The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1896-04-15
REPLIES TO BOB.
A Methodist Minister on the Lecture
of Colonel Ingersoll.


CHICAGO, April 14-Dr. John D.
D. John, ex-president of the Depauw
university and a well known Methodist
minister, replied this evening to the
address of Colonel Ingersoll, made at
the Militant church on Sunday. Mr..
John said in part:
81 do not intend to abuse Mr.. Inger-
soil. Abuse Is not argument. He has
presented some difficult questions to
the defenders of the Christian faith.
1t is not a sufficient answer to say ne
is a blasphemer. That is to beg the
question. Mr.. Ingersoll claims that the
Christian religion and its reputed au-
thor are both man-made and, there
fore, no better than the man who made
them. He objects to the reputed au-
thor of the Bible on the ground that,
like the man who made him, he is lg-
norant, cruel, savage. unjust, immoral,
inconsistent, unfaithful; and that he IS
opposed to art, science, education, pro-
gress and liberty. He objects to
THE CHRISTIAN SCHEME
on the broad ground that it is un-
scientific, that is having been made
by unscientifi men, the Christian
scheme is contrary to fact, unnatural,
superstitious and not adapted to the
task it proposes. It came to teach
men of duty and destiny-not to teach
art, science or literature. Judge the
Bible by what it says of duty and des-
tiny, and not by what it omits saying
of the things it did not come to teach.
Life is the gift of God in trust The
most refined ideals of justice demand
that a trust once accepted must be sur
rendered according to its terms, and
that the bestower of such trust may
of right determine the conditions OF
the bestowal. But
THE AGNOSTIC REPLIES
that he was not consulted about the
trust and tina. it is unjust to make
him a compulsory party to the trans
action. He has, however. accepted the
terms of the trust and he stoutly
claims all the advantages arising
therefrom. Attempt to relieve MIN OF
his embarra ssment by taking his HE
and he protects himself against your
we'll meant endeavors.
'FWhy did not God, with whom mira
Gle is 50 easy, says Ny Ingersoll, make
the Israelites at once what he wanted
them to be without educating them
through The horrors of war and slaV-
cry? Because he could not. God can
make clods the way he wants them,
and so they will remain but he cannot
make. parallel lines meet, for they VIII
no longer be parallel and he cannot
make men virtuous against their wills.
for they will no longer be men.
but Mr.. Ingersoll raises the chief
objection against God before of his
proposed dealing with men in the next
world.
HE HATES HE'LL,
he says. and so do I, but neither of US
can hate it out of existence. He'll is
already here The majority of man
kind are already in its fires. But the
hell TO come is not the one described
by Mr.. Ingersoll, and long ago rejected
by intelligent Christians. There is no
hell, here or hereafter other than that
whose fires are kindled by the law of
sowing and reaping. He'll has already
come because sin has come and it will
remain as long as sin endures.
"All the intellectual objections
against the Bible may be put under
the one general charge that it is I'M
scientific, that is, that it is contrary
to fact, unnatural, superstitious and
not adapted to its work. Does the
Bible conflict with any known fact of
modern science? If SO that much of it
is not inspired If not, it must have
been inspired, for the best astronomi-
cal. geological and biological knowl-
edge contemporary with the age of the
sacred writers was a chaotic
MASS OF IGNORANCE.
If YOU had been guessing 5000 years
ago about the creation of ight-yea,
less than a century ago, you would
have guessed the sun first and light
simultaneously or afterwards. But
Moses made a happier guess. He saw
without the spectroscope, what our
generation has seen with one"