The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume V Part 31

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and enslaved. Hundreds and thousands of Germans, unable to find liberty at home, are coming to the United States.

I admit that England is a Christian country. Any doubts upon this point can be dispelled by reading her history--her career in India, what she has done in China, her treatment of Ireland, of the American Colonies, her att.i.tude during our Civil war; all these things show conclusively that England is a Christian nation.

Religion has filled Great Britain with war. The history of the Catholics, of the Episcopalians, of Cromwell--all the burnings, the maimings, the brand- ings, the imprisonments, the confiscations, the civil wars, the bigotry, the crime--show conclusively that Great Britain has enjoyed to the full the blessings of "our most holy religion."

Of course, Mr. Talmage claims the United States as a Christian country. The truth is, our country is not as Christian as it once was. When heretics were hanged in New England, when the laws of Virginia and Maryland provided that the tongue of any man who denied the doctrine of the Trinity should be bored with hot iron,, and that for the second offence he should suffer death, I admit that this country was

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Christian. When we engaged in the slave trade, when our flag protected piracy and murder in every sea, there is not the slightest doubt that the United States was a Christian country. When we believed in slavery, and when we deliberately stole the labor of four millions of people; when we sold women and babes, and when the people of the North enacted a law by virtue of which every Northern man was bound to turn hound and pursue a human being who was endeavoring to regain his liberty, I admit that the United States was a Christian nation.

I admit that all these things were upheld by the Bible --that the slave trader was justified by the Old Testa- ment, that the bloodhound was a kind of missionary in disguise, that the auction block was an altar, the slave pen a kind of church, and that the whipping- post was considered almost as sacred as the cross.

At that time, our country was a Christian nation.

I heard Frederick Dougla.s.s say that he lectured against slavery for twenty years before the doors of a single church were opened to him. In New England, hundreds of ministers were driven from their pulpits because they preached against the crime of human slavery. At that time, this country was a Christian nation.

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Only a few years ago, any man speaking in favor of the rights of man, endeavoring to break a chain from a human limb, was in danger of being mobbed by the Christians of this country. I admit that Dela- ware is still a Christian State. I heard a story about that State the other day.

About fifty years ago, an old Revolutionary soldier applied for a pension. He was asked his age, and he replied that he was fifty years old. He was told that if that was his age, he could not have been in the Revolutionary War, and consequently was not en- t.i.tled to any pension. He insisted, however, that he was only fifty years old. Again they told him that there must be some mistake. He was so wrinkled, so bowed, had so many marks of age, that he must certainly be more than fifty years old. "Well," said the old man, "if I must explain, I will: I lived forty "years in Delaware; but I never counted that time, "and I hope G.o.d won't."

The fact is, we have grown less and less Christian every year from 1620 until now, and the fact is that we have grown more and more civilized, more and more charitable, nearer and nearer just.

Mr. Talmage speaks as though all the people in what he calls the civilized world were Christians. Ad-

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mitting this to be true, I find that in these countries millions of men are educated, trained and drilled to kill their fellow Christians. I find Europe covered with forts to protect Christians from Christians, and the seas filled with men-of-war for the purpose of ravaging the coasts and destroying the cities of Chris- tian nations. These countries are filled with prisons, with workhouses, with jails and with toiling, ignorant and suffering millions. I find that Christians have invented most of the instruments of death, that Christians are the greatest soldiers, fighters, de- stroyers. I find that every Christian country is taxed to its utmost to support these soldiers; that every Christian nation is now groaning beneath the grievous burden of monstrous debt, and that nearly all these debts were contracted in waging war. These bonds, these millions, these almost incalculable amounts, were given to pay for shot and sh.e.l.l, for rifle and torpedo, for men-of-war, for forts and a.r.s.enals, and all the devilish enginery of death. I find that each of these nations prays to G.o.d to a.s.sist it as against all others; and when one nation has overrun, ravaged and pillaged another, it immediately returns thanks to the Almighty, and the ravaged and pillaged kneel and thank G.o.d that it is no worse.

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Mr. Talmage is welcome to all the evidence he can find in the history of what he is pleased to call the civilized nations of the world, tending to show the inspiration of the Bible.

