No human being has imagination enough to conceive of this infinite
horror.
All that the human race has suffered in war and want, in pestilence
and famine, in fire and flood--all the pangs and pains of every
disease and every death--all this is as nothing compared with the
agonies to be endured by one lost soul.
This is the consolation of the Christian religion. This is the
justice of God--the mercy of Christ.
This frightful dogma, this infinite lie, made me the implacable
enemy of Christianity. The truth is that this belief in eternal
pain has been the real persecutor. It founded the Inquisition,
forged the chains, and furnished the fagots. It has darkened the
lives of many millions. It made the cradle as terrible as the
coffin. It enslaved nations and shed the blood of countless
thousands. It sacrificed the wisest, the bravest and the best. It
subverted the idea of justice, drove mercy from the heart, changed
men to fiends, and banished reason from the brain.
Like a venomous serpent it crawls and coils and hisses in every
orthodox creed.
It makes man an eternal victim and God an eternal fiend. It is the
one infinite horror. Every church in which it is taught is a public
curse. Every preacher who teaches it is an enemy of mankind. Below
this Christian dogma, savagery can not go. It is the infinite of
malice, hatred and revenge.
Nothing could add to the horror of hell, except the presence of its
creator, God.
While I have life, as long as I draw breath, I shall deny with all
my strength, and hate with every drop of my blood, this infinite
lie.
Nothing gives me greater joy than to know that this belief in
eternal pain is growing weaker every day--that thousands of
ministers are ashamed of it. It gives me joy to know that
Christians are becoming merciful, so merciful that the fires of
hell are burning low--flickering, choked with ashes, destined in a
few years to die out forever.
For centuries Christendom was a madhouse. Popes, cardinals,
bishops, priests, monks and heretics were all insane.
Only a few--four or five in a century--were sound in heart and
brain. Only a few, in spite of the roar and din, in spite of the
savage cries, heard Reason's voice. Only a few, in the wild rage of
ignorance, fear and zeal, preserved the perfect calm that wisdom
gives.
We have advanced. In a few years the Christians will become humane
and sensible enough to deny the dogma that fills the endless years
with pain.
* * * * *
The world is getting better. We are gradually growing honest, and men
everywhere, even in the pulpit, are acknowledging they do not know all
about things. There was little hope for the race so long as an
individual was disgraced if he did not pretend to believe a thing at
which his reason revolted. We are simplifying life--simplifying truth.
The man who serves his fellowmen best is he who simplifies. The learned
man used to be the one who muddled things, who scrambled thought, who
took reason away, and instead, thrust upon us faith, with a threat of
punishment if we did not accept it, and an offer of reward if we did.
We have now discovered that the so-called learned man had no authority,
either for his threat of punishment or his offer of reward. Hypocrisy
will not now pass current, and sincerity, frozen stiff with fright, is
no longer legal tender for truth. In the frank acknowledgment of
ignorance there is much promise. The man who does not know, and is not
afraid to say so, is in the line of evolution. But for the head that is
packed with falsehood and the heart that is faint with fear, there is no
hope. That head must be unloaded of its lumber, and the heart given
courage before the march of progress can begin.
Now, let us be frank, and let us be honest, just for a few moments. Let
us acknowledge that this revolution in thought that has occurred during
the last twenty-five years was brought about mainly by one individual.
The world was ripe for this man's utterance, otherwise he would not have
gotten the speaker's eye. A hundred years before we would have snuffed
him out in contumely and disgrace. But men listened to him and paid high
for the privilege. And those who hated this man and feared him most,
went, too, to listen, so as to answer him and thereby keep the planet
from swinging out of its orbit and sweeping on to destruction.
Wherever this man spoke, in towns and cities or country, for weeks the
air was heavy with the smoke of rhetoric, and reasons, soggy and solid,
and fuzzy logic and muddy proof were dragged like siege-guns to the
defense.
They dared the man to come back and fight it out. The clouds were
charged with challenges, and the prophecy was made and made again that
never in the same place could this man go back and get a second hearing.
Yet he did go back year after year, and crowds hung upon his utterances
and laughed with him at the scarecrow that had once filled their
day-dreams, made the nights hideous, and the future black with terror.
Through his influence the tears of pity put out the fires of hell; and
he literally laughed the devil out of court. This man, more than any
other man of his century, made the clergy free. He raised the standard
of intelligence in both pew and pulpit, and the preachers who denounced
him most, often were, and are, the most benefited by his work.
