Ladies and Gentlemen:--I am glad that I have lived long enough to see
one gentleman in the pulpit brave enough to say that God would not be
offended at one who speaks according to the dictates of his conscience;
who does not believe that God will give wings to a bird, and then damn
the bird for flying. I thank the pastor and I thank the church for
allowing its pastor to be so brave.
I admit that thousands and thousands of church people, with their
pastors and the deacons, are today advocating religious principles that
they deem right and good. I honor these men, but I do not believe that
their method is a good one. I do not want these people to forgive me
for the views I entertain, but I want them so to act that I will not
have to forgive them. I am the friend of every one who preaches the
gospel of absolute intellectual liberty, and that man is my friend.
Is there a God who says that if man does so and so He will damn him?
Can there be such a fiend? I am not responsible to man unless I injure
him; nor to God unless I injure Him, but one cannot injure God, for "He
is infinite."
When I was young I was told that the bible was inspired, written by
God, that even the lids of the book were inspired. They say He is a
personal God; if so, He has not revealed Himself to me. There may be
many gods. As I look around I see that justice does not prevail, that
innocence is not always effectual and a perfect shield. If there be a
God these things could not be. If God made us all, why did He not make
us all equally well. He had the power of an infinite god. Why did God
people the earth with so many idiots? I admit that orthodoxy could not
exist without them, but why did God make them? If we believe the bible
then He should have made us all idiots, for the orthodox Christian says
the idiots will not be damned, simply transplanted, while the sensible
man, who believeth not, will be sent to eternal damnation? If there is
any God that made us, what right had He to make idiots? Is a man with
a head like a pin under any obligation to thank God? Is the black man,
born in slavery, under any obligation to thank God for his badge of
servitude?
What kind of a God is it that will allow men and women to be put in
dungeons and chains simply because they loved Him and prayed to Him?
And what kind of a God is it that will allow such men and women to be
burned at the stake? If God won't love such men and women, then under
what circumstances will he love?
Famine stalks over the land and millions die, not only the bad but the
good, and there in the heavens above sits an infinite God who can do
anything, can change the rocks and the stones, and yet these millions
die. I do not say there is no God, but I do ask, what is God doing?
Look at the agony, and wretchedness and woe all over the land. Is
there goodness, is there mercy in this? I do not say there is not, but
I want to know, and I want to know if a man is to be damned for asking
the question?
(He eloquently recited the agonies that clustered around the French
Bastille, where great men and heroic women suffered and died for loving
liberty, and said: If there is a God, I think that one word, Bastille,
would bring the blush of shame to His face.)
I find that the men who have received revelation are the worst; and
that where the bible goes there go the sword and the fagot. If an
infinite God makes a revelation to me He knows how I will understand
it. If God wrote the bible he knew that no two people would understand
it alike.
When I read the bible I found that God in His infinite wisdom couldn't
control the people He had created and that He had to drown them. If I
had infinite power and couldn't make a people that I could control and
had to drown them, why I'd resign.
Then I read in the bible such cruel things, and I do not believe that
God can be cruel. Such cruelty may make one afraid, but cannot inspire
love. I can't love a god that will inflict pain and sorrow, and I
won't.
The preachers say all unbelievers will go to hell--tidings of great
joy. When I confront them they--say I'm taking away their consolation.
The old bible does not mention hell or heaven. Now God should have
notified Adam and Cain of hell, but He didn't. When He came to drown
all those people He didn't tell a single one that He would drown him.
He talked all about water--nothing about fire. When He came down on
Mount Sinai, and told Moses how to cut out clothes for a priest, He
never said one word on the subject. When God gave Moses the ten
commandments, engraved on stone, there He said not one word about hell.
There was plenty of room on the stone; why did He not add: "If you
don't keep these commandments you will be damned." Through all these
ages, when God was talking all the time, and when every howling prophet
had His ear, not one word did He utter of hell or heaven. For 4,000
years God got along without mentioning those places or even hinting of
them. It seems to me that we ought to have been notified by Him.
(Here the orator recalled many stories from the old bible and subjected
them to keen irony and ridicule. Reciting the story wherein the she
bears came out of the woods and tore to pieces the forty children who
mocked the prophet, he asked: If God did that, what would the devil
have done under the same circumstances? Why; he said, did not God give
a sure cure for leprosy, unless He wanted to have His chosen people to
have that frightful disease?)
Do you believe that God ever told a widow if her brother-in-law refused
to marry her to spit in his face? Do you believe any such nonsense
from a god? I call that courting under difficulties. (Then Colonel
Ingersoll dwelt pathetically on the sweet, innocent babes eaten up by
the lions in the den, after Daniel was rescued from their jaws, and
asked the question, what kind of a god was it that allowed such
horrible deeds?)
They say that I pick out all the bad things in the bible. Well, God
ought not to have put bad things in the book. If you only read the
bible you will not believe it. Why, it is such a bad book that it has
to be supported by legislation. In Maine and elsewhere they will send
you to jail for two years if you deny the bible or the judgment day.
