Col. Ingersoll began, "Only a few years ago the pulpit was almost supreme. The palace was almost in the shadow of the cathedral, and the power behind every throne was a priest. Man was held in physical slavery by kings, and in a mental prison by the church. He was allowed to hold no opinions as to where he came from, nor as to where he was going. It was sufficient for him to do the labor and believe the kings would do the governing and the priests the thinking—and, my God, what thinking! If the world had obeyed the priests we would all be idiots tonight. The eagle of intellect would have given way to the blind bat of faith. They were the rack, the faggot, the thumbscrew in this world, and hell in the next. Only a few years ago no man could express an honest thought unless he agreed with the church. The church has been a perpetual beggar. It has never plowed, it never sowed, it never spun, yet Solomon in all his glory was not so arrayed. Thanks to modern thought, the brain of the nineteenth century, to Voltaire, Paine, Hume, to all the free men, that beggar—the church—is no longer upon horseback; and it fills me with joy to state that even its walking is not now good. Only a little while ago a priest was thought more than human. Nobody dared contradict the minister. Now there are other learned professions. There are doctors, lawyers, writers, books, newspapers, and the priest has hundreds of rivals.
The priest grew jealous, hateful; he was always thankful for an epidemic or pestilence, so that people would turn to him in despair. In our country all the men of intellect were in the pulpit once. Now there are so many avenues to distinction the men of brain, heart and red blood have left the pulpit and gone to useful things. I do not say all. There are still some men of mind in the pulpit, but they are nearer infidels than any others. Where do we get our ministers? A young man, without constitution enough to be wicked, without health enough to enjoy the things of this world, naturally, fixes his gaze on high. He is educated, sent to a university where he is taught that it is criminal to think. Stuffed with a creed, he comes out a shepherd. Most of them are intellectual shreds and patches, mental ravelings, selvage. Every pulpit is a pillory in which stands a convict; every member of the church stands over him with a club, called a creed. He is an intellectual slave, and dare not preach his honest thought. There are thousands of good men in the pulpit, honest men. I am simply describing the average shepherd; they tell me "they've been called," that Almighty God selected them. He looked all over the world and said: "Now, there's a man I want!" And what selections! Shakespeare was not called. Yet he has done more for this world than all the ministers who have ever lived in it. Beethoven! He was not called. Raphael was not called. He was all an accident. All the inventors, discoverers, poets—God never called one of them; he turned his attention to popes, cardinals, priests, exhorters; and what selections he has made! It's astonishing.
In the United States a great many ministers have been good enough to take me for a text. Among others the Rev. Mr. Talmage, of Brooklyn. I have nothing to say about his reputation. It has nothing to do with the question. Some ministers think he has more gesticulation than grace. Some call him a pious pantaloon, a Christian clown; but such remarks, I think, are born of envy. He is the only Presbyterian minister in the United States who can draw an audience. He stands at the head of the denomination, and I answer him. He's a strange man. I believe he's orthodox, or intellectual pride would prevent his saying these things. He believes in a literal resurrection of the dead; that we shall see countless bones flying through the air. He has some charges against me, and he has denied some of my statements. He has produced what he calls arguments, and I am going to answer some of the charges. Next Sunday afternoon, at 2 o'clock; in this place, I shall have a matinee, and answer his arguments. He says I am the champion blasphemer. What is blasphemy? To contradict a priest? to have a mind of your own? Whoever takes a step in advance is a blasphemer. Blasphemy is what a last year's leaf says to a this year's bud. To deny that Mohammed is the prophet of God is not blasphemy in New York. It is in Constantinople. It is a question, then, largely of Geography. It depends on where you are. The missionary who laughs at a modern God is a blasphemer. In a Catholic country whoever says Mary is not the mother of God is a blasphemer. In a Protestant country to say she is the mother of God is blasphemy. Everything has been blasphemy. My doctrine is this: He is a blasphemer who refuses to tell his honest thought; who is not true to himself; who enslaves his fellow man; who charges that God was once in favor of slavery. If there is any God, that man is a blasphemer. They're afraid we'll injure God. How? Is infinite goodness and mercy to become livid with wrath because a finite being expresses an opinion? I cannot help the infinite. That man only is the good man who helps his fellow man. I know then who would do anything for God, who doesn't need it, but nothing for men, who do need it. Why should God be so particular about my believing his book? It's no more his work than the stars of gravitation. Yet I may declare that the earth is flat, and he'll not damn me for that. But if I make a mistake about that book I'm gone. I can blaspheme the multiplication table and deify the power of the wedge—in fact, the less I know the better my chance will be. I say that book is not inspired, and there is no infinitely good God who will damn one human soul. At the judgment, if I am mistaken I own up—I am here, I do not know where I came from, nor where I am going—I'll be honest about it. I am on a ship and not on speaking terms with the captain, but I propose to have a happy voyage, and the best way is to do what you can to make your fellow passengers happy. If we run into a good port, I'll be as happy an angel as you'll meet that day. Blasphemy is the cry of a defeated priest—the black flag of theology—it shows where argument stops and slander and persecution begin. I am told by Mr. Talmage that whoever contradicts this word is a fool, a howling wolf, one of the assassins of God. I presume the gentleman is honest. Take Mr. Talmage, now, he is a good man. Mr. Humboldt, he was another good man. What Humboldt knew and what Talmage didn't know would make a library.
