John Lothrop Motley - "The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1580 82"

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Henri Barbusse - "Under Fire"

Rudyard Kipling - "The Phantom 'Rickshaw and Other Ghost Stories"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Lectures of Col. R.G. Ingersoll Latest

C >> Col. Robert Green Ingersoll >> Lectures of Col. R.G. Ingersoll Latest




Suppose it was the Day of Judgment tonight and we were all assembled, as
the ghosts say we will be, to be judged, and God should ask a man:

"Have you been a good man?"

"Yes."

"Have you loved your wife and children?"

"Yes."

"Have you taken good care of them and made them happy?"

"Yes."

"Have you tried to do right by your neighbors?"

"Yes."

"Paid all your debts?"

"Yes."

And then cap the climax by asking:

"Were you ever baptized?"

Could a solitary being hear that question without laughing? I think
not. I once happened to be in the company of six or seven baptist
elders (I never have been able to understand since how I got into such
bad company), and they wanted to know what I thought of baptism. I
answered that I had not given the matter any attention, in fact I had no
special opinion upon the subject. But they pressed me and finally I told
them that I thought, with soap baptism was a good thing.

The Rev. Mr. Guard has attacked me, and has described me, among other
things, as a dog barking at a train. Of course he was the train. He
said, first, the bible is not an immoral book, because I swore upon it
when I joined the Free and Accepted Masons. That settles the question.
Secondly, he says that Solomon had softening of the brain and fatty
degeneration of the heart; thirdly, that the Hebrews had the right to
slay all the inhabitants of Canaan according to the doctrine of the
survival of the fittest. He says that the destruction of these
Canaanites, the ripping open by the bloody sword of women with child was
an act of sublime mercy. Think of that! He says that the Canaanites
should have been driven from their homes, and not only driven, but that
the men who simply were guilty of the crime of fighting for their native
land--the old men with gray hairs; the old mothers, the young mothers,
the little dimpled, prattling child--that it was an act of sublime mercy
to plunge the sword of religious persecution into old and young. If
that is mercy, let us have injustice. If there is that kind of a God I
am sorry that I exist. Fourthly, Mr. Guard said God has the right to do
as he pleases with the beings he has created; and, fifthly, that God,
by choosing the Jews and governing them personally, spoiled them to that
degree that they crucified Him the first opportunity they had. That
shows what a good administration will do. Sixthly, He says polygamy is
not a bad thing when compared with the picture of Anthony and Cleopatra,
now on exhibition in this city. I will just say one word about art. I
think this is one of the most beautiful words in our language, and do
you know, it never seemed to me necessary for art to go into partnership
with a rag? I like the paintings of Angelo, of Raphael--I like those
splendid souls that are put upon canvas--all there is of human beauty.
There are brave souls in every land who worship nature grand and nude,
and who, with swift, indignant hand, tear off the fig leaves of the
prude. Seventhly, it may be said that the bible sanctions slavery, but
that it is not an immoral book if it does. Mr. Guard playfully says
that he is a puppy nine days old; that he was only eight days old when I
came here. I'm inclined to think he has over stated his age. I account
for his argument precisely as he did for the sin of Solomon, softening
of the brain, or fatty degeneration of the heart. It does seem to me
that if I were a good Christian and knew that another man was going down
to the bottomless pit to be miserable and in agony forever, I would try
to stop him, and instead of filling my mouth with epithet and invective,
and drawing the lips of malice back from the teeth of hatred, my eyes
would be filled with tears, and I would do what I could to reclaim him
and take him up in the arms of my affection.

The next gentleman is the Rev. Mr. Robinson, who delivered a sermon
entitled 'Ghost against God, or Ingersoll against Honesty.' Of course
he was honest. He apologized for attending an infidel lecture upon the
ground that he hated to contribute to the support of a materialistic
showman. I am willing to trade fagots for epithets, and the rack for
anything that may be said in his sermon. I am willing to trade the
instrument of torture with which they could pull the nails from my
fingers for anything which the ingenuity of orthodoxy can invent. When
I saw that report--although I do not know that I ought to tell it--I
felt bad. I knew that man's conscience must be rankling like a snake in
his bosom, that he had contributed a dollar to the support of a man as
bad as I. I wrote him a letter, in which I said: "The Rev. Samuel
Robinson, My Dear Sir. In order to relieve your conscience of the
stigma of having contributed to the support of an unbeliever in Ghosts,
I herewith enclose the dollar you paid to attend my lecture." I then
gave him a little good advice to be charitable, and regretted
exceedingly that any man could listen to me for an hour and a half and
not go away satisfied that other men had the same right to think that he
had.

