The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-09-06

he feels no more reverence and exhibits no
more respect for the mythology, cosmog-
ony and monk-invented theological dog
mas of Christianity than he does for the
mythology of Greece, the cosmogony of
Aristotle or the theology of Hindostan.
But let Us grant, for the sake of argu-
ment, that Colonel Ingersoll's enunciation
Of biblical criticism and agnostic phil
osophy Is not always marked by good
taste. self-restraint and self-suppressions
that he is open to the charge Of irrever-
ence. Having granted this. let US inquire
whether the peculiar irreverence imputed
to Colonel Ingersoll' is not seldom
completely overmatched in vulgarity,
coarseness and corrupt method and
manner of public speech by certain
intensely orthodox popular preachers.
and most sublime personages and
events Of sacred history in a
style of gross familiarity and al
most frantic grotesqueness OF nlustra-
ton that makes their so-called sermon read
like sensational "hash" reporters ac-
or slaughter. The Rev. Dr. 7. Dewitt Tai
mage Is most notorious offender of this
sort. It is not too much to say Of this
man that no person of the slightest sensi-
bility or reverence for the fitting treatment
Of the solemnities of religion could pos
sibly sit long under the droppings of his
huge mouth, that spits forth death, and
mountains, rocks and seas" and talks as
Familiarity of the grand and final resurrec-
ton of the dead, as boy of thirteen would
of great local firemeu's muster, or mill
tary parade, or a political jubilee, which
opened with artillery and closed with
torchlight procession.
If there be any who think this charge Of
gross irreverence and vulgarity in his
treatment of solemn themes against DR..
Talmage is not well founded, let them read
the following extract from his Easter Sun
day sermon on the grand and final resur-
rection of the dead, as he imagines it, and
ask themselves if this sort of stuff, which
is printed by columns in various papers
over the country, is not quite as viciously
and vulgarly irreverent in spirit and ex-
preston as any discourse ever delivered by
Colonel Ingersoll:
Crashi goes Westminster abbey; all its dead
kings and orators and poets get up. Strange
commingling of spirits, searching among the
ruins. William Wilberforce, the good, and
Queen Elizabeth. the bad Crash! go the pyra-
mids, and the monarchs OF Egypt rise out of the
heart of the desert. Snapl go the iron gates of
the modern vaults. The country graveyard VIII
look like rough plowed field as the mounds
break open All the kings of the earth; all the
senators; all the great men; all the beggars; all
the armies-victors and vanquished; all the
ages-barbaric and civilized; all those who
were chopped by guillotine, or simmered in the
fire, or rotted in dungeons; all the infants of
day; all the octogenarians-alli ALI Not one
straggler left behind. ALL ALL
And now the ar is darkened with the frag-
ments OF bodies that are coming together from
the opposite corners OF the earth. Lost limbs
finding their mate, bone to bone, sinew to s;new
until every joint is reconstructed, and every
arm finds its socket, and the amputated limb Of
the surgeons table shall be set again at the
point from which It was severed. A surgeon
told me that after the battle OF Bull Run ne am
putated limbs, throwing them out of the win
dow until the pile reached up to the window
sill All these fragments will have to take their
eyes divineiy kindled; those who were lame
shall have limb substituted In all the hosts
OF the resurrected not one eye missing, not one
foot clogged, not one arm palsied, not one
tongue dumb, not one ear deaf.