This man was Robert G. Ingersoll.
On the urn that encloses his ashes should be these words: Liberator of
Men. When he gave his lecture on "The Gods" at Cooper Union, New York
City, in Eighteen Hundred Seventy-two, he fired a shot heard 'round the
world.
It was the boldest, strongest, and most vivid utterance of the century.
At once it was recognized that the thinking world had to deal with a man
of power. Efforts were made in dozens of places to bring statute law to
bear upon him, and the State of Delaware held her whipping-post in
readiness for his benefit; but blasphemy enactments and laws for the
protection of the Unknown were inoperative in his gracious presence.
Ingersoll was a hard hitter, but the splendid good nature of the man,
his freedom from all personal malice, and his unsullied character, saved
him, in those early days, from the violence that would surely have
overtaken a smaller person.
The people who now seek to disparage the name and fame of Ingersoll
dwell on the things he was not, and give small credit for that which he
was.
They demand infinity and perfection, not quite willing yet to
acknowledge that perfection has never been incorporated in a single
soul.
Let us acknowledge freely that Ingersoll was not a pioneer in science.
Let us admit, for argument's sake, that Rousseau, Voltaire, Paine and
Renan voiced every argument that he put forth. Let us grant that he was
often the pleader, and that the lawyer habit of painting his own side
large, never quite forsook him, and that he was swayed more by his
feelings than by his intellect. Let us further admit that in his own
individual case there was small evolution, and that for thirty years he
threshed the same straw. And these things being said and admitted,
nothing more in truth can be said against the man.
But these points are neither to his discredit nor his disgrace. On them
you can not construct an indictment--they mark his limitations, that is
all.
Ingersoll gave superstition such a jolt that the consensus of
intelligence has counted it out. Ingersoll did not destroy the good--all
that is vital and excellent and worthy in religion we have yet, and in
such measure as it never existed before.
In every so-called "Orthodox" pulpit you can now hear sermons calling
upon men to manifest their religion in their work; to show their love
for God in their attitude toward men; to gain the kingdom of heaven by
having the kingdom of heaven in their own hearts.
Ingersoll pleaded for the criminal, the weak, the defenseless and the
depraved. Our treatment toward all these has changed marvelously within
a decade. When we ceased to believe that God was going to damn folks,
we left off damning them ourselves. We think better now of God and we
think better of men and women. Who dares now talk about the "hopelessly
lost"?
You can not afford to indict a man who practised every so-called
Christian virtue, simply because there was a flaw or two in his
"belief"--the world has gotten beyond that. Everybody now admits that
Ingersoll was quite as good a man as those who denounced him most. His
life was full of kind deeds and generous acts, and his daily walk was
quite as blameless as the life of the average priest and preacher.
Those who seek to cry Ingersoll down reveal either density or malice. He
did a great and necessary work, and did it so thoroughly and well that
it will never have to be done again. His mission was to liberalize and
to Christianize every church in Christendom; and no denomination, be its
creed never so ossified, stands now where it stood before Ingersoll
began his crusade. He shamed men into sanity.
Ingersoll uttered in clarion tones what thousands of men and women
believed, but dared not voice. He was the spokesman for many of the best
thinkers of his time. He abolished fear, gave courage in place of
cringing doubt, and lived what he believed was truth. His was a brave,
cheerful and kindly life. He was loved most by those who knew him best,
for in his nature there was neither duplicity nor concealment. He had
nothing to hide. We know and acknowledge the man's limitations, yet we
realize his worth: his influence in the cause of simplicity and honesty
has been priceless.
The dust of conflict has not yet settled; prejudice still is in the air;
but time, the great adjuster, will give Ingersoll his due. The history
of America's thought evolution can never be written and the name of
Ingersoll left out. In his own splendid personality he had no rivals, no
competitors. He stands alone; and no name in liberal thought can ever
eclipse his. He prepared the way for the thinkers and the doers who
shall come after, and in insight surpass him, reaching spiritual heights
which he, perhaps, could never attain.
This earth is a better place, and life and liberty are safer, because
Robert G. Ingersoll lived.
The last words of Ingersoll were, by a strange coincidence, the dying
words of his brother Ebon: "I am better!"--words of hope, words of
assurance to the woman he loved.
Sane to the last! And let us, too, hope that these dear words are true
of all the countless dead.