the rotation of the earth was caused by the souls trying to get
away from the fire. The old church at Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare's
home, in adorned with pictures of hell and the like. One of the pictures
represents resurrection morning. People are getting out of their graves,
and devils are catching hold of their heels. In one place there is a
huge brass monster, and devils are driving scores of lost souls into his
mouth. Over hot fires hang caldrons with fifty or sixty people in each,
and devils are poking the fires. People are hung up on hooks by their
tongues, and devils are lashing them. Up in the right hand corner are
some of the saved, with grins on their faces stretching from ear to ear.
They seem to say: "Aha, what did I tell you?"

Some of the old saints--gentlemen who died in the odor of sanctity, and
are now in the harp business--insisted that heaven and hell would be
plainly in view of each other. Only a few years ago, Rev. J. Furness (an
appropriate name) published a little pamphlet called "A Sight in Hell."
I remember when I first read that. My little child, seven years old, was
ill and in bed. I thought she would not hear me, and I read some of it
aloud. She arose and asked, "Who says that?" I answered, "That's what
they preach in some of the churches." "I never will enter a church as
long as I live!" she said, and she never has.

The doctrine of orthodox Christianity is that the damned shall suffer
torment forever and forever. And if you were a wanderer, footsore,
weary, with parched tongue, dying for a drop of water, and you met one
who divided his poor portion with you, and died as he saw you reviving--
if he was an unbeliever and you a believer, and you died and went to
heaven, and he called to you from hell for a draught of water, it would
be your duty to laugh at him.

Rev. Mr. Spurgeon says that everywhere in hell will be written the words
"for ever." They will be branded on every wave of flame, they will be
forged in every link of every chain, they will be seen in every lurid
flash of brimstone--everywhere will be those words "for ever." Everybody
will be yelling and screaming them. Just think of that picture of the
mercy and justice of the eternal Father of us all. If these words are
necessary why are they not written now everywhere in the world, on every
tree, and every field, and on every blade of grass? I say I am entitled
to have it so. I say that it is God's duty to furnish me with the
evidence. Here is another good book read in every Sunday-school--a
splendid book--Pollok's "Course of Time." Every copy in the world of
such books as that ought to be burned. Well, the author pretends to have
gone to hell, and I think that he ought to have stopped there.

[The lecturer read the passage from the work descriptive of the torments
of the damned, and proceeded:] And that book is put into the hands of
children in order that they may love and worship the most merciful God.
In old time they had to find a place for hell and they found a hundred
places for it. One says that it was under Lake Avernus, but the
Christians thought differently. One divine tells us that it must be
below the earth because Christ descended into hell. Another gives it as
his opinion that hell is in the sun, and he tells us that nobody,
without an express revelation from God, can prove that it is not there.
Most likely. Well, he had the idea at all events of utilizing the damned
as fuel to warm the earth. But I will quote from another poet--if it is
lawful to call him a poet. I mean Tupper.

[Colonel Ingersoll quoted from that orthodox author, and continued:]
Another divine preached a sermon no further back than 1876, in which he
said that the damned will grow worse; and the same divine says that the
devil was the first Universalist. Then I am on the side of the devil.

The fact is, that you have got not merely to believe the bible; but you
must also believe in a certain interpretation of it, and, mind you, you
must also believe in the doctrine of the trinity. I want to explain what
that is, so that you may never have an excuse for not knowing it.

I quote from the best theologian that ever wrote. [Then he went on to
give in substance the Athanasian definition of the trinity, winding up
with a long string of adjectives, culminating in the description
"entirely incomprehensible."] If you don't understand it after that, it
is you own fault. Now, you must believe in that doctrine. If you do not,
all the orthodox churches agree in condemning you to everlasting flames.
We have got to burn through all our lives simply with the view of making
them happy. We are taught to love our enemies, to pray for those that
persecute us, to forgive. Should not the merciful God practice what he
preaches? I say that reverently. Why should he say, "Forgive your
enemies," if he will not himself forgive? Why should he say "Pray for
those that despise and persecute you," but if they refuse to believe his
doctrine he will burn them forever? I cannot believe it. Here is a
little child, residing in the purlieus of the city--some boy who is
taught that it is his duty to steal by his mother, who applauds his
success and pats him on the head and calls him a good boy--would it be
just to condemn him to an eternity of torture? Suppose there is a God;
let us bring to this question some common sense.

