The record-union. [volume] (Sacramento, Calif.) 1891-1903, 1899-08-10


ysius, the despot of Syracuse, is said
to have led from his little capital a
host of eighty thousand infantry, at
tended by innumerable cavalry to make
war upon the smaller communities OF
the island. What matter then If Moses
is said to have led into the wilderness
an army of lighting men altogether dis
proportionate to the assigned limits of
the camp, and that such an army conlo
not have been maintained from any
known magazines of supply? 1t is only
the ignorant or ribald mind that can
accept such arguments as these as
bearing upon the majesty of religious
belief, and Mr.. Ingersoll is to be CEN
sured, if even as an advocate, he gives
to them apparent Importance in hiA
argument.
But Mr.. Ingersoll was not even orig
inal in. his criticism. John William
Colenso, Bishop of the English
Church, had long since made the cal
culations upon which Mr.. IngersoH
based his famous exposition, but Bish-
OPP Colenso was only assailing the lit
eral authority of an historic account.
and was not impugning the truth re-
siding in religious faith.
Mr.. Ingersoll, however, was too gen.
erously endowed with intellectual acu-
men to believe in the secret places of
his being, that any assault upon a
book could invalidate the real and
reasonable sanctions of belief. One
would have thought that a man of his
vigorous understanding would have
simply classed the Bible as literature,
h. II, L Of
man, as they struggle to express their
yearnings for the infinite and the eter-
nal. AS long as man remains moral
being, as long as the loving and duti-
full relations of life will continue to
touch that morality with emotion,
which thus becomes religion in some
rational acceptation of the term, intel
ligent man will find in the Bible, not
authority, but the expression of mans
own belief in his moral and spiritual
nature. And We're the Bibles of the
race destroyed to-day, and all records
of them forever lost, men of future
ages would construct new Bibles, to
take the places of those that were
gone, simply because of intimations
and intuitions that speak to the soul
49,
fined his demonstration too exclusively
to the things of sense, and the wonder
of it is, that with all those lovely and
loving characteristics with which ne
is SO abundantly credited, and which
secured to him the almost extravagant
affection Of wife and daughters to the
very close of his long and busy life,
he could not have allowed something
of these intimations and intuitions
which every loving heart must know
to have some little place in his argu-
ment, as looking to things we may not
comprehend, but which are apprehend-
ed in every act of affection or of duty.
Perhaps it might be claimed that
Mr.. Ingerso1I never by any explicit ut
terance denied the possibility of the
souls continued existence, but yet by
implication his teaching seemed so
greatly to emphasize the doubt. as to
give to it the quality of denial Many of
us are agnostics, and feel it more honor
able to express at times an intellectual
doubt, than to proclaim absolute I'M
Outstanding as to many of the things
that reason does not know. But while
it is altogether honest and honorable
for men to confess to no complete and
comprehensive knowledge of anything
which may transcend the world Of
sense, the agnosticism that this at
titude of mind describes is of very
widely varying qualities. The quality
of the agnosticism which we must as
sociate with Mr.. Ingersoll is unfortun-
ately that of denial. But the agnos-
ticism attributed to those great con-
temporary scholars and scientists,
Huxley, and Spencer, and Tindall,
and many another earnest and honest
investigator is different not only in
degree, but in kind. With these it is
not denial either expressed or implied,
but a frank acknowledgment of the
limitations which bound mans think
ing here, and of suspended judgment
upon all matters, which, because Of
these limitations, are beyond our finite
grasp. Yet in so far as these men are
able to make acknowledgment of any
ultimate truth, they are ever forward
! in the frank acceptance of it. Mr..
Spencer posits a first cause which hu-
man understanding can only interpret
! in terms of intelligence and will, as
one of the very necessities of our think
! ing, and then finally presents that
cause to US as something not our
selves which makes for righteousness.
Mr.. Tyndall, while finding in matter
1.-The promise and the potency of every
order of life feels that any concep-
ton of a universe out of which thought
and emotion have been so wonderfully
evolved, would be manifestly untrue,
| that did not first conceive of these as
| having been involved in the stupen-
dous plan.
| 1t is not for what Mr.. Ingersoll may
have said, but for what he seemed al
ways to carefully refrain from saying,
that an unfavorable Judgment must be
passed upon his work Greater men
! than he, profounder philosophers and
of an ampler scholarship. have not
scrupled, because of any fear for the
qualification of the reason they re-
spected, to make their acknowledg-
ment of things that the mind can dim
ly apprehend, although it may never
fully comprehend upon this bank and
shoal of time
I have said it is the things of sense,
with which Mr. Ingersoll too exclusive
! ly deals: but even out of these very
things of sense, which are undoubted-
ly all we can really know, such a one
as Tennyson can build something OF
eternal hope, as when he says:
We have but faith we cannot know.
For knowledge is of things we see:
And yet we trust 1t comes from Thee,
A beam in darkness, let it grow.
1t was the absence of this note of
faith and trust, and which the very
loving relationships of Mr.. Ingersoll's
life would be thought to awaken, that