And right here it may be well enough to say again, that the question of inspiration can not be settled by the votes of the superst.i.tious millions. It can not be affected by numbers. It must be decided by each human being for himself. If every man in this world, with one exception, believed the Bible to be the in- spired word of G.o.d, the man who was the exception could not lose his right to think, to investigate, and to judge for himself.

_Question_. You do not think, then, that any of the arguments brought forward by Mr. Talmage for the purpose of establis.h.i.+ng the inspiration of the Bible, are of any weight whatever?

_Answer_. I do not. I do not see how it is possible to make poorer, weaker or better arguments than he has made.

Of course, there can be no "evidence" of the in- spiration of the Scriptures. What is "inspiration"?

Did G.o.d use the prophets simply as instruments?

Did he put his thoughts in their minds, and use their

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hands to make a record? Probably few Christians will agree as to what they mean by "inspiration."

The general idea is, that the minds of the writers of the books of the Bible were controlled by the divine will in such a way that they expressed, independently of their own opinions, the thought of G.o.d. I believe it is admitted that G.o.d did not choose the exact words, and is not responsible for the punctuation or syntax.

It is hard to give any reason for claiming more for the Bible than is claimed by those who wrote it.

There is no claim of "inspiration" made by the writer of First and Second Kings. Not one word about the author having been "inspired" is found in the book of Job, or in Ruth, or in Chronicles, or in the Psalms, or Ecclesiastes, or in Solomon's Song, and nothing is said about the author of the book of Esther having been "inspired." Christians now say that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were "inspired" to write the four gospels, and yet neither Mark, nor Luke, nor John, nor Matthew claims to have been "inspired."

If they were "inspired," certainly they should have stated that fact. The very first thing stated in each of the gospels should have been a declaration by the writer that he had been "inspired," and that he was about to write the book under the guidance of G.o.d,

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and at the conclusion of each gospel there should have been a solemn statement that the writer had put down nothing of himself, but had in all things followed the direction and guidance of the divine will. The church now endeavors to establish the inspiration of the Bible by force, by social ostracism, and by attacking the reputation of every man who denies or doubts. In all Christian countries, they begin with the child in the cradle. Each infant is told by its mother, by its father, or by some of its relatives, that "the Bible is an inspired book." This pretended fact, by repet.i.tion "in season and out of "season," is finally burned and branded into the brain to such a degree that the child of average intelligence never outgrows the conviction that the Bible is, in some peculiar sense, an "inspired" book.

The question has to be settled for each generation.

The evidence is not sufficient, and the foundation of Christianity is perpetually insecure. Beneath this great religious fabric there is no rock. For eighteen centu- ries, hundreds and thousands and millions of people have been endeavoring to establish the fact that the Scriptures are inspired, and since the dawn of science, since the first star appeared in the night of the Middle Ages, until this moment, the number of

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people who have doubted the fact of inspiration has steadily increased. These doubts have not been born of ignorance, they have not been suggested by the unthinking. They have forced themselves upon the thoughtful, upon the educated, and now the ver- dict of the intellectual world is, that the Bible is not inspired. Notwithstanding the fact that the church has taken advantage of infancy, has endeavored to control education, has filled all primers and spelling- books and readers and text books with superst.i.tion-- feeding all minds with the miraculous and super- natural, the growth toward a belief in the natural and toward the rejection of the miraculous has been steady and st.u.r.dy since the sixteenth century. There has been, too, a moral growth, until many pa.s.sages in the Bible have become barbarous, inhuman and infamous. The Bible has remained the same, while the world has changed. In the light of physical and moral discovery, "the inspired volume" seems in many respects absurd. If the same progress is made in the next, as in the last, century, it is very easy to predict the place that will then be occupied by the Bible. By comparing long periods of time, it is easy to measure the advance of the human race. Com- pare the average sermon of to-day with the average

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sermon of one hundred years ago. Compare what ministers teach to-day with the creeds they profess to believe, and you will see the immense distance that even the church has traveled in the last century.

The Christians tell us that scientific men have made mistakes, and that there is very little certainty in the domain of human knowledge. This I admit.

