An Open Letter to Robert G. Ingersoll.
Dear Sir: I am glad that I know you, even though some of my brethren
look upon you as a monster because of your unbelief. I shall never
forget the long evening I spent at your house in Washington; and in what
I have to say, however it may fail to convince you, I trust you
will feel that I have not shown myself unworthy of your courtesy or
confidence.
Your conversation, then and at other times, interested me greatly. I
recognized at once the elements of your power over large audiences, in
your wit and dramatic talent--personating characters and imitating tones
of voice and expressions of countenance--and your remarkable use of
language, which even in familiar talk often rose to a high degree of
eloquence. All this was a keen intellectual stimulus. I was, for the
most part, a listener; but as we talked freely of religious matters, I
protested against your unbelief as utterly without reason. Yet there
was no offence given or taken, and we parted, I trust, with a feeling of
mutual respect.
Still further, we found many points of sympathy. I do not hesitate to
say that there are many things in which I agree with you, in which I
love what you love and hate what you hate. A man's hatreds are not the
least important part of him; they are among the best indications of his
character. You love truth, and hate lying and hypocrisy--all the petty
arts and deceits of the world by which men represent themselves to be
other than they are--as well as the pride and arrogance, in which they
assume superiority over their fellow-beings. Above all, you hate every
form of injustice and oppression. Nothing moves your indignation so
much as "man's inhumanity to man," and you mutter "curses, not loud but
deep," on the whole race of tyrants and oppressors, whom you would sweep
from the face of the earth. And yet, you do not hate oppression more
than I; nor love liberty more. Nor will I admit that you have any
stronger desire for that intellectual freedom, to the attainment of
which you look forward as the last and greatest emancipation of mankind.
Nor have you a greater horror of superstition. Indeed, I might say that
you cannot have so great, for the best of all reasons, that you have not
seen so much of it; you have not stood on the banks of the Ganges, and
seen the Hindoos by tens of thousands rushing madly to throw themselves
into the sacred river, even carrying the ashes of their dead to cast
them upon the waters. It seems but yesterday that I was sitting on
the back of an elephant, looking down on this horrible scene of human
degradation. Such superstition overthrows the very foundations of
morality. In place of the natural sense of right and wrong, which is
written in men's consciences and hearts, it introduces an artificial
standard, by which the order of things is totally reversed: right is
made wrong, and wrong is made right. It makes that a virtue which is not
a virtue, and that a crime which is not a crime. Religion consists in a
round of observances that have no relation whatever to natural goodness,
but which rather exclude it by being a substitute for it. Penances
and pilgrimages take the place of justice and mercy, benevolence and
charity. Such a religion, so far from being a purifier, is the greatest
corrupter of morals; so that it is no extravagance to say of the
Hindoos, who are a gentle race, that they might be virtuous and good if
they were not so religious. But this colossal superstition weighs upon
their very existence, crushing out even natural virtue. Such a religion
is an immeasurable curse.
I hope this language is strong enough to satisfy even your own intense
hatred of superstition. You cannot loathe it more than I do. So far we
agree perfectly. But unfortunately you do not limit your crusade to
the religions of Asia, but turn the same style of argument against
the religion of Europe and America, and, indeed, against the religious
belief and worship of every country and clime. In this matter you make
no distinctions: you would sweep them all away; church and cathedral
must go with the temple and the pagoda, as alike manifestations of
human credulity, and proofs of the intellectual feebleness and folly of
mankind. While under the impression of that memorable evening at your
house, I took up some of your public addresses, and experienced a
strange revulsion of feeling. I could hardly believe my eyes as I read,
so inexpressibly was I shocked. Things which I held sacred you not only
rejected with unbelief, but sneered at with contempt. Your words were
full of a bitterness so unlike anything I had heard from your lips, that
I could not reconcile the two, till I reflected that in Robert Ingersoll
(as in the most of us) there were two men, who were not only distinct,
but contrary the one to the other--the one gentle and sweet-tempered;
the other delighting in war as his native element. Between the two, I
have a decided preference for the former. I have no dispute with the
quiet and peaceable gentleman, whose kindly spirit makes sunshine in his
home; but it is _that other man_ over yonder, who comes forth into
the arena like a gladiator, defiant and belligerent, that rouses my
antagonism. And yet I do not intend to _stand up_ even against him; but
if he will only _sit down_ and listen patiently, and answer in those
soft tones of voice which he knows so well how to use, we can have a
quiet talk, which will certainly do him no harm, while it relieves my
troubled mind.