The next charge is that I have said the universe was made of nothing, according to the bible. False in one thing, false in all, he says. Think of that rule. Let us apply that to man. If the world was created, what was it make of? and who made that? If the Lord created it, what did He make it of? Nothing. That's all He had. No sides, no top, nothing. Yet God had lived there forever. What did He think about? What did He do? Nothing. Nothing had ever happened. All at once He made something. What did He make it of? Mr. Talmage explains.
He says if I knew anything I would know that God made this world out of His omnipotence. He might just as well made it out of His memory. What is omnipotence? Is it a raw material? The weakest man in the world can lift as much nothing as God. Yet He made this world out of His omnipotence. It is so stated by a doctor of divinity, and I should think such divinity would need a doctor! I don't believe this. I believe this universe has existed throughout all eternity—everything. All that is, is God. I do not give to that universe a personality that wants man to get his knees into dust and his fingers in holy water; that wants some body to ring a bell or eat a wafer. I am a part of this universe, and I believe all there is, is all the God there is. I may be mistaken; I don't know. I just give my best opinion. If there's any heaven, I'll give it there. But there'll be no discussion in heaven. Hell is the only place where mental improvement will be possible.
I have said, it is charged, that the bible says the world was made in six days. He says I don't understand Hebrew. The bible says the world was made in six days. God didn't work nights—evening and morning were the first day. God rested on the seventh day, and sanctified it. That, they say, didn't mean days; it meant good whiles. He made the world in six good whiles. Adam was made, I think along about Saturday. If the account is correct, it's only 6,000 years since man made his appearance. We know that to be false. A few years ago a gentleman who was going to California in the cars met a minister. They came to the place called the Sink of the Humboldt, the most desolate place in the world. Just imagine perdition with the fire out. The traveler asked the minister whether God made the earth in six days, and the minister said he did. Then don't you think, said he, He could have put in another day's work to great advantage right here? I am charged, too, with saying that the sun was not made till the fourth day, whereas, according to the bible, vegetation began on the third day, before there was any light. But Mr. Talmage says there was light without the sun. They got light, he says, from the crystallization of rocks. A nice thing to raise a crop of corn by. There may have been volcanoes, he says. How'd you like to farm it, and depend on volcanic glare to raise a crop? That's what they call religious science. God won't damn a man for things like that. What else? The aurora borealis! A great cucumber country! It's strange He never thought of glow worms! Imagine it! a Presbyterian divine gravely saying vegetation could grow by the light of the crystallization of rocks—by the light of volcanoes in other worlds, probably now extinct.
He says of me, too in his pulpit, that I was in favor of the circulation of immoral literature. Let me tell you the truth. Several gentlemen, so-called, were trying to exclude from the mails, books called infidel. I said the law should be modified. It is impossible for anybody to reach the depth of one who will print or circulate obscene books. One of my objections to the bible is that it contains obscene stories. Any book, couched in decent language, should have the liberty of the United States mails. Where books are immoral and obscene, I say, burn them, and have always said it. Mr. Talmage said what he knew to be untrue. He said it out of hatred, and because he cannot answer the arguments I have urged. I believe in pure books and pure literature. But when a God writes there is no excuse for Him. In Shakespeare we say obscene things are impure—we do not say they are inspired. That I have falsified the records of the bible showing the period of Jewish slavery, is another of the charges against me. That slavery extended over a period of 215 years; and he proceeded to substantiate this statement by being through a long and somewhat complicated genealogical table. If I made any misstatement I was misled by the new testament. Mr. Talmage may settle with St. Paul. If you can depend on what my friend Paul says, the Jews, in 215 years, increased from seventy persons till they had 600,000 men of war. I know it isn't so, and so does any man who knows anything. For such an increase as this each woman must have borne somewhat over fifty-seven children, and every child lived.