I care nothing about the doctrines of religions or creeds of the past.
Let us come to the bar of the nineteenth century and judge matter by
what we know, by what we think, by what we love. But they say to us, "If
you throw away the Bible what are we to depend on then?" But no two
persons in the world agree as to what the Bible is, what they are to
believe, or what they are not to believe. It is like a guidepost that
has been thrown down in some time of disaster, and has been put up the
wrong way. Nobody can accept its guidance, for nobody knows where it
would direct him. I say, "Tear down the useless guidepost," but they
answer, "Oh, do not do that or we will have nothing to go by." I would
say, "Old Church, you take that road and I will take this." Another
minister has said that the Bible is the great town-clock, at which we
all may set our watches. But I have said to a friend of that minister:
"Suppose we all should set our watches by that town-clock, there would
be many persons to tell you that in old times the long hand was the hour
hand, and besides, the clock hasn't been wound up for a long time." I
say let us wait till the sun rises and set our watches by nature. For my
part, I am willing to give up heaven to get rid of hell. I had rather
there should be no heaven than that any solitary soul should be
condemned to suffer forever and ever. But they tell me that the Bible is
the good book. Now, in the Old Testament there is not in my judgment a
single reference to another life. Is there a burial service mentioned in
it in which a word of hope is spoken at the grave of the dead? The idea
of eternal life was not born of any book. That wave of hope and joy ebbs
and flows, and will continue to ebb and flow as long as love kisses the
lips of death.

Let me tell you a tale of the Persian religion of a man who, having
done good for long years of his life, presented himself at the gates of
Paradise, but the gates remained closed against him. He went back and
followed up his good works for seven years longer, and the gates of
Paradise still remaining shut against him, he toiled in works of charity
until at last they were opened unto him. Think of that, pursued the
lecturer, and send out your missionaries among those people. There is no
religion but goodness, but justice, but charity. Religion is not theory;
it is life. It is not intellectual conviction; it is divine humanity,
and nothing else. Colonel Ingersoll here told another tale from the
Hindoo, of a man who refused to enter Paradise without a faithful dog,
urging that ingratitude was the blackest of all sins. "And the God," he
said, "admitted him, dog and all." Compare that religion with the
orthodox tenets of the city of New York.

There is a prayer which every Brahmin prays, in which he declares that
he will never enter into a final state of bliss alone, but that
everywhere he will strive for universal redemption; that never will he
leave the world of sin and sorrow, but remain suffering and striving and
sorrowing after universal salvation. Compare that with the orthodox
idea, and send out your missionaries to the benighted Hindoos.

The doctrine of hell is infamous beyond all power to express. I wish
there were words mean enough to express my feelings of loathing on this
subject. What harm has it not done? What waste places has it not made?
It has planted misery and wretchedness in this world; it peoples the
future with selfish joys and lurid abysses of eternal flame. But we are
getting more sense every day. We begin to despise those monstrous
doctrines. If you want to better men and women, change their conditions
here. Don't promise them something somewhere else. One biscuit will do
more good than all the tracts that were ever peddled in the world. Give
them more whitewash, more light, more air. You have to change men
physically before you change them intellectually. I believe the time
will come when every criminal will be treated as we now treat the
diseased and sick, when every penitentiary will become a reformatory,
and that if criminals go to them with hatred in their bosoms, they will
leave them without feelings of revenge. Let me tell you the story of
Orpheus and Eurydice. Eurydice had been carried away by the god of hell,
and Orpheus, her lover, went in quest of her. He took with him his lyre,
and played such exquisite music that all hell was amazed. Ixion forgot
his labors at the wheel, the daughters of Danaus ceased from their
hopeless task, Tantalus forgot his thirst, even Pluto smiled, and, for
the first time in the history of hell, the eyes of the Furies were wet
with tears. As it was with the lyre of Orpheus, so it is to-day with the
great harmonies of Science, which are rescuing from the prisons of
superstition the torn and bleeding heart of man.

