Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen>: At this late hour, I could not
attempt--even if I would--the eloquence of my friend Colonel Ingersoll;
nor the wit and rapier-like sarcasm of my other valued friend Mr.
Coudert. But there are some things so serious about this subject that
we discuss to-night, that I crave your pardon if, without preface, and
without rhetoric, I get at once to what from my Protestant standpoint
seems the fatal logical error of Mr. Inger-soll's position.
Mr. Ingersoll starts with the statement--and that I may not, for I could
not, do him injustice, nor myself injustice, in the quotation, I will
give it as he stated it--he starts with this statement: that thought is
a necessary natural product, the result of what we call impressions made
through the medium of the senses upon the brain.
Do you think that is thought? Now stop--turn right into your own
minds--is that thought? Does not will power take hold? Does not reason
take hold? Does not memory take hold, and is not thought the action of
the brain based upon the impression and assisted or directed by manifold
and varying influences?
Secondly, our friend Mr. Ingersoll says that no human being is
accountable to any being, human or divine, for his thought.
He starts with the assumption that thought is the inevitable impression
burnt upon the mind at once, and then jumps to the conclusion that there
is no responsibility. Now, is not that a fair logical analysis of what
he has said?
My senses leave upon my mind an impression, and then my mind, out
of that impression, works good or evil. The glass of brandy, being
presented to my physical sense, inspires thirst--inspires the thought
of thirst--inspires the instinct of debauchery. Am I not accountable for
the result of the mind given me, whether I yield to the debauch, or rise
to the dignity of self-control?
Every thing of sense leaves its impression upon the mind. If there be no
responsibility anywhere, then is this world blind chance. If there be
no responsibility anywhere, then my friend deserves no credit if he
be guiding you in the path of truth, and I deserve no censure if I be
carrying you back into the path of superstition. Why, admit for a moment
that a man has no control over his thought, and you destroy absolutely
the power of regenerating the world, the power of improving the world.
The world swings one way, or it swings the other. If it be true that in
all these ages we have come nearer and nearer to a perfect liberty, that
is true simply and alone because the mind of man through reason, through
memory, through a thousand inspirations and desires and hopes, has ever
tended toward better results and higher achievements.
No accountability? I speak not for my friend, but I recognize that I
am accountable to myself; I recognize that whether I rise or fall, that
whether my life goes upward or downward, I am responsible to myself. And
so, in spite of all sophistry, so in spite of all dream, so in spite
of all eloquence, each woman, each man within this audience is
responsible--first of all to herself and himself--whether when bad
thoughts, when passion, when murder, when evil come into the heart or
brain he harbors them there or he casts them out.
I am responsible further--I am responsible to my neighbor. I know that I
am my neighbor's keeper, I know that as I touch your life, as you touch
mine, I am responsible every moment, every hour, every day, for my
influence upon you. I am either helping you up, or I am dragging you
down; you are either helping me up or you are dragging me down--and you
know it. Sophistry cannot get away from this; eloquence cannot seduce us
from it. You know that if you look back through the record of your life,
there are lives that you have helped and lives that you have hurt. You
know that there are lives on the downward plane that went down because
in an evil hour you pushed them; you know, perhaps with blessing, lives
that have gone up because you have reached out to them a helping
hand. That responsibility for your neighbor is a responsibility and an
accountability that you and I cannot avoid or evade.
I believe one thing further: that because there is a creation there is a
Creator. I believe that because there is force, there is a Projector of
force; because there is matter, there is spirit. I reverently believe
these things. I am not angry with my neighbor because he does not; it
may be that he is right, that I am wrong; but if there be a Power
that sent me into this world, so far as that Power has given me wrong
direction, or permitted wrong direction, that Power will judge me
justly. So far as I disregard the light that I have, whatever it
may be--whether it br light of reason, light of conscience, light of
history--so far as I do that which my judgment tells me is wrong, I am
responsible and I am accountable.
Now the Protestant theory, as I understand it, is simply this: It would
vary from the theory as taught by the mother church--it certainly swings
far away from the theory as suggested by my friend; I understand the
Protestant theory to be this: That every man is responsible to himself,
to his neighbor, and to his God, for his thought. Not for the first
impression--but for that impression, for that direction and result which
he intelligently gives to the first impression or deduces from it. I
understand that the Protestant idea is this: that man may think--we know
he will think--for himself; but that he is responsible for it. That a
man may speak his thought, so long as he does not hurt his neighbor. He
must use his own liberty so that he shall not injure the well-being of
any other one--so that when using this liberty, when exercising this
freedom, he is accountable at the last to his God. And so Protestantism
sends me into the world with this terrible and solemn responsibility.
It leaves Mr. Ingersoll free to speak his thought at the bar of his
conscience, before the bar of his fellow-man, but it holds him in the
inevitable grip of absolute responsibility for every light word idly
spoken.
God grant that he may use that power so that he can face that
responsibility at the last!
It leaves to every churchman liberty to believe and stand by his church
according to his own conviction.
It stands for this; the absolute liberty of each individual man to
think, to write, to speak, to act, according to the best light within
him; limited as to his fellows, by the condition that he shall not use
that liberty so as to injure them; limited in the other direction, by
those tremendous laws which are laws in spite of all rhetoric, and in
spite of all logic.
If I put my finger into the fire, that fire burns. If I do a wrong, that
wrong remains. If I hurt my neighbor, the wrong reacts upon myself. If
I would try to escape what you call judgment, what you call penalty, I
cannot escape the working of the inevitable-law that follows a cause by
effect; I cannot escape that inevitable law--not the creation of
some dark monster flashing through the skies--but, as I believe, the
beneficent creation which puts into the spiritual life the same control
of law that guides the material life, which wisely makes me responsible,
that in the solemnity of that responsibility I am bound to lift my
brother up and never to drag my brother down.