St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1885-05-25
BLASPHEMOUS BOB.
Ingersoll Empties His Walls Of Wit and
Wrath on the Religions Of the
" World.
The Thunders Of His Eloquence Hurled
Against the Law Promulgated
from Sinai
ssA Narrow Guage God Might Suit
Delaware But Not the Great
NOrthwest.''
Painting Most Beautiful Word Pic
lures, He Interests But Does
Not Convince.

Painting Most Beautiful Word Pic
lures, He Interests But Does
Not Convince.
| 1t was very large audience which as
sembled in the Grand opera house last night
to listen to r. G. IngersolPs eloquent lee
ture on Which Way? The lecture was in
| substance as follows:
THE LECTURE.
1t is the imagination of most people that
their belief is the one essential thing in this
| world; and that unless man agrees with
them in what they please to call the essen
tlals he must necessarily be a bad man in
| thai he denies what they are certain is true.
And the less man knows the more he is
certain that if he denies he is actuated by
the worst of motives. Now in what little
l have read and experienced have found
| that belief does not dominate the character.
| Some men who have believed in their re-
| ligion have been very bad men. Some men
who have worshiped our God have been
very far from respectable. The religion
! lists of other countries have not all been
good. The gentlemen who made Socrates
drink. hemlock were all believers in God.
The men who cruciied. according to the
Christian religion, the one sinless being
who ever touched this globe, were believers
and wOrshipers of our God. The gentle
| men who founded the inquiSitiOn- in
vented and used
INSTRUMENTS OE TORTURE,
who built prisons for the body and dun
geons for the mind, were worshipers of
and believers in our God and religion. Ac-
cording to the Bible the devil is believer:
and the only influence it has had upon his
moral character-or the only influence it
has had upon him is, according to the Bible,
that he trembled. But the belief has never
made him any better. You see, after all,
there is no reforming power in fear. You
may scare person so badly that he will
not do a certain thing; but you cannot
frighten him to that degree that he will not
want to. Laughter On the other hand,
some of the best men who have ever lived
have been unbelievers. Some of the great
est men in the history of this world have
held in supreme contempt
THE sUPERsTITIONs OF MANKIND.
The greatest produced by Rome laughed
at the Roman gods. And the greatest of
Christendom have not been believers; and
the leaders of the intellectual hosts of this
world tonight are not believers in what we
call the Christian religion. Bruno, the
martyr, was not believer; Humboldt, the
greatest of naturalistS, was not a believer;
Darwin, the greatest man produced by the
nineteenth century-and this century will
be known as ''Darwins century, long after
every minister who has ever answered him
will have been forgotten-he was nota be-
lever, but he was an honest man. And l
cannot convince myself that there is in the
infinite expanse of this universe God who
who will punish any human being for the
expression of his honest thought
WE HAVE BEEN TAUGHT
that it was crime to differ from the
religious majority. There is a reason in
nature for that doctrine. There was time
when man believed that the heavens were
filed with gods; and all these gods were
extremely quick-tempered. Barbarianism
is egotstic. And the less man knows the
more important he thinks he is. COnse-
quently, when one of our forefathers saw
an eclipse he said, s'That means me-" When
some vagrant comet shot through the sky,
distributing pestilence from it's horrid train,
he said, 81 have done something or my
nv neighbor-but all this has been brought
about by myself. p Or when the lightning
leaped from the cloud and left it's blackened
mark upon the bosom of wife or child he
thought he had enraged some god. so, to
THE POOR BARBARIAN,
everything happened in reference to man.
And vet such is my doctrine that / believe
if everybody in the world was dead, if no
human being existed, the sun would rise to-
morrow. the world would turn and
pursue it's flight on the old ac-
customed axis; time would repeat the per-
petual poem of the year; the violets would
spread their velvet blossoms to the day; the
spendthrift roses give their perfume to the
air: the seasons would come and go, the
rain would fall in pleasant showers; light
would hang its seven-hued banners on cata-
ract and cloud; spring, with deft and I'M
seen hands, would weave the tapestries Of
green; autumn would reap the wealth OF
leaf and seed; winter, the artist, would
still etch in frost the pines and ferns he
loves so well; while wind and wave and
fire, old architects, would still destroy and
build and change; and the stars would
| look down as serenely as though it were
| filled with happy homes. Take fear away and
what we call orthodox religion, OF course,
WILL CEASE TO EXIST.
Have we got the right God ourselves? and is
the God that we have the rightful Governor
of mankind? Now above all the gods that
| ing. [ don't know. You have no idea
how little know on the God question, and
yet know as much as the aggregate-and
that is nothing. AUD if there was any
other word that expressed less than moth
| ing, I would use it. / know as little as
| the smallest insect that ever famed with
happy wings the sunshine of moment.
| And yet there may be above all an Infinite
| being. do not know. And ii there be l
am not talking about Him. I am talking
about our God; the Jehovah Of the Jews
and the God of the orthodox religionists.
Now who is He? Let us have the courage
to examine the question. Let us do it with
kindness.
WHO IS OUR GOD?
Is this world atheocracy or democracy? Is
this world tyranny, or have we lived i'll
this world to a government republican i'll
it's form? Does the right to govern come
from the clouds-from the God we bor-
rowed from the Jews; or does the right to
govern mankind spring from the consent OF
| the governed? The best test of a man u.s.
how does he use power? How does he
treat his wife? Is he tyrant at home? How
does he treat his little children? Does he
raise them by brute force? How does he
treat his creditors? How does he treat his
debtors? How does he treat the servant
that labors for him? How does he treat the
poor dog that lovingly follows his footsteps?
That is the measure. How does he use his
power? Does he use it to increase the sun
shine Of human happiness? Does he fill his
home with light, with
THE RIPPLE OF LAUGHTER
from the red lips of joy? How does he
treat his inferior? Does he fawn and cringe
before the man who is above him. and then
make some poor wretch below him fawn
and cringe to make things even? That is
the test of character
| Now by that standard let us measure our