The speaker went on to answer the argument of Mr. Robinson with regard
to persecution, contending that protestants had been guilty of it no
less than catholics; and showing that the first people to pass an act
of toleration in the new world were the catholics in Maryland. The
reverend gentleman has stated also that infidelity has done nothing for
the world in the development of art and science. Has he ever heard of
Darwin, of Tyndall, of Huxley, of John W. Draper, of Auguste Comte, of
Descartes, Laplace, Spinoza, or any man who has taken a step in advance
of his time? Orthodoxy never advances, when it does advance, it ceases
to be orthodoxy.

A reply to certain strictures in the Occident led the lecturer up to
another ministerial critic, namely, the Rev. W.E. Ijams.

I want to say that, so far as I can see, in his argument this gentleman
has treated me in a kind and considerate spirit. He makes two or three
mistakes, but I suppose they are the fault of the report from which he
quoted. I am made to say in his sermon that there is no sacred place in
the universe. What I did say was: There is no sacred place in all the
universe of thought; there is nothing too holy to be investigated,
nothing too sacred to be understood, and I said that the fields of
thought were fenceless, that they should be without a wall. I say so
tonight. He further said that I said that a man had not only the right
to do right, but to do wrong. What I did say, was: "Liberty is the
right to do right, and the right to think right, and the right to think
wrong," not the right to do wrong. That is all I have to say in regard
to that gentleman, except that, so far as I could see, he was perfectly
fair, and treated me as though I was a human being as well as he.

The speaker sarcastically referred to the slurs thrown upon him by his
reviewers, who have claimed that his theories have no foundation, his
arguments no reason, and that his utterances are vapid, blasphemous, and
unworthy a reply. He said that their statements and their actions were
sadly at variance, for, while declaring him a senseless idiot, they
spent hours in striving to prove themselves not idiots; in other words,
in one breath they declare that his views were absolutely without point,
and needed no explaining away; while in direct rebuttal of this
declaration, they devoted time and labor in attempts to disprove the
very things they called self-evident absurdities.

Turning from this subject, Mr. Ingersoll read numerous extracts from the
bible, with interpolated comments. He claimed that the bible authorized
slavery, and that many devoted believers in that book had turned the
cross of Christ into a whipping post. He did not wish it understood
that he could find no good in believers in creeds; far from it, for
some of his dearest friends were most orthodox in their religious ideas,
and there had been hundreds of thousands of good men among both clergy
and laymen. History has shown no people more nobly self-sacrificing
than the Jesuit Fathers who first visited this country to proselyte
among the Indians. But these men and their like were better than their
creeds; better than the book in which their faith was centered. The
bible tells us distinctly that the world was made in six days--not
periods, but actual, bona fide days--a statement which it iterates and
reiterates. It also tells us that God lengthened the day for the
benefit of a gentleman named Joshua, in other words, that he stopped the
rotary motion of the earth. Motion is changed into heat by stoppage,
and the world turns with such velocity that its sudden stoppage would
create a heat of intensity beyond the wildest flight of our imagination,
and yet this impossible feat was performed that Joshua might have longer
time to expend in slaying a handful of Amorites. The bible also upholds
the doctrines of witchcraft and spiritualism, for Saul visited the witch
of Endor, and she, after preparing the cabinet, trotted out the spirit
of Samuel, said spirit kindly joining in conversation with Saul, without
requiring the aid of a trance medium. The speaker then quoted at length
from Leviticus concerning wizards and evil spirits, described the
temptation of Christ by Satan, and the driving of devils from man into
swine. He sneered at the rights of children as biblically described,
citing the law which sentenced them to be stoned to death for
disobedience to parents, the almost sacrifice of Isaac by his father,
and the actual murder of Jephthah's daughter, asking if a God who could
demand such worship was worthy the love of man. He next referred to the
conversation between God and Satan concerning the man Job, and of the
reward given to the latter for his long continued patience. His three
daughters and his seven sons had been taken from him merely to test his
patience, and the merciful God gave him in exchange three other
daughters and seven sons, but they were not the children whom he had
loved and lost. The bible represents woman as vastly inferior to man,
while he believed, with Robbie Burns, that God made man with a prentice-
hand, and woman after He had learned the trade. Polygamy, also, was a
doctrine supported by this pure and pious work; a doctrine so foul that
language is not strong enough to express its infamy. The bible taught,
as a religious creed, that if your wife, your sister, your brother, your
dearest friend, tempted you to change from the religion of your fathers,
your duty to God demanded that you should at once strike a blow at the
life of your tempter. Let us suppose, then, that in truth God went to
Palestine and selected the scanty tribes of Israel as his chosen people,
and supposing that he afterward came to Jerusalem in the shape of a man
and taught a different doctrine from the one prescribed by their book
and their clergy, and that the chosen people, in obedience to the
education he had prepared for them, struck at the life of him who
tempted them. Were they to be cursed by God and man because the former
had reaped the harvest of his own sowing?






