We must judge people somewhat by their creeds. Mr. Talmage is a
Calvinist, and he therefore regards every human being who has been born
only once as totally depraved. He thinks that God never made a single
creature that didn't deserve to be damned the minute He finished him.
So every one who opposes Mr. Talmage is infamous. The generosity of an
agnostic is meanness, his honesty is larceny and his love is hate.
Talmage is a consistent follower of Calvin and Knox, and a consistent
worshiper of the Jehovah of the ancient Jews. I oppose not him, but
his creed, because it tends to crush out the natural tendencies in men
to joyousness and goodness. There is something good in every human
being, and there is something bad. There are no perfect saints and no
totally bad persons. There is the seed of goodness in every human
heart and the capacity for improvement in every human soul. Isn't it
possible for a man who acts like Christ to be saved, whatever be his
belief? Cannot a soul be infinitely generous? And can any God damn
such a soul? If Mr. Talmage's creed be true, nearly all the great and
glorious men of the past are burning today. If it be true, the
greatest man England has produced in 100 years is in hell. The world
is poorer since I spoke here last, for Darwin has passed away. He was
a true child of nature--one who knew more about his mother than any
other child she had. Yet he was not a Calvinist. He did not get his
inspiration from any book, but from every star in the heavens, from the
insect in the sunbeam, from the flowers in the meadows, and from the
everlasting rocks.
If the doctrine of the Calvinists is true, what right had any one to
ask an unbeliever to fight for his country in the civil war? What right
has a believer to buy an unbelieving substitute, when some day he will
look over the edge of heaven, and pointing downward, would say to a
friend, "that is my substitute blistering there"?
Mr. Talmage says that my mind is poisoned, and that the reason why all
infidels' minds are poisoned is that they don't believe the Jew bible.
Let us see whether it is worth believing. I deny that an infinitely
merciful God would protect slavery or would uphold polygamy, which
pollutes the sweetest words in language. I will not believe that God
told men to exterminate their fellow-men, to plunge the sword into
women's breasts and into the hearts of tender babes. I am opposed to
the Jew bible because it is bad. I don't deny that there are many good
passages in it, nor that among all the thorns there are some roses. I
admit that many Christians are doing all they can to idealize the
frightful things in the old testament. It is the protest of human
nature. Now, they tell me that this book is inspired. Let us see what
inspired means. If it means anything, it is that the thoughts of God,
through the instrumentality of men, constitute this Jew bible, and that
these thoughts were written. Now just suppose that some voice
whispered in your ear, how would you know it was God's? How did these
gentlemen of old know it was God who was talking to them? If anyone
now told you that God whispered in his ear, you wouldn't believe him.
Why? Because you know him. Why are we asked to believe those ancient
gentlemen? Because we don't know them. Another reason, according to
Mr. Talmage, why the Jew bible is inspired, is that prophecies in it
have been fulfilled. How do we know that the prophecies were not
fulfilled before they were written? They are so vague that you can't
tell what was prophesied. If you will read the Jew bible carefully,
you will see that there was not a line, not a word, prophesying the
coming of Christ. Catholics were right in saying that if the Jew bible
was to be kept in awe it must be kept from the people. Protestants are
wrong in letting the people read it.
