The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1881-12-10
ROTHACKER ON RELIGION.
A strong & Eloquent Reply to IngerSOII


Mr.. Ingersoll is great phrase-maker.
He has many musical mannerisms The
element in his lectures which tends most
to make them widely read is the exquisite
fugue on domestic love which he is con-
stantly playing. His arguments are not
new, nor is the basis of his declamatory
belief of foundation recently built. Vol
taire sneered before him; Tom Paine rallied
and denounced before him. They were
hard, logical, analytical and sterile. He
covers the hardness and sterility with flow
ers of rhetoric He adds to borrowed rea-
son an artificial sentimentalism. Beauty
and brutality 90 hand in hand with him.
His infdelity is Lilith who lures to spir-
itual ruin.
Men with strong brains do not follow
him. and therefore he is most dangerous
He is the apostle of the shallow; the demi-
god of amateur thinkers. The graces of
his oratory hold audiences which are above
the substance of his speech. He bedizens
impiety with pretty words and exhibits
reason as one would puppet-show to make
the groundlings laugh. An eloquent Jug
gler, he attempts to teach truth by trickery.
He hides the snake under tropical luxu-
rance of wOrd-blOssoms. Distinctly prac-
teal, he bufets at the form because the
essence is beyond him. He plays with
language in that which is essentially spirit
ual and beyond language. He answers an
organ tone with a jingle; a poem with
gibe. He is a phrase-huckster preaching
the gospel of unrest; Moment brawling
at Eternity. And yet this man has done
more to injure Christianity than any one
who has ever written or spoken against it.
Lacking the finer fibre himself, he has been
singularly influential in bruising or destroy
ing it wholly in others. There have been
many answers to him, but the majority of
them have been utter failures in effect.
SO far he has held his own against the
Christian world.
The reasons for this are palpable. An
analytical examination of his position shows
that it rests upon three pillars
First-The contradictions of the Old
Testament as contained in certain texts.
These pillars would be pillars of sand
but for the stubborness and stupidity of
the men who have attempted to reply to
him. As long as it is maintained that the
Bible, from Genesis to Revelations, is the
inspired word of God, that those who wrote
its various books were the inspired aman-
uenses of the Almighty, and that, in all the
centuries from its first delivery to the pres
ent time, there have been neither changes
nor opportunities for changes, the anti-or-
thOdox will have an advantage which will
strike every reasoning mind. The moment
the theory of inspiration is abandoned, and
the historical portions of the Bible are re-
garded as history, subject to the errors of
fact and opinion which belong to history,
and to the alterations of time, Christianity
will be on foundation from which it can
not be shaken. The essence of the deliv-
erance is in a sentence from Matthew Ar
mold He (the historian) may give us,
in the very same work, current errors, and
also fruitful and profound new truth, the
errors future corrective" Why should
ministers of the gospel cling to this theory
of inspiration? 1t IS not maintained in the
Bible itself. Indeed, the Bible is, itself, a
contradiction of it. The Old Testament is
history of the creation of the world, of
wars and conquests, of Jewish victory and
Jewish defeat Is it necessary to maintain
that this narration of facts is inspired ?
The New Testament is record of the
birth, life and death of Christ, with a sub
sequent detail of the growth of his doctrine.
Is it necessary to maintain that these his
torical books, colored by the minds and
varying with the memories of the Apostles,
are inspired? By no means What Christ
himself said is thrilled with inspiration.
What the men who read his utterances by
a dim light, the men who disputed as to who
should sit upon his left hand in the King
dom of Heaven, the men who slept while
he cried aloud in his agony in the sombre
! shadows and sentient silence of Gethsem-
ane, the men who deserted him at the
cross and left him to breath out the the
God-life upon an atmosphere tainted with
jeers-what they wrote with imperfect un-
derstandings, need not be called inspired,
for all reason is opposed to it. 1t Is OF
profound interest, but no more.
! ii WIdU ulGll have given NOU ullOl-
ances are true, then the old charge, which
has travelled down the years and lodged in
IngersoIls mouth, that God teaches poly
gamy and murder, is true. If reason is
consulted, and the passages in the Old les
lament are accepted as the utterances of
men only, the charge falls instantly to the
ground, and Christianity is in position to
| FIGHT back. The answer to the theory OF
inspiration may be found in the life of
Christ. He was born in Nazareth, on the
shores of Galilee He was raised in a vii
lage under the teachings of rabbis, whose
lessons in customs and religion were drawn
from the records of the nation, as found IN
the Old Testament Yet his entire minis
trv was protest against the Journalism, the
ceremonials. the caste distinctions, the hy-
pocrisv. and the false doctrine, which were
so constantly taught. His life and teach
ings were utterly antagonistic to the inter
pretatiOns of the Scribes and the Pharisees
who taught the very doctrines in the Old
Testrment, which to-day furnish Ingersoll
and those of his kind such rich source for
argumentative outlaws and noisy denuncia-
ton. Christ saw the defects long before
they did, and the realization of it was ex-
pressed in that terrible outburst, beginning;
'Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, by
pocrites, for ye pay tithe of mint, anise and
cumin, and have omitted the weightier
matters of the law-justice, mercy, and fl
deity. Blind guides that you are, strain
ing at gnats and swallowing camels p The
doctrine of the divinity of Christ, and the
doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible are
by no means identical 1t is not necessary
to believe one to believe the other. In
deed, the latter belief is almost sufficient to
destroy the former. What he did not teach
it is not necessary for his followers to teach
When this is conceded there will be an
end of text-mockering by loud debators
The muck-hunters will cease to pick ovel
contradictions and hold fresh one up in
tr;umnh Whenever II is discovered. The