Ingersoll's Lecture on "How the Gods Grow"



Ladies and Gentlemen: Priests have invented a crime called blasphemy.
That crime is the breastwork behind which ignorance, superstition and
hypocrisy have crouched for thousands of years, and shot their poisoned
arrows at the pioneers of human thought. Priests tell us that there is
a God somewhere in heaven who objects to a human being, thinking and
expressing his thought. Priests tell us that there is a God somewhere
who takes care of the people of this world; a God somewhere who watches
over the widow and the orphan; a God somewhere who releases the slave;
a God somewhere who visits the innocent man in prison; the same God that
has allowed men for thousands of years to burn to ashes human beings
simply for loving that God. We have been taught that it is dangerous to
reason upon these subjects--extremely dangerous--and that of all crimes
in the world, the greatest is to deny the existence of that God.

Redden your hands in innocent blood; steal the bread of the orphan,
deceive, ruin and desert the beautiful girl who has loved and trusted
you, and for all this you may be forgiven; for all this you can have
the clear writ of that bankrupt court of the gospel. But deny the
existence of one of these gods, and the tearful face of mercy becomes
lurid with eternal hate; the gates of heaven are shut against you, and
you, with an infinite curse ringing in your ears, commence your
wanderings as an immortal vagrant, as a deathless convict, as an eternal
outcast. And we have been taught that the infinite has become enraged
at the finite simply when the finite said: "I don't know!" Why,
imagine it. Suppose Mr. Smith should hear a couple of small bugs in his
front yard discussing the question as to the existence of Smith; and
suppose one little red bug swore on the honor of a bug that, in his
judgment, no such man as Smith lived. What would you think of Mr. Smith
if he fell into a rage, and brought his heel down on this little atheist
bug and said: "I will teach you that Smith is a diabolical fact!" And
yet if there is an infinite God, there is infinitely a greater
difference between that God and a human being than between Shakespeare
and the smallest bug that ever crawled. It cannot be; there is
something wrong in this thing somewhere.

I am told, also, that this being watches over us, takes care of us. And
the other day I read a sermon (you will hardly believe it, but I did);
I had nothing else to. I had read everything in that paper, including
the advertisements; so I read the sermon. It was a sermon by Rev. Mr.
Moody on prayer, in which he took the ground that our prayer should be
"Thy will be done;" and he seemed to believe that if we prayed that
prayer often enough we could induce God to have his own way. He gives
an instance of a woman in Illinois who had a sick child, and she prayed
that God would not take from her arms that babe. She did not pray "Thy
will be done," but she prayed, according to Mr. Moody, almost a prayer
of rebellion, and said: "I cannot give up my babe." God heard her
prayer, and the child got well; and Mr. Moody says it was an idiot when
it got well. For fifteen years that woman watched over and took care of
that idiotic child; and Mr. Moody says how much better would it have
been if she had allowed God to have had his own way. Think of a God who
would punish a mother for speaking to Him from an agonizing heart and
saying, "I cannot give up my babe," and making the child an idiot. What
would the devil have done under the same circumstances? That is the God
we are expected to worship. I range myself with the opposition. The
next day I read another sermon preached by the Rev. De Witt Talmage, a
man of not much fancy, but of great judgment. He preached a sermon on
dreams, and went on to say that God often visited us in dreams, and that
He often convinces men of His existence in that way. So far as I am
concerned I had rather see something in the light. And, according to
that sermon, there was a poor woman in England, a pauper who had the
rheumatism, and there was another pauper who had not the rheumatism;
and the pauper who had not the rheumatism used to take food to the
pauper that had. After a while the pauper without rheumatism died, and
then the pauper with the rheumatism began to think in her own mind, who
will bring me food? That night God appeared to her in a dream. He did
not cure her rheumatism though. He appeared to her in a dream, and he
took her out of the house and pointed on the right hand to an immense
mountain of bread, and on the left hand to an immense mountain of
butter. And when I read that I said to myself, my Lord, what a place
that would be to start a political party. And he said to her: "These
belong to your father; do you think that he will allow one of his
children to starve? What a place would Ireland be with that mountain of
bread and butter! Until I read these two sermons I hardly believed that
in this day and generation anybody believed that God would make a child
an idiot simply because the mother had prayed for its sweet dear life,
or that God's visits are only in dreams. But so it is.

