The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1903-11-29

ate appeal The memorable laws Of
demand and supply affect oratory as
well as the more material commodl-
ties. OF old the ambitious youth stud
led to become an orator, in the hope
that by his eloquence he might achieve
a seat in the legislative hall. Now he
plots to become millionaire, for he
knows full we'll that the surest way TO
obtain the toga, is not to earn it by
cuItivating mental powers to be de-
voted to public service; but to buy it
from the bosses who lead the ward
heelers - those modern Pretorian
guards who sell Scholarships as their
prototypes sold the imperial purple
for so much gold counted down upon
the drunheads.
The press has also been potent in
strumentality in procuring the passing
Of the orator. for people do not care
to be jostled in a crowd when they can
read the speeches next morning while
comfortably seated at the breakfast
table.
Whatever the reason may be. the fact
is patent that the voices which Of old
could stir the blood of listeners as with
the blare of trumpets, and Jingle their
eyelids to tears, have gone into the
great silence, and their successors
come not, for commercialism has dis
couraged the orator and driven him
from the path along which high am
bition once pointed the way to fame.
I Ingersoll held the stage longer than
any of his compeers, because he left
the beaten path and discussed the
problem Of the ages fearlessly and elo-
quently from his own point of view.
He was not-as has sometimes been
said, IAN infidel for revenue only"
He was an honest apostle Of the gospel
of humiliation. He believed in eter-
nal death as sincerely as Calvin be-
lieved in eternal damnation, and he
roasted orthodoxy in speech as relent-
lessly as Calvin roasted Servetus at
the stake. Ingersoll believed that the
dying infant passed on forever-never
to live again, save in the grasses and
the flowers. Calvin believed that God
snatched the smiling child from it's
mothers arms, only to hurl it's pre-
destined baby soul into an abyss of
unending torture. Ingersoll denied
the existence of personal God, or of
a pre-arranged fate for man. Calvin
asserted that there was an individual
Creator, whose delight was to call in
to existence millions of souls, whom in
the hour of their birth he foredoonsed
to eternal flames. Both Calvin and
Ingersoll were honest in their beliefs,
, and both-in my opinion-were wrong.
Ingersoll was unconsciously friend
of true religion, for he did 1t a great
service by his fearless assaults upon
it's errors. Christianity, to my mind,
+ is beautiful ship, ploughing through
the deeps of the Universe, and freight
ed with the hopes OF world. In her
journey of many centuries barnacles
have loaded themselves upon her prov
and keel, and chung to her sides, and
impeded her progress through the
seas. Ingersoll has compelled her Off
GERS to dry-dock her, and scrape off
some of these offspring of the blindness
and foulness of the waters.
I suppose that few intelligent men
ever did believe that Jonah for three
days occupied apartments in the int.
rior of whale; or that the centrifugal
and centripetal forces ceased to whirl
at the ipse dixit of Joshua; or that
thousands of Israelites followed Moses
around and around for forty years, like
| blind horses in bark mill, trying to
| escape from desert so small that a
| boy on a bicycle could have crossed il
| in any direction IL two days.
/ That the growing intelligence o
mankind is banishing from orthodox!
! these allegories and fables of the Bible
does not affect the central truths
preached by Jesus Christ, any NOR
than the variations of the needle caused
i by mounds of iron affect the eterna
verify of the magnetic compass. Ths
world of thought moves forward from
| the darkness of ignorance into the Ugh
| of progress, under the spur of an In
gersoll, as surely as the world of mat
! ter rushes onward through space I'M
| der the lash of the centrifugal force
Who shall regret the advance, or re-
| fuse a measure of praise to the fear,
less souls who lead it? Even Presby-
i terians must feel better, now that the
Galileos of their General Synod have
banished from their creed the kindly
doctrine of infant damnation, and the
cheerful prospect of predestined hell.
The late Benjamin F. Butler once re-
lated in my hearing an incident of his
student life at an orthodox college.
The rules required every scholar to at
tend upon Divine Service three times
every Sunday. "One Monday morn
ing" said Butler, 81 sent letter to the
President of the college, requesting to
be exempted from compliance with this
rule. I recalled the fact to the Pres
ident, that in his sermon of the day
before, he had stated that probably not
more than one soul. in twenty would be
elected for salvation; that the other
nineteen, in order to illustrate the
glory of God, must burn forever, and
that their sufferings would be greater
in proportion as their opportunities
while on earth for religious instruc-
ton were larger. / reminded the Pres
ident that the proportion of one to nine
teen would not only exclude ali the stu
dents from salvation, but that ever
some of the professors would be placed
on the fuel pile. said that I could moi
hope to be preferred to a college pro-
fessor, and since had to go to he'll
anyhow, 1 did not wish, on account OF
having listened to three sermons 6