The Arkansaw traveler., 1884-11-29

way ef his Happiness. ln seven of shsse
 answers Ae makes onset on the doctrine
 of eternal pnnisAment, He exhshits an
 intense personal interest h the ahoiisA-
 mens of hell. h the course ofAis answex
 to the question of design. he assumes
 al one time knowledge of God and ex.
 sreme aathEcpomospAic v;sws. He tAIka
 as if be saw Him the morning he crossed the river so go to work in the machine shops of the uni. verse, and he told Aim he could use oak ash, hickory and iron. in nanufac. ture of other things. bat that He never could make them. Again he gives ou, hheFalH creative power to ali created things evea according to them the right and power of creating their osn creator, and proposes equal rights between creator and creation. Again he assumes to have invaded the eternity tha, pre-. cedes our eternity, and inding God in idieness proposes to rob Him of the universe because he vas tooiing away time before He made it. He says know, to prove that Ae did not know. He denies all creative power and afsirms a seli-exissent universe. He takes ell oi this trouble to prove that |, h a matter oi no importance to him whether God exists oE not 1T He exists and is unimportsn, to him why all this trouble. and if he dses not, why all of t AnyhowY No man ever passed through such contortions Of opinion as Mi. lngersoll does in forty. two lines of newspaper column. What. ever may be his record, 10, on paper, be exhibits an utter destitution of sense oi hoaos ia matters of intellect and opinion. The marked peeuiiarity abou, his discussion of reli gioas topics Is the in sensisy of hts anscrupaio usness as a req. soner. This fact Is patent to all candid who serioaAly consider what be may say.
 My first impression of him was such hat thought if there vas a man in America who kuew less of what re. lieion is than Mir, Ingessoll he had been a more quiet man and had not ex. posed himself 90 much. But much that betrays ignorance of christianity Is DO, lhe product Of ignorance, t is willhul disregard of facts Under a question pending that requires careful consider Ation of what christianity Is, he can al- ways escape the features unsuitable to Ais purpose by the use of definitions in which is made to be just wha, his argument has need that it should be. He assumes the right to de6ne both ehns- tiani,y and God to his o~n liking and is under no obligation to any record. There IS another feature about Mir. lngersoll ,ha, Is peculiar. and that is his invetera,e ten- dency to fall into the discussion oi hell on every topic that comes before bim. He seems never to set out Of sigh, of it ttG Wttkto 1H U " Wa9 a 4&tCtuA fGalUf -v confronting him from which he Is poweriess to turn away. He tries to talk l. ou, of existence aad yet talks on as if he had no success against it. He writes and speaks as if he ~as possessed of an andesired and overwhelming conviction mat there is a hell and that there ought lo be one but ,ha, be really wished there were not His was on christianity seems all born ol his conviction that there is a nell which he would abolish If he esuld. If doctrine has hell ia it he feels that it must be made away with, 90 must God and the church. Ills literary instincts never cease soensing the world over to see il there Is any scent of hell about h. If he finds il, his warfare begins at once.
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