The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1899-07-31

| chllQren ana padding of in some or
thodox Canoe
Is this orthodoxy the truth about the
past and future of mankind? Has the
work of God gone to such wreck and
ruin? Are truth and love and goodness
! to be forever defeated in their work of
/ bringing the beings God has made 10
| godlikeness2 Are the mistaken and the
SHINING to be forever kept alive only to
| be forever tortured? Is it as bad as
this? With all the faith of my soul
! believe that it is not. With all the force
of my mind l feel convinced that or
thodoxy misreads the history of man,
mistakes the plan of God in our crea-
| ton, misinterprets the process of the
ages, and utterly miscalculates the
| power of Gods patience and love and
wisdom, as he gives his eternal years
| to the perfecting and blessing of his
| children.
And its dark and dreadful vision OF
devil wrestling from the hand of God
his universe, and wasting it with end
| less sin, and God able to do nothing
| but revenge himself with such hell as
DR.. Brady pictures-all this despairing
view of orthodoxy is nothing but a
| fearful nightmare. from which intelli-
| gent and merciful men and women
| should awaken and bravely clear heir
minds as from a hideous dream. But
there remains for me to put before YOU
| yet another question: Is the order I'M
Ger which we have our being, and are
working out our destiny, as bad as Mr..
| Ingersoll would have us see it?
That address of more than an hours
length, which he read to that great au-
dience in Boston about two months ago,
| had one topic, the Folly of religion. 1t
had one meaning, the foolishness Of
trusting that goodness and love are
over all. The lecture was one long,
gloomy panorama of the evils Of exist
ence and the wrongs of earth All the
diseases, the earthquakes, the famines,
the slaveries, the wars, the crimes, the
ldisappointments, the bereavements that
have made the heavy burden of the
world were given crushing weight
Scenes of human suffering were depict
| ed with dramatic force. The unchang-
| ing and unalterable laws of nature
were presented as ruthless in their
laundering cruelty. Wrong was pic
tured as enthroned and night as on the
scaffold.
| No hint was given that possibly a
race of men is being reared, men of he
roic virtue, of sublime self-mastery, of
| beautiful and tender sympathy under
| this mingled discipline of pain and
pleasure. No hope was painted for us
that an unfolding life of some immortal
robust god-like sort, might explain the
| toilsome way and make it infinitely
worth the travelling.
| Not a word was uttered to encour-
! age faith that wisdom may be working,
| goodness may be getting at It's ends,
| love may be the force of all the forces,
| in this vast and wonderful order whose
deepest meaning. we only begin to dim
| ly guess.
He did not know, the great agnostic
fol ~ Tl1It
| gaunt suspicion he could show against
the justice or the, mercy of the God of
I such a universe as this was sum
moned, every bit of circumstantial evil
ldence that could make nature seem the
enemy of human happiness was dwelt
upon. We were listening not to an i'm
partial judge, helping the Jury to the
wisest, truest verdict, but to an attor-
ney for the prosecution, blind to every
thing except the case he was resolved
to prove against the one he was accus-
| ing.
He did not know, he told US. Thus
| his conclusions were more merciful
than those of orthodoxy. He let the
tragedy of human existence end with
death. He did not have the victims of
! this infinite blunder of creation pur-
sued with an endless hell of pain. But
| he pictured the injustice, the cruelty
of the things that are so remorseless;
feeding cancer with such dainty food,
setting it amid such nerves of sensi
bility to pain; allowing with such pitt
less Indifference the innocent and good
to suffer on the rack and on the cross:
he made this world such a scene of
wrong and agony, with the heavens as
brass above it, that for the life of me
could not see how orthodoxys world
to come, with its hopeless hell and its
lheartless heaven, was anything but the
natural sequel to IngerSolls world that
lis.
| Ah many of you think of Robert In
gersoll as only the enemy of ignorant
and savage superstitions. If you have
| read his every published word, as be-
lieve that I have done, you know that
he never lost an opportunity to cast
doubt and disbelief against the faith in
wisdom and goodness being over all.
He never said: There is no God. But
Everything that he could find to dis
courage mems belief that intelligence
or justice or love are the over-ruling
forces of this universe, he magnifed
could to- make impossible to US such
trust as stayed the heart Of Jesus and
made Him glad and strong to do a
| heavenly Fathers will He made the
faith ridiculous and fatally at fault
with grim reality that any such heav-
emily Father can be the center and the
soul of such a failure as this universe.
Is 1t as bad as he says? Again, I say
with all the force of deepest and most
definite conviction, 1 don't believe it is.
| l will back Ingersoll himself against
| its being so bad Mark the man he
was. What confidence in reason and
truth he had! What a home he reared
upon affection and mutual trust and
! how he believed in thesel What a
Qrsk h AL H..
ness, of liberty, of good, clean living,
of education, of justice-that we must
reap what we sow! Is it such an evil,
cruel, helpless universe in which a sane
sound-hearted man can safely put his
faith in reason, truth, affection, mutual
/ trust, in cheerfulness, freedom, good,
clean living, education, justice? Is that
order to be despised, which out of the
seeming clash Of elements, and the
wild process of the ages produces from
mere matter the brain and the heart
and the home of a Robert Ingersoll?
| DR.. Brady may think it is to be de-
spised. But do we?
| Any man can go about as an apostle
of mistrust, arguing down the tokens
tof a god at work and exag"erating ev-
| cry sign of i'll. Any man can be a
sound misanthrope like the author of
Ecclesiastes, crying: Vanity of van
tiles, all is vanity" 1t is easy to heed
doubling and despair. Lay your finger
upon every sore until it quivers; fix
your suspicious eye on every dark spot
| in the brightness of the day; have
thought alone for life's cares and griefs
with mind that shuts out the sight of
every lesson learned, every noble pow
err gained; brood upon the sin of men
with no appreciation of the growing
| goodness that has made sin of the
deeds which once were the best that
men could do; have the vulture's sight
and scent for carrion, and what foul
and evil universe you will find this one
| Il he