While Ingersoll was still living, in answer to an inquiry by some of
his students as to whether the arguments of Ingersoll are unanswerable,
a college president answered them in the _Andover Review_ as
follows:
An infidel is an abnormal growth, and nature feels funny once in
a while and creates a freak, _e.g._, the living skeleton;
the fat woman, the two-headed girl. So there is about one
infidel to a million sane men. The most of these noisy fellows
are amateur infidels. They talk Ingersoll in fair weather and
pray themselves hoarse every time it thunders. A well-developed
case of cholera morbus will knock their infidelity out of them,
and leave them in a cold sweat like a china dog in an ice-house.
I know them. The most of them are like the boy who runs away
from home, and comes back to stay with his father nights. Then,
again, boys, take a look around you when you invest another
fifty cents to hear Ingersoll talk on “liberty,” and compare the
crowd with the kind of people you find in almost any church.
Is it the odor of sanctity you smell? Hardly, boys, hardly.
But you can eat peanuts there, and choke on the shells, while
you applaud the funny jokes about heaven where you know in
your hearts your dear mother is; or hear the humble Nazarene
ridiculed, who, you think, and always will think, gave a home to
your weary old father when he left the earth.
(1602)