What then is the basis of this religion which you despise? At the
foundation of every form of religious faith and worship, is the idea of
God. Here you take your stand; you do not believe in God. Of course you
do not deny absolutely the existence of a Creative Power: for that would
be to assume a knowledge which no human being can possess. How small is
the distance that we can see before us! The candle of our intelligence
throws its beams but a little way, beyond which the circle of light
is compassed by universal darkness. Upon this no one insists more than
yourself. I have heard you discourse upon the insignificance of man in
a way to put many preachers to shame. I remember your illustration from
the myriads of creatures that live on plants, from which you picked out,
to represent human insignificance, an insect too small to be seen by the
naked eye, whose world was a leaf, and whose life lasted but a single
day! Surely a creature that can only be seen with a microscope, cannot
_know_ that a Creator does not exist!
This, I must do you the justice to say, you do not affirm. All that you
can say is, that if there be no knowledge on one side, neither is there
on the other; that it is only a matter of probability; and that, judging
from such evidence as appeals to your senses and your understanding,
you do not _believe_ that there is a God. Whether this be a reasonable
conclusion or not, it is at least an intelligible state of mind.
Now I am not going to argue against what the Catholics call "invincible
ignorance"--an incapacity on account of temperament--for I hold that the
belief in God, like the belief in all spiritual things, comes to some
minds by a kind of intuition. There are natures so finely strung that
they are sensitive to influences which do not touch others. You may say
that it is mere poetical rhapsody when Shelley writes:
"The awful shadow of some unseen power,
Floats, though unseen, among us."
But there are natures which are not at all poetical or dreamy, only most
simple and pure, which, in moments of spiritual exaltation, are almost
_conscious_ of a Presence that is not of this world. But this, which is
a matter of experience, will have no weight with those who do not have
that experience. For the present, therefore, I would not be swayed one
particle by mere sentiment, but look at the question in the cold light
of reason alone.
The idea of God is, indeed, the grandest and most awful that can be
entertained by the human mind. Its very greatness overpowers us, so that
it seems impossible that such a Being should exist. But if it is hard
to conceive of Infinity, it is still harder to get any intelligible
explanation of the present order of things without admitting the
existence of an intelligent Creator and Upholder of all. Galileo, when
he swept the sky with his telescope, traced the finger of God in every
movement of the heavenly bodies. Napoleon, when the French savants on
the voyage to Egypt argued that there was no God, disdained any other
answer than to point upward to the stars and ask, "Who made all these?"
This is the first question, and it is the last. The farther we go, the
more we are forced to one conclusion. No man ever studied nature with a
more simple desire to know the truth than Agassiz, and yet the more he
explored, the more he was startled as he found himself constantly face
to face with the evidences of mind.
Do you say this is "a great mystery," meaning that it is something that
we do not know anything about? Of course, it is "a mystery." But do
you think to escape mystery by denying the Divine existence? You only
exchange one mystery for another. The first of all mysteries is, not
that God exists, but that _we_ exist. Here we are. How did we come here?
We go back to our ancestors; but that does not take away the difficulty;
it only removes it farther off. Once begin to climb the stairway of past
generations, and you will find that it is a Jacob's ladder, on which
you mount higher and higher until you step into the very presence of the
Almighty.
But even if we know that there is a God, what can we know of His
character? You say, "God is whatever we conceive Him to be." We frame
an image of Deity out of our consciousness--it is simply a reflection of
our own personality, cast upon the sky like the image seen in the Alps
in certain states of the atmosphere--and then fall down and worship that
which we have created, not indeed with our hands, but out of our minds.
This may be true to some extent of the gods of mythology, but not of the
God of Nature, who is as inflexible as Nature itself. You might as well
say that the laws of nature are whatever we imagine them to be. But we
do not go far before we find that, instead of being pliant to our will,
they are rigid and inexorable, and we dash ourselves against them to our
own destruction. So God does not bend to human thought any more than to
human will. The more we study Him the more we find that He is _not_ what
we imagined him to be; that He is far greater than any image of Him that
we could frame.
But, after all, you rejoin that the conception of a Supreme Being is
merely an abstract idea, of no practical importance, with no bearing
upon human life. I answer, it is of immeasurable importance. Let go the
idea of God, and you have let go the highest moral restraint. There is
no Ruler above man; he is a law unto himself--a law which is as impotent
to produce order, and to hold society together, as man is with his
little hands to hold the stars in their courses.
