Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1885-06-05
M ON INGERsoLL,
The Preacher Puts Him on the Witness
Stand and Tries Him by Jury.

lAIMA1e YIN INGERSOll.
The Preacher Puts Him on the Witness
Stand and Tries Him by Jury.
In the Trinity Baptist Church, Cam
den, last evening, Rev. I. De Witt
Talmage, of Brooklyn, lcctured on
''lngersollism," under the auspices of
the Young Mems Christian Association.
The church was crowded to its utmost,
and laughter and applause were fire.
quent. DR.. Talmage had left his home
on the four o'clock train and arrived
just in time to step upon the platform
and begin his address.
During the past four or five years."
began the speaker, ga distinguished
gentleman has been lecturing through
the country on what he has been pleased
to call 'Talmagian Philosophy 1t is
kind of him to thus talk of me to those
who probably never saw or heard of
me, and so, when this talented gentle
man shall have become changed in his
convictions, / shall invite him to preach
his first sermon in my pulpit. This
shows that l have no personal feeling
against him, for he will change, 1 hope.
Voltaire, who wrote some two hundred
and forty volumes, all of which were
more or less attacks on Christianity,
asked to have the sacrament admin
istered to him when he was dying, and
requested that he should be buried in
consectated ground.
"From what we have heard of late, it
seems that the Christian religion is a
huge blunder; that the Bible, from lid to
lid, is stuffed with lies and shams; that
there never was a miracle, and that the
Flood and Ncah's Ark are great absur-
dities; that those who have died for it's
truths have been dupes; that we should
blush for such men as William H.
Seward, and Thomas jefferson, and
William E. Gladstone, and Daniel Web
ster because they believed such trash;
that your father was a fool to lean on
the Bible to his grave; your mother was
but cajoled by lies and superstitions;
that the Book which has deluded so
many of the great intellects of the past
must not be allowed to delude our so
much greater ones. So, then, out with
it from the Church, the court and the
home"
DR.. Talmage then proposed to give
the Bible q fair trial before condemning
it, and he impaneled the audience as the
jury before whom to try the case. Then
he called Robert G. lngersoll to the wit
ness stand, and was Obliged to swear
him ''by the spots on the sun, the cav
erns in the moon, the belts about Sat-
urn, the Milky Way and the Aurora b.
realis." Laughter He neXt stated q
principle Of law that if he could prove
that the witness had misrepresented one
set of facts, he could not be trusted in
another-false in one, false in all.
"In Mr.. Ingersoll's lecture" contin-
ued the reverend gentlemen, che states
that the Bible favors polygamy, and he
asks if his audience believes in such a
procedure. No, not Then you
are better than your Bible concluded
Mr.. Ingersoll in triumph. Now let me
ask you how many wives did God make
for Adam, and l. presume that He
started the institution as He wanted it
to continue. How many wives did He
tell Noah and his sons to take into the
Ark, at the second launching of the
human race? One each" This point
was elaborated at some length, and
then DIR. Talmage replied in regular
order to the following claims of Inger-
soil: That the Bible is an impure book;
that it is a cruel book; that it is
woman's tyrant and degradation; that
the story OF the creation of woman
is most ridiculous. On this he said:
':My friend pronounces the rib story
as absurd. That poor old rib of Adams.
Laughter. 1t is run through all my
friends lectures, so that when people
come in late they ask: Has he come
to the rib story yeti? [Laughter.] 1t
is like a greyhound of mine who used
to devote himself to gnawing an old, dry
bone, when there was an abundance of
good food at hand. One day I lost my
temper and was about to throw the
bone over the fence, when that dog
seemed to look at me as though he
wanted to say: If you only knew how
much 1 depend on this bone-I'm an
infidel.'" Laughter.
BY a liberal quotation of statistics DR..
Talmage answered the next claim, that
Christianity is falling back and the Hible
becoming extinct, and declared that to-
day the most popular name on earth is
Jesus, and the most popular book the
Bible. He then, in q humorous,
illustrative way, considered the substi-
tute which intidels offered for religion,
and recited their creed, which began:
Il believe in nothing, the maker Of the
heavens and the earth; born of moth
ing, etc." in the form of the Apostles
Creed. He stated that ''every infidel
had died either in stolid indifference or
horror, and they always will" With
an earnest conclusion DR.. Talmage re-
tired from the platform amid hearty
applause.-RladelphiG Press.
ONE YOUNG MANS WORK.