Orthodoxy has not advanced upon the religion of the Fiji Islander. It
is the same yesterday, today and forever. Now we are told that there is
a god; and nearly every nation has had a god; generally a good many of
them. You see the raw material was so cheap, and Gods were manufactured
so easily, that heaven has always been crammed with the phantoms of
these monsters. But they say there is a god, and every savage tribe
believes in a God. It is an argument made to me every day. I concede
to you that fact; I concede to you that all savages agree with you. I
admit it takes a certain amount of civilization, a certain amount of
thought, to rise above the idea that some personal being, for his own
ends, for his own glory, made and governs this universe. I admit that it
takes some thought to see the universe is good and all that is good, and
every star that shines is a part of God, and I am something, no matter
how little, and that the infinite cannot exist without me, and that
therefore I am a part of the infinite. I admit that it takes a little
civilization to get to that point.

Now every nation has made a god, and every man that has made a god has
used himself for a pattern; and men have put into the mouth of their
god all their mistakes in astronomy, in geography, in philosophy, in
morality, and the god is never wiser or better than his creators. If
they believe in slavery, so did he; if they believe in eating human
flesh, he wanted his share; if they were polygamous, so was he; if they
were cruel, so was he. And just to the extent that man has become
civilized, he has civilized his god. You can hardly imagine the
progress that our God has made in four thousand years.

Four thousand years ago He was a barbarian; tonight He is quite an
educated gentleman. Four thousand years ago He believed in killing and
butchering little babes at the breasts of their mothers; He has
reformed. Four thousand years ago He did not believe in taking
prisoners of war. He said, kill the old men; mingle their blood with
the white hair. Kill the women. But what shall we do, O God, with the
maidens? Give them to satisfy the lust of the soldiers and of the
priests! If there is anywhere in the serene heaven a real God. I want
him to write in the book of His eternal remembrance, opposite my name,
that I deny that lie for Him.

Four thousand years ago our God was in favor of slavery; four thousand
years ago our God would have a man beaten to death with rugged rocks for
expressing his honest thought; four thousand years ago our God told the
husband to kill his wife if she disagreed with him upon the important
subject of religion; four thousand years ago our God was a monster;
and if He is any better now, it is simply because we have made Him so.
I am talking about the God of the Christian world. There may be, for
aught I know, upon the shore of the eternal vast, some being whose very
thought is the constellation of those numberless stars. I do not know;
but if there is he has never written a bible; he has never been in
favor of slavery; he has never advocated polygamy, and he never told
the murderer to sheathe his dagger in the dimpled breast of a babe. But
they say to me, our God has written a book. I am glad he did, and it is
by that book that I propose to judge them. I find in that book that it
was a crime to eat of the tree of knowledge. I find that the church has
always been the enemy of education, and I find that the church still
carries the flaming sword of ignorance and bigotry over the tree of
knowledge.

And if that story is true, ought we not after all to thank the devil?
He was the first school master; he was the first to whisper liberty in
our ears; he was the author of modesty. He was the author of ambition
and progress. And as for me, give me the storm and tempest of thought
and action rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith. Punish me
when and how you will, but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of
knowledge. And there is one peculiar thing I might as well speak of
here. While the world has made gods, it has also made devils; and as a
rule the devils have been better friends to man than the gods. It was
not a devil that drowned the world; it was not a devil that covered
with the multitudinous waves of an infinite sea the corpses of men,
women and children.