I know how you reason against the Divine existence from the moral
disorder of the world. The argument is one that takes strong hold of the
imagination, and may be used with tremendous effect. You set forth in
colors none too strong the injustice that prevails in the relations of
men to one another--the inequalities of society; the haughtiness of the
rich and the misery of the poor; you draw lurid pictures of the vice
and crime which run riot in the great capitals which are the centres of
civilization; and when you have wound up your audience to the highest
pitch, you ask, "How can it be that there is a just God in heaven, who
looks down upon the earth and sees all this horrible confusion, and yet
does not lift His hand to avenge the innocent or punish the guilty?"
To this I will make but one answer: Does it convince yourself? I do not
mean to imply that you are conscious of insincerity. But an orator is
sometimes carried away by his own eloquence, and states things more
strongly than he would in his cooler moments. So I venture to ask: With
all your tendency to skepticism, do you really believe that there is
no moral government of the world--no Power behind nature "making for
righteousness?" Are there no retributions in history? When Lincoln
stood on the field of Gettysburg, so lately drenched with blood,
and, reviewing the carnage of that terrible day, accepted it as the
punishment of our national sins, was it a mere theatrical flourish in
him to lift his hand to heaven, and exclaim, "Just and true are Thy
ways, Lord God Almighty!"
Having settled it to your own satisfaction that there is no God, you
proceed in the same easy way to dispose of that other belief which lies
at the foundation of all religion--the immortality of the soul. With an
air of modesty and diffidence that would carry an audience by storm, you
confess your ignorance of what, perhaps, others are better acquainted
with, when you say, "This world is all that _I_ know anything about, _so
far as I recollect_." This is very wittily put, and some may suppose
it contains an argument; but do you really mean to say that you do not
_know_ anything except what you "recollect," or what you have seen with
your eyes? Perhaps you never saw your grandparents; but have you any
more doubt of their existence than of that of your father and mother
whom you did see?
Here, as when you speak of the existence of God, you carefully avoid
any positive affirmation: you neither affirm nor deny. You are ready
for whatever may "turn up." In your jaunty style, if you find yourself
hereafter in some new and unexpected situation, you will accept it and
make the best of it, and be "as ready as the next man to enter on any
remunerative occupation!"
But while airing this pleasant fancy, you plainly regard the hope of
another life as a beggar's dream--the momentary illusion of one who,
stumbling along life's highway, sets him down by the roadside, footsore
and weary, cold and hungry, and falls asleep, and dreams of a time when
he shall have riches and plenty. Poor creature! let him dream; it helps
him to forget his misery, and may give him a little courage for his
rude awaking to the hard reality of life. But it is all a dream, which
dissolves in thin air, and floats away and disappears. This illustration
I do not take from you, but simply choose to set forth what (as I infer
from the sentences above quoted and many like expressions) may describe,
not unfairly, your state of mind. Your treatment of the subject is one
of trifling. You do not speak of it in a serious way, but lightly and
flippantly, as if it were all a matter of fancy and conjecture, and not
worthy of sober consideration.
Now, does it never occur to you that there is something very cruel in
this treatment of the belief of your fellow-creatures, on whose hope
of another life hangs all that relieves the darkness of their present
existence? To many of them life is a burden to carry, and they need all
the helps to carry it that can be found in reason, in philosophy, or in
religion. But what support does your hollow creed supply? You are a man
of warm heart, of the tenderest sympathies. Those who know you best, and
love you most, tell me that you cannot bear the sight of suffering
even in animals; that your natural sensibility is such that you find no
pleasure in sports, in hunting or fishing; to shoot a robin would make
you feel like a murderer. If you see a poor man in trouble your first
impulse is to help him. You cannot see a child in tears but you want to
take up the little fellow in your arms, and make him smile again.
And yet, with all your sensibility, you hold the most remorseless and
pitiless creed in the world--a creed in which there is not a gleam of
mercy or of hope. A mother has lost her only son. She goes to his grave
and throws herself upon it, the very picture of woe. One thought only
keeps her from despair: it is that beyond this life there is a world
where she may once more clasp her boy in her arms. What will you say to
that mother? You are silent, and your silence is a sentence of death to
her hopes. By that grave you cannot speak; for if you were to open your
lips and tell that mother what you really believe, it would be that her
son is blotted out of existence, and that she can never look upon his
face again. Thus with your iron heel do you trample down and crush the
last hope of a broken heart.