No, we are told we must not only believe in the God we have been
talking about, but must also believe in another one.
Let us look at the church today. The orthodox church--that is, all but
the Universalist. He is trying to be orthodox, but he can't get in.
The God of the Universalists, to say the least, is a gentleman.
Now, what is this religion? To believe certain things that we may be
saved, that we won't be damned. What are they? First, that the old and
new testament are inspired. No matter how kind, how just a man may be,
unless he believes in the inspiration, he will be damned.
Second, he must believe in the trinity. That there are three in one.
That father and son are precisely of the same age, the son, possibly, a
little mite older; that three times one is one, and that once one is
three. It is a mercy you don't know how to understand it, but you must
believe it or be damned. Therein you see the mercy of the Lord. This
trinity doctrine was announced several hundred years after Christ was
born: Do you believe such a doctrine will make a man good or honest?
Will it make him more just? Is the man that believes any better than
the man who does not believe? How is it with nations? Look at Spain,
the last slave-holder in the civilized world; she's christian, she
believes in the trinity! And Italy, the beggar of the world. Under the
rule of priestcraft money streamed in from every land and yet she did
not advance. Today she is reduced to a hand-organ. Take poor Ireland,
groaning under the heel of British oppression; could she cast off her
priests she would soon be one with America in freedom.
Protestantism is better than Catholicism, because there is less of it.
Both dread education. They say they brought the arts and sciences out
of the dark ages; why, they made the dark ages and what did they
preserve? Nothing of value, only an account of events that never
happened. What did they teach the world! Slavery!
The best country the sun ever shown upon is the northern part of the
United States, and there you will find less religion than anywhere else
on the face of the earth. You will find here more people that don't
believe the bible, and you will find better husbands, better wives,
happier homes, where the women are most respected and where the
children get less blows and more huggings and kissings. We have
improved just as we lost this religion and this superstition.
Great Britain is the religious nation par excellence, and there you
will find the most cant and most hypocrisy. They are always thanking
God that they have killed somebody. Look at the opium war with China.
They forced the Chinese to open their ports and receive the deadly
drug, and then had the impudence to send a lot of driveling idiots of
missionaries into China.
Go around the world, and where you find the least superstition, there
you will find the best men, the best women, the best children. Two
powerful levers are at work; love and intelligence. The true test of a
man is generosity, that covers a multitude of sins.
They have got so now they damn a man on a technicality. You must be
baptized by immersion, sprinkling or pouring. If you come to the day
of judgment and can't show the watermark, you're damned!
What more: That a fellow named Adam, whom you don't know and never
voted for, is your representative. You are charged with his sins.
Equally abused is the doctrine of atonement, that you are created with
the sacrifice of another. If Christ had more virtue than Adam had
meanness, then you are ahead.
Atonement is the corner-stone of the Christian religion. But there is
one great objection. It saves the wrong man, and it is not honest.
(In holding up the atonement to ridicule the orator said: "If Judas
had failed to betray Christ, the mother of Christ would be in hell
today." Then he ridiculed the miracles recorded in the new testament,
pronounced them absurdities. He said that the four apostolic writers
were very contradictory in their statements, and did not even agree as
to the last word of this great man.)
The ascension was the most striking, the grandest of the miracles, if
true, yet the ascension is only recorded by two of these writers. If
He was God, I know he will forgive somebody for not believing the
miracles, unless convinced.
Another contradiction in the book: in one gospel the condition of
salvation is "whosoever believeth shall not be damned," and in another
we are promised that if we forgive our enemies God will forgive us--and
there's sense in this last promise. The first I believe a lie--it was
never spoken by God.
Christ said: Love your enemies. Nobody can do that. The doctrine of
Confucius is sound--to love one's friends and to do justice to one's
enemies without any mixture of revenge.
If Christ was God, did He not know on His cross what crimes would be
done in His name? Why didn't He settle all disputes about the trinity
and about baptism? Why didn't He post His disciples? Because He could
no more see into the future than I can. Only in this way can you
acquit him of the crimes committed in His name. The way to save our own
souls is to save another soul. God can't turn into hell a man who
makes on this earth a little heaven for himself, wife and babes.
Any minister who preaches the doctrine of hell ought to be ashamed. I
want, if I can while I live, to put an end to all belief in this
infamous doctrine. That doctrine has done incalculable harm, wrought
incalculable injury. I despise it, and I defy it.
The orthodox church says that religion does good; that it restrains
crime. It restrains a man from artificial, not from natural crimes. A
man can be made so religious that he will not eat meat on Friday, yet
he will steal.
Did you ever hear of a tramp coming to town and inquiring where the
deacon of the Presbyterian church lived.
The bible says consider the lilies. What good would it do a naked man
standing out in the bitter blasts of this night to consider the lilies.
What is the social position of a man in heaven who through all eternity
remembers that if he had had a grain of courage he would never have
been there.
The realization of our day does not satisfy the intelligence of the
people--the people have outgrown it. It shocks us and we have got to
have another religion. We must have a religion of charity; one that
will do away with poverty, close the prisons and cover this world with
homes.