The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1888-05-28

You start with establishment to find a man
nx1ng with wave of his hand the exact
moral and intellectual superiority of Shakes
peare and Buddha.
But we have heard him fix in the same
instantaneous and final manner. without
nope OF appeal, the status of thes1nfnite
lou ought to hear him whistle the His
torlc Christ down the wind.
GU have suspicion that he has no re-
spect for any authority but his own.
We have heard him say so repeatedly
with double ground swell of rhetoric and
rlbaldry, and can quote him down whole
pages to that effect if it were edifying, or if
he dared to deny it.
Your amazement at the authoritative and
swift tinality of his opinion on Shakespeare
is natural.
But you ought to hear his opinion on
Robert g. lngersoll
That, think, would temper your amaze
ment with awe.
You may not know it, but this is the
man who said that if there should happen
10 be any grand assize after this life, and
ne found himself to be wrong he'd walk
up to the Judge like man and say so, ask
Ing him to overlook the personal difference
that existed between them and call things
square.
l do not deny that there is a pictur
esque merit to this. The merit is in carrying
over the free and easy audacity of the Iii
nois court room into the possible issues of
eternity.
The picturesqueness is in the unavoid-
able implication that he intends to wear his
silk hat on the side of his bead and keep
his thumbs In his waistcoat during the ex-
animation.
You arc little surprised at his inaccu-
rate treatment Of the Bible, and say that so
far from guSnnHtipp hSe 81
that he had studied it, You would incline
to the belief that he had only galloped round
il.
Our surprise at Ills hatred of-the Bible
gave way long ago to a greater surprise
at his hatred of Blair's rhetoric and Mills
logic.
You apply the word Extravaganza" to
his literature.
That was too general for us, and long
ago we invented word to fit these special
cases.
We call it ''buncombe"
You evince some amusement at seeing
him tie up the Darwinian hypothesis of de-
velopment to his hitching post.
We have seen him bowl down Aristotle.
Descartes, Kant, Bentham, Hamilton.
and Huxley without taking his thumbs out
of his waistcoat and without having read
them.
You imagine his enmity is against one
book.
We have found that his inaccuracy and
sloppiness are against all books.
He has misquoted Spencer, Hume, Oar
win, Draper, Gibbon, Colenso, Renan,
Strauss and Websters Dictionary oftener
and more viciously than he has misquoted
the Bible.
Such an antagonist is not damaged by the
Christian evidences. He lodges them with
nimbleness that would do credit to Mr.
Crowley. He is too free and independent
to be hampered by any shackleS of accu-
racy, and too original to follow in the track
of logic.
All this has been shown in former con-
tests. We have here sturdy pulpiteer,
De Witt Talmage by name who came at
Mr. lngersoll with the Mosaic cosmology
thundered literally. and so successful was
he that he left the impression on the minds
of THESIS and Atheists alike that it was quite
as necessary to the salvation of man that
God should have made the world in a par
ticular time and manner as that he should
have made it at all.
When these tournaments were moved
from the rostrum to the review one of our
most distinguished jurists, Judge jeremiah
Black, took up the old-fashioned O. prtoTi
club of orthodoxy and swung it with a
ponderouS majesty that was unavoidable in
his case, but that was entirely dis
proportionate to the siza Of the opponent.
1t thwacked the tin armor of agnosticism
robustly. But the few sparks that were
emitted were popularity supposed to come
from the armor and not from the club, and
the evidence of the Judges superiority was
not furnished by his brilliancy so much as
by his antagonists discretion, for Mr.. In
gersoll began to sQueal to the editor before
the fight was over.