That was the good god. The devil never sent pestilence and famine; the
devil never starved women and children; that was the good God. The
meanest thing recorded of the devil is what happened concerning my
servant Job. According to that book God met the devil and said: "Where
have you been?" "Oh, been walking up and down." "Have you noticed my
man Job; nobody like him!" "Well, who wouldn't be; you have given him
everything; but take away what he has, and he will curse you to your
face." And so the devil went to work and tried it. It was a mean thing.
And that was all done to decide what you might call a wager on a
difference of opinion between the serene highnesses. He took away his
property, but Job didn't sin; and when God met the devil, he said:
"Well, what did I tell you, smarty?" "Ah," he said, "that is all very
well, but you touch his flesh and he will curse you; and he did, but
Job didn't curse him. And then what did God do to help him! He gave
him some other children better looking than the first ones. What kind
of an idea is that for a God to kill our children and then give us
better looking ones! If you have loved a child, I don't care if it is
deformed, if you have held it in your arms and covered its face with
kisses, you want that child back and no other.

I find in this bible that there was an old gentleman a little short of
the article of hair. And as he was going through the town a number of
little children cried out to him "Go up, thou bald head!" And this man
of God turned and cursed them. A real good-humored old fellow! And two
bears came out of the woods and tore in pieces forty-two children! How
did the bears get there? Elisha could not control the bears. Nobody but
God could control the bears in that way. Now just think of an infinite
God making a shining star, having his attention attracted by hearing
some children saying to an old gentlemen, "Go up, thou bald head!" and
then speaking to his secretary or somebody else, "Bring in a couple of
bears now!" What a magnificent God! What would the devil have done
under the same circumstances? And yet that is the God they want to put
into the constitution in order to make our children gentle and kind and
loving.

You hate a God like that. I do; I despise him. And yet little
children in the Sabbath-school are taught that infamous lie. Why, I have
very little respect for an old man that will get mad about such a thing,
anyway. What would the Christian world say of me if I should have a few
children torn to pieces if they should make that remark in my face?
What would the devil have done under the same circumstances? I tell
you, I cannot worship a God who is no better than the devil! I cannot
do it. And if you will just read the old testament with the bandage off
your eyes and the cloud of fear from your heart, you will come to the
conclusion that it was written not only by men, but by barbarians, by
savages, and that it is totally unworthy of a civilized age. I believe
in no God who believes in slavery. I will worship no God who ever said
that one of His children should own another of His children. But they
say to me, there must be a God somewhere! Well, I say I don't know.
There may be. I hope there is more than one--one is so lonesome. Just
think of an old bachelor, always alone! I want more than one. And they
say, somebody must have made this! Well, I say I don't know. But it
strikes me that the indestructible cannot be created. What would you
make it of? "Oh, nothing!" Well, it strikes me that nothing,
considered in the light of a raw material, is a decided failure. For my
part, I cannot conceive of force apart from matter, and I cannot
conceive of matter apart from force. I cannot conceive of force
somewhere without acting upon something; because force must be active,
or it is not force; and if it has no matter to act upon, it ceases to
be force. I cannot conceive of the smallest atom of matter staying
together without force. Beside, if some god made all this, there must
have been some morning when he commenced! And if he has existed always,
there is an eternity back of that when he never did anything; when he
lived in an infinite hole, without side, top or bottom! He did not
think, for there was nothing to think about. Certainly he did not
remember, for nothing had ever happened. Now I cannot conceive of this!
I do not say it is not so. I may be damned for my smartness, yet--I
simply say I cannot conceive of it, that is all. But men tell me, you
cannot conceive of eternity! That is just what I can conceive of. I
cannot conceive of its stopping. They say I cannot conceive of infinite
space! That is just what I can conceive of; because, let me imagine
all I can, my imagination will stand upon the verge and see infinite
space beyond. Infinite space is a necessity of the mind, because I
cannot think of enough matter to fill it. Eternity is a necessity of
the mind, because I cannot dream of the cessation of time. But they say
there is a design in the world, consequently there must be a designer.
Well, I don't know.