INGERSOLL'S LECTURE ON INDIVIDUALITY, AN ARRAIGNMENT OF THE CHURCH.

"His soul was like a star and dwelt apart."

On every hand are the enemies of individuality, and mental freedom.
Custom meets us at the cradle,--and leaves us only at the tomb. Our
first questions are answered by ignorance, and our last by superstition.
We are pushed and dragged by countless hands along the beaten track, and
our entire training can be summed up in the word "suppression." Our
desire to have a thing or to do a thing is considered as conclusive
evidence that we ought to do it. At every turn we run not to have it,
and ought not against a cherubim and a flaming sword, guarding some
entrance to the Eden of our desire. We are allowed to investigate all
subjects in which we feel no particular interest, and to express the
opinions of the majority with the utmost freedom. We are taught that
liberty of speech should never be carried to the extent of contradicting
the dead witnesses of a popular superstition. Society offers continual
rewards for self-betrayal, and they are nearly all earned and claimed,
and some are paid.

We have all read accounts of Christian gentlemen remarking when about to
be hanged, how much better it would have been for them if they had only
followed a mother's advice! But, after all, how fortunate it is for the
world that the maternal advice has not been followed! How lucky it is
for us all that it is somewhat unnatural for a human being to obey!
Universal obedience is universal stagnation; disobedience is one of the
conditions of progress. Select any age of the world and tell me what
would have been the effect of implicit obedience. Suppose the church
had had absolute control of the human mind at any time, would not the
word liberty and progress have been blotted from the human speech? In
defiance of advice, the world has advanced.

Suppose the astronomers had controlled the science of astronomy; suppose
the doctors had controlled the science of medicine; suppose kings had
been left to fix the form of government! Suppose our fathers had taken
the advice of Paul, who was subject to the powers that be, "because they
are ordained of God;" suppose the church could control the world today,
we would go back to chaos and old night. Philosophy would be branded as
infamous; science would again press its pale and thoughtful face
against the prison bars; and round the limbs of liberty would climb the
bigot's flame.

It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had individuality
enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions; some one who
had the grit to say his say. I believe it was Magellan who said, "the
church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon,
and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the church." On the
prow of his ship were disobedience, defiance, scorn and success.

The trouble with most people is that they bow to what is called
authority; they have a certain reverence for the old because it is old.
They think a man is better for being dead, especially if he has been
dead a long time, and that the forefathers of their nation were the
greatest and best of all mankind. All these things they implicitly
believe because it is popular and patriotic, and because they were told
so when very small, and remember distinctly of hearing mother read it
out of a book, and they are all willing to swear that mother was a good
woman. It is hard to overestimate the influence of early training--in
the direction of superstition. You first teach children that a certain
book is true--that it was written by God himself--that to question its
truth is sin, that to deny it is a crime, and that should they die
without believing that book they will be forever damned without benefit
of clergy; the consequence is that before they read that book they
believe it to be true. When they do read, their minds are wholly
unfitted to investigate its claim. They accept it as a matter of
course.

In this way the reason is overcome, the sweet instincts of humanity are
blotted from the heart, and while reading its infamous pages even
justice throws aside her scales, shrieking for revenge; and charity,
with bloody hands, applauds a deed of murder. In this way we are taught
that the revenge of man is the justice of God, that mercy is not the
same everywhere. In this way the ideas of our race have been subverted.
In this way we have made tyrants, bigots, and inquisitors. In this way
the brain of man has become a kind of palimpsest upon which, and over
the writings of Nature, superstition has scribbled her countless lies.
Our great trouble is that most teachers are dishonest. They teach as
certainties those things concerning which they entertain doubts. They
do not say, "We think this is so." but "We know this is so." They do
not appeal to the reason of the pupil, but they command his faith. They
keep all doubts to themselves; they do not explain, they assert. All
this is infamous. In this way you make Christians, but you cannot make
men; you cannot make women. You can make followers but no leaders;
disciples, but no Christs. You may promise power, honor, and happiness
to all those who will blindly follow, but you cannot keep your promise.

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