The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-05-30

Christianity has but to return to the Cos
pei" Christianity is not valuable for its
myths, but for its moral and spiritual force.
The Sermon on the Mount, the Golden
Rule, the Ten Commandments, and the
Lords Prayer are not affected by the
authenticity Of the story of Jonah and
the whale; the essentials of Christian be-
lief are not affected at all by the micro
scopic Biblical criticism of Ingersoll.
These essentials are imnregnable, so In
gersoll blazes away at the non-essentials;
he is so irreverent and contemptuous in
his treatment of the dead body of what
was once living faith of the people. that
his method shocks and exasperates
often when all that is of consequence in
his criticism is really applicable to the
ecciesiasticism that is dying fast under the
blows of men who have struck at it from
the door of the church which Ingersoll
seeks to scald with his satire and his
sneer. All that is good and true that
Ingersoll teaches, Christianity gave him
and gave US all.
The religion OF self.interest and self-pro-
scSstch was AuotiuCtiVC, Dus ehC iChSAoh ia
humanity was not. There was no such
thing as a religion of humanity before
Christ as popular faith and practice; it
took centuries of effort after Christ to
make this religion of humanity faith of
general adoption and sincere practice, and
it is not fair to obscure the great and glo-
rious reform wrought by Christ's religion
and gospel of example against the in
domitable selfishness of man, by citing
the crimes ecclesiasticism has committed
in the name of Christ, even as anarchy
commits murders in the name of liberty
as a war cry.
Ingersoll's methods are always the same.
When he exaggerates the mistakes of
Moses" or pleads for the star route con-
spirators, he Is always Jury lawyer" of
genius whether he blasts the Bible or de-
tends politician in danger Of the peni-
tertiary. We presume today that Inger-
soil would accept a retainer to discredit the
"higher Biblical criticism" of the brilliant
DR.. Briggs. Ingersoll recently spoke at
Unitarian banquet. where he was among
the invited guests, and here is Rev. DR..
John w. Chadwick's candid but kindly
measure of this gifted man:
Jesus OF Nazareth, says Colonel lngersol
added nothing to morality that helped in any
way; and, at the risk of ending with word of
disagreement whore should like to end with
word of sympathy, must sincerely disagree
with that The special moral precepts of Jesus
may be to some extent outgrown; but we have
not outgrown, we shall never outgrow, his spirit,
for it the spirit OF trust it the spirit of
inward truth and purity. it was, above all, the
spirit of compassion for the miserable and sor-
rOwful and sinful-the very spirit Colonel
Iugersoll Of all things most admires. Jesus
added to morality personality alive with this
spirit, and a glorious personality surcharged
with kindness Is worth more for kindness
in the world than all the maxms ever writ
ten The personality of Jesus has been of
incalculable worth to Christendom, softening
the hearts of many hardened by the mon
strous creeds which have been foisted on his
brothers in His name 1t has contributed
nightly to that ideal OF human goodness which
shames the Calvinistic God, and makes the
worship OF Him increasingly impossible for men
of kindly heart If Colonel Ingersoll did but
know it. much of the energy of his own protest
against ecclesiastical and dogmatic Christianity
is his inheritance from one whom Thomas Dek.
ker called, without irrcverence, " the first true
gentleman that ever breathed."