When such sorrow comes to you, you feel it as keenly as any man. With
your strong domestic attachments one cannot pass out of your little
circle without leaving a great void in your heart, and your grief is as
eloquent as it is hopeless. No sadder words ever fell from human lips
than these, spoken over the coffin of one to whom you were tenderly
attached: "Life is but a narrow vale, between the cold and barren peaks
of two eternities!" This is a doom of annihilation, which strikes a
chill to the stoutest heart. Even you must envy the faith which, as
it looks upward, sees those "peaks of two eternities," not "cold and
barren," but warm with the glow of the setting sun, which gives promise
of a happier to-morrow!
I think I hear you say, "So might it be! Would that I could believe
it!" for no one recognizes more the emptiness of life as it is. I do not
forget the tone in which you said: "Life is very sad to me; it is very
pitiful; there isn't much to it." True indeed! With your belief, or want
of belief, there is very little to it; and if this were all, it would be
a fair question whether life were worth living. In the name of humanity,
let us cling to all that is left us that can bring a ray of hope into
its darkness, and thus lighten its otherwise impenetrable gloom.
I observe that you not unfrequently entertain yourself and your
audiences by caricaturing certain doctrines of the Christian religion.
The "Atonement," as you look upon it, is simply "punishing the wrong
man"--letting the guilty escape and putting the innocent to death. This
is vindicating justice by permitting injustice. But is there not another
side to this? Does not the idea of sacrifice run through human life,
and ennoble human character? You see a mother denying herself for her
children, foregoing every comfort, enduring every hardship, till at
last, worn out by her labor and her privation, she folds her hands upon
her breast. May it not be said truly that she gives her life for the
life of her children? History is full of sacrifice, and it is the best
part of history. I will not speak of "the noble army of martyrs," but
of heroes who have died for their country or for liberty--what is it but
this element of devotion for the good of others that gives such glory
to their immortal names? How then should it be thought a thing without
reason that a Deliverer of the race should give His life for the life of
the world?
So, too, you find a subject for caricature in the doctrine of
"Regeneration." But what is regeneration but a change of character
shown in a change of life? Is that so very absurd? Have you never seen a
drunkard reformed? Have you never seen a man of impure life, who, after
running his evil course, had, like the prodigal, "come to himself"--that
is, awakened to his shame, and turning from it, come back to the path
of purity, and finally regained a true and noble manhood? Probably you
would admit this, but say that the change was the result of reflection,
and of the man's own strength of will. The doctrine of regeneration only
adds to the will of man the power of God. We believe that man is weak,
but that God is mighty; and that when man tries to raise himself, an arm
is stretched out to lift him up to a height which he could not attain
alone. Sometimes one who has led the worst life, after being plunged
into such remorse and despair that he feels as if he were enduring the
agonies of hell, turns back and takes another course: he becomes "a new
creature," whom his friends can hardly recognize as he "sits clothed and
in his right mind." The change is from darkness to light, from death
to life; and he who has known but one such case will never say that the
language is too strong which describes that man as "born again."
If you think that I pass lightly over these doctrines, not bringing out
all the meaning which they bear, I admit it. I am not writing an essay
in theology, but would only show, in passing, by your favorite method of
illustration, that the principles involved are the same with which you
are familiar in everyday life.
But the doctrine which excites your bitterest animosity is that of
Future Retribution. The prospect of another life, reaching on into an
unknown futurity, you would contemplate with composure were it not for
the dark shadow hanging over it. But to live only to suffer; to live
when asking to die; to "long for death, and not be able to find it"--is
a prospect which arouses the anger of one who would look with calmness
upon death as an eternal sleep. The doctrine loses none of its terrors
in passing through your hands; for it is one of the means by which
you work upon the feelings of your hearers. You pronounce it "the most
horrible belief that ever entered the human mind: that the Creator
should bring beings into existence to destroy them! This would make
Him the most fearful tyrant in the universe--a Moloch devouring his
own children!" I shudder when I recall the fierce energy with which
you spoke as you said, "Such a God I hate with all the intensity of my
being!"