The man who thought the world was flat, and who had a way of accounting for the movement of the heavenly bodies, had what he was pleased to call a philosophy. He was, in his way, a geologist and an astronomer. We admit that he was mistaken; but if we claimed that the first geologist and the first astronomer were inspired, it would not do for us to admit that any advance had been made, or that any errors of theirs had been corrected. We do not claim that the first scientists were inspired. We do not claim that the last are inspired. We admit that all scientific men are fallible. We admit that they do not know everything. We insist that they know but little, and that even in that little which they are sup- posed to know, there is the possibility of error. The first geologist said: "The earth is flat." Suppose that the geologists of to-day should insist that that man was inspired, and then endeavor to show that

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the word "flat," in the "Hebrew," did not mean quite flat, but just a little rounded; what would we think of their honesty? The first astronomer in- sisted that the sun and moon and stars revolved around this earth--that this little earth was the centre of the entire system. Suppose that the astronomers of to-day should insist that that astronomer was in- spired, and should try to explain, and say that he simply used the language of the common people, and when he stated that the sun and moon and stars re- volved around the earth, he merely meant that they "apparently revolved," and that the earth, in fact, turned over, would we consider them honest men?

You might as well say that the first painter was in- spired, or that the first sculptor had the a.s.sistance of G.o.d, as to say that the first writer, or the first book- maker, was divinely inspired. It is more probable that the modern geologist is inspired than that the an- cient one was, because the modern geologist is nearer right. It is more probable that William Lloyd Gar- rison was inspired upon the question of slavery than that Moses was. It is more probable that the author of the Declaration of Independence spoke by divine authority than that the author of the Pentateuch did.

In other words, if there can be any evidence of

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"inspiration," it must lie in the fact of doing or saying the best possible thing that could have been done or said at that time or upon that subject.

To make myself clear: The only possible evidence of "inspiration" would be perfection--a perfection ex- celling anything that man unaided had ever attained.

An "inspired" book should excel all other books; an inspired statue should be the best in this world; an in- spired painting should be beyond all others. If the Bible has been improved in any particular, it was not, in that particular, "inspired." If slavery is wrong, the Bible is not inspired. If polygamy is vile and loathsome, the Bible is not inspired. If wars of extermination are cruel and heartless, the Bible is not "inspired." If there is within that book a contradiction of any natural fact; if there is one ignorant falsehood, if there is one mistake, then it is not "inspired." I do not mean mistakes that have grown out of translations; but if there was in the original ma.n.u.script one mistake, then it is not "inspired." I do not demand a miracle; I do not demand a knowledge of the future; I simply demand an absolute knowledge of the past. I demand an ab- solute knowledge of the then present; I demand a knowledge of the const.i.tution of the human mind-- of the facts in nature, and that is all I demand.

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_Question_. If I understand you, you think that all political power should come from the people; do you not believe in any "special providence," and do you take the ground that G.o.d does not interest himself in the affairs of nations and individuals?

_Answer_. The Christian idea is that G.o.d made the world, and made certain laws for the government of matter and mind, and that he never interferes except upon special occasions, when the ordinary laws fail to work out the desired end. Their notion is, that the Lord now and then stops the horses simply to show that he is driving. It seems to me that if an infinitely wise being made the world, he must have made it the best possible; and that if he made laws for the government of matter and mind, he must have made the best possible laws. If this is true, not one of these laws can be violated without producing a posi- tive injury. It does not seem probable that infinite wisdom would violate a law that infinite wisdom had made.

Most ministers insist that G.o.d now and then in- terferes in the affairs of this world; that he has not interfered as much lately as he did formerly. When the world was comparatively new, it required alto- gether more tinkering and fixing than at present.

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Things are at last in a reasonably good condition, and consequently a great amount of interference is not necessary. In old times it was found necessary fre- quently to raise the dead, to change the nature of fire and water, to punish people with plagues and famine, to destroy cities by storms of fire and brimstone, to change women into salt, to cast hailstones upon heathen, to interfere with the movements of our planetary system, to stop the earth not only, but sometimes to make it turn the other way, to arrest the moon, and to make water stand up like a wall.

Now and then, rivers were divided by striking them with a coat, and people were taken to heaven in chariots of fire. These miracles, in addition to curing the sick, the halt, the deaf and blind, were in former times found necessary, but since the "apostolic age,"

nothing of the kind has been resorted to except in Catholic countries. Since the death of the last apostle, G.o.d has appeared only to members of the Catholic Church, and all modern miracles have been performed for the benefit of Catholicism. There is no authentic account of the Virgin Mary having ever appeared to a Protestant. The bones of Protestant saints have never cured a solitary disease. Protest- ants now say that the testimony of the Catholics can

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