Another argument of Mr. Talmage for the inspiration of the bible is
that the Jews have been kept as a wandering, persecuted race to fulfill
the prophecies of the old testament. I don't believe an infinitely
merciful God would persecute a race for thousands of years to use them
as witnesses. Christian hate has not allowed the Jews to earn a
[living?] or at least to practice a profession, and now, by a kind of
poetic justice, the Jews control the money of the world. Emperors go
to their bankers with hats in hand and beg them to discount their
notes. This is because God has cursed the Jews. Only a little while
ago Christians have robbed Hebrews, stripped them naked, turned them
into the streets, and pointed to them as a fulfillment of divine
prophecy. If you want to know the difference between some Jews and
some Christians compare the address of Felix Adler with the sermon of
the Rev. Dr. Talmage. Mr. Talmage thinks that the light of every
burning Jewish home in Russia throws light upon the gospel. Every
wound in a Jewish breast is to him a mouth to proclaim the divine
inspiration of the bible. Every Jewish maiden violated is another
fulfillment of God's holy word. What do these horrid persecutions
prove, except the barbarity of Christians? Next it is said that martyrs
prove the truth of the bible. Mr. Talmage affirms that no man ever
died cheerfully for a lie. Why, men have gone cheerfully to their
death for believing that a wafer was God's flesh. Thousands have died
for their belief in Mohammed. Men have died because they believed in
immersion. Either Mr. Talmage is a Catholic, a Mohammedan, a Baptist,
or else he believes that these thousands died for lies. Every religion
has had its martyrs, and every religion cannot be true. Then it is
said that miracles prove the inspiration of the bible. But it is
impossible by the human senses to establish a violation of nature's
laws. When the Hebrews threw down sticks before Pharaoh, and they
became snakes, did he believe? No; because he was there. After the
Jews had been lead through the desert and had been fed with bread
rained from heaven, had been clothed in indestructible pantaloons, and
had quenched their thirst with water that followed them over mountains
and through sands; when they saw Jehovah wrapped in the smoke of Sinai
they still had more faith in a calf that they could make than anything
Jehovah could give them. It was so with the miracles of Christ. Not
twenty people were converted by one of them. In fact, human testimony
cannot substantiate a miracle. Take the miracle about the bears which
ate the children who laughed at the bald-headed old prophet. What do
you suppose Mr. Talmage would say that meant? Why, first, that
children ought to respect preachers, and second, that God is kind to
animals. Nearly every miracle in the old testament is wrought in the
interest of slavery, polygamy, creed or lust. I wish by denying them
to rescue the reputation of Jehovah from the assaults of the bible.
Who are the witnesses to the truth of the narratives of the Jews'
bible? Eusebius was one. He lived in the reign of Constantine, and
said that the tracks of Pharaoh's chariots could be seen--perfectly
preserved in the sands of the Red sea. He was the man who forged the
passage in Josephus which speaks about the coming of Christ. Good
witness, isn't he. Another one was Polycarp. We don't know much about
him. He suffered martyrdom in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, and when
the fire wouldn't burn and he looked like gold through it, a heathen
was so mad about it that he ran his sword through Polycarp. The blood
gushed out and quenched the fire, while the martyr's soul flew up to
heaven in the form of a dove. And that's all we know about Polycarp.
To know how much reliance should be placed upon the judgment of such
trustworthy witnesses, we should look at what some of their beliefs
were. They thought that the world was flat; that the phoenix story was
true; that the stars had souls and sinned; and one said there were four
gospels because there were four winds and four corners of the earth.
He might have added that it was also because a donkey has four legs.
So far as the argument drawn from the sufferings of the martyrs is
concerned, the speaker said that thousands upon thousands of men had
died as cheerfully in defense of the koran as Christians had died in
defense of the bible. Their heroic suffering simply proved that they
were sinners in their beliefs, not that those beliefs were true. This
argument, as advanced by Mr. Talmage, proves too much. Every religion
on the face of the globe has had its martyrs, but all religions cannot
be true. Men do die cheerfully for falsehoods when they believe them
to be true.
[The question of miracles was discussed at some length, and Col.
Ingersoll declared it was impossible to establish by any human evidence
that a miracle had ever been performed.]
Pharaoh was not convinced by the alleged miracle performed by Aaron, of
turning a stick into a serpent. Why? Because he was there, and no
such miracle was ever done. No twenty people were convinced by the
reported miracles of Christ, and yet people of the nineteenth century
were coolly asked to be convinced on hearsay by miracles which those
who are supposed to have seen them refuse to credit. It won't do. The
laws of nature never have been interrupted, and they never will be.
All the books in the universe will never convince a thinking man that
miracles have been performed.
[The lecture was sprinkled throughout with the satirical wit for which
Col. Ingersoll is famous, and concluded by the enumeration of a long
list of "unscientific" facts and events recorded in the bible.]