But gently, gently, Sir! We will let this burst of fury pass before we
resume the conversation. When you are a little more tranquil, I would
modestly suggest that perhaps you are fighting a figment of your
imagination. I never heard of any Christian teacher who said that "the
Creator brought beings into the world to destroy them!" Is it not better
to moderate yourself to exact statements, especially when, with all
modifications, the subject is one to awaken a feeling the most solemn
and profound?
Now I am not going to enter into a discussion of this doctrine. I will
not quote a single text. I only ask you whether it is not a scientific
truth that _the effect of everything which is of the nature of a cause
is eternal_. Science has opened our eyes to some very strange facts
in nature. The theory of vibrations is carried by the physicists to an
alarming extent. They tell us that it is literally and mathematically
true that you cannot throw a ball in the air but it shakes the solar
system. Thus all things act upon all. What is true in space may be true
in time, and the law of physics may hold in the spiritual realm.
When the soul of man departs out of the body, being released from the
grossness of the flesh, it may enter on a life a thousand times more
intense than this: in which it will not need the dull senses as avenues
of knowledge, because the spirit itself will be all eye, all ear, all
intelligence; while memory, like an electric flash, will in an instant
bring the whole of the past into view; and the moral sense will be
quickened as never before. Here then we have all the conditions of
retribution--a world which, however shadowy it may be seem, is yet as
real as the homes and habitations and activities of our present state;
with memory trailing the deeds of a lifetime behind it, and conscience,
more inexorable than any judge, giving its solemn and final verdict.
With such conditions assumed, let us take a case which would awaken your
just indignation--that of a selfish, hardhearted, and cruel man; who
sacrifices the interests of everybody to his own; who grinds the faces
of the poor, robbing the widow and the orphan of their little all; and
who, so far from making restitution, dies with his ill-gotten gains held
fast in his clenched hand. How long must the night be to sleep away the
memory of such a hideous life? If he wakes, will not the recollection
cling to him still? Are there any waters of oblivion that can cleanse
his miserable soul? If not--if he cannot forget--surely he cannot
forgive himself for the baseness which now he has no opportunity to
repair. Here, then, is a retribution which is inseparable from his
being, which is a part of his very existence. The undying memory brings
the undying pain.
Take another case--alas! too sadly frequent. A man of pleasure betrays
a young, innocent, trusting woman by the promise of his love, and then
casts her off, leaving her to sink down, down, through every degree
of misery and shame, till she is lost in depths, which plummet never
sounded, and disappears. Is he not to suffer for this poor creature's
ruin? Can he rid himself of it by fleeing beyond "that bourne from
whence no traveler returns"? Not unless he can flee from himself: for
in the lowest depths of the under-world--a world in which the sun never
shines--that image will still pursue him. As he wanders in its gloomy
shades a pale form glides by him like an affrighted ghost. The face is
the same, beautiful even in its sorrow, but with a look upon it as of
one who has already suffered an eternity of woe. In an instant all the
past comes back again. He sees the young, unblessed mother wandering in
some lonely place, that only the heavens may witness her agony and her
despair. There he sees her holding up in her arms the babe that had no
right to be born, and calling upon God to judge her betrayer. How far
in the future must he travel to forget that look? Is there any escape
except by plunging into the gulf of annihilation?
Thus far in this paper I have taken a tone of defence. But I do not
admit that the Christian religion needs any apology,--it needs only to
be rightly understood to furnish its own complete vindication. Instead
of considering its "evidences," which is but going round the outer
walls, let us enter the gates of the temple and see what is within. Here
we find something better than "towers and bulwarks" in the character of
Him who is the Founder of our Religion, and not its Founder only but its
very core and being. Christ is Christianity. Not only is He the Great
Teacher, but the central subject of what He taught, so that the whole
stands or falls with Him.
In our first conversation, I observed that, with all your sharp
comments on things sacred, you professed great respect for the ethics
of Christianity, and for its author. "Make the Sermon on the Mount your
religion," you said, "and there I am with you." Very well! So far, so
good. And now, if you will go a little further, you may find still more
food for reflection.
All who have made a study of the character and teachings of Christ, even
those who utterly deny the supernatural, stand in awe and wonder before
the gigantic figure which is here revealed. Renan closes his "Life of
Jesus" with this as the result of his long study: "Jesus will never
be surpassed. His worship will be renewed without ceasing; his
story [legende] will draw tears from beautiful eyes without end; his
sufferings will touch the finest natures; all the ages will proclaim