The next charge is that I have laughed at holy things. Holy things! The priest always says: "Now don't laugh; look solemn; this is no laughing matter." There's nothing a priest hates like mirthfulness. He despises a smile. I read in the bible that God gave a recipe to Aaron for making hair-oil and said if anybody made any like it, kill him. Well, I don't believe it. The penalty for infringing on that patent was death. Do you believe an infinite God gave a recipe for hair-oil? Is it possible for absurdity to go beyond that? That's what they call a holy thing. And water for baptism! Do you believe God will look for this water-mark on the soul?
The next charge is that I misquote the scriptures. That's because I don't know Hebrew. Why didn't He write to me in English? If He wishes to hold a gentleman responsible, why doesn't He address him in his native tongue? Why write His word in such a way that hundreds of thousands make their living explaining it? If I'd only understood Hebrew I would have known God didn't make Eve out of a rib. He made her out of Adam's side. How did He get it out? Well, I suppose He cut it out with a kind of a splinter of His omnipotence! Then our mother was made from a rib. When you consider the material used it was the most successful job ever done. There's even a serpent in the bible that knows a language. It won't do. Sin, how did it come into the world? Where did the serpent come from? He was wicked. Adam's sin did not make him bad. Then there was sin in the world before Adam. There's no sense in it—not a particle. Then Talmage touches me upon the flood. His flood didn't come to America, because America was not discovered then. He says it was a partial flood. Then why did they have to take any birds in the ark? How did Noah get the animals in the ark? Talmage says it was through the instinct to get out of the rain. According to the bible they went in before the rain began. Dr. Scott says the angels helped carry them in. Imagine an angel with an animal under each wing. It must have rained 800 feet a day for forty days. Why does Talmage try to explain a miracle? The beauty of a miracle is it cannot be explained. The moment the church begins to explain the church is gone. All it's got to do is swear it is so. The ark landed on Ararat, which is 17,000 feet high. There was only one window, twenty-two inches square. Talmage says the window ran clear around the ark. The bible doesn't say so. That's Brooklyn; that's no bible.
If the bible account is true the ark must have struck bottom on the top of a mountain. Would any but a God of mercy and kindness people a world, and then drown them all? A God cruel enough to drown His own children ought not to have the impudence to tell me how to bring up mine. Why did He save eight of the same kind of people to take a fresh start? Why didn't He make a fresh lot, kill His snake, and give His children a fair show? It won't do.
Talmage says the bible does not favor polygamy and slavery. There was room enough on the table of stone for saying man should only have one wife and no slaves. If not, God might have written it on the other side. David and Solomon were pursued of God, but they had a pretty good time of it. Most anybody would be willing to be pursued that way. There is not a word in the old testament against slavery or polygamy. Frederick Douglas, a slave in Maryland, is the greatest man that state ever produced. He was enslaved by Christians. Why did God pay so much attention to blasphemers, and so little to slaveholders and robbers? I am opposed to any God that was ever in favor of slavery. The bible upholds polygamy, and that's the reason I don't uphold the bible. The most glorious temple ever erected is the home—that's my church. I've misquoted the story of Jonah, Talmage says. When somebody had been guilty of blasphemy the winds rose; they tried to get Jonah ashore, but couldn't do it. The sea waxed. He was swallowed by a whale. The people of Minerva wrapped all their cattle up in sack-cloth, and if anything would have pleased God I should think that would. Jonah sat under a gourd, and God made a worm out of some omnipotence he had left over, and set it work on the ground. Talmage doesn't think Jonah was in the whale's belly—he said in his mouth. Well, judging from the doctor's photograph, that explanation would be quite natural to him. He says he might have been in the whale's stomach, and avoided the action of the gastric juice by walking up and down. Imagine Jonah, sitting on a back tooth, leaning against the upper jaw, longingly looking through the open mouth for signs of land! But that's scripture and you've got to believe it or be damned. Let me say his brother preachers will not thank Talmage for his explanations. I don't believe it, and if I am to be damned for it, I'll accept it cheerfully.
They say I was defeated for Governor of Illinois because I was an infidel, and that I am an infidel because I was defeated. That's logic. Now I'll tell you. They asked me whether I was an infidel, and I said I was! I was defeated. I preserved my manhood and lost an office. If everybody were as frank as I was, some men now in office would be private citizens. I would rather be what I am than hold any office in the world and be a slimy hypocrite.
Next they say I slandered my parents because I do not believe what they believed. My father at one time believed the bible to be the inspired word of God. He was an honorable man, and told me to read the bible for myself and be honest. He lived long enough to believe that the old testament was not the word of God. He had not in his life as much happiness as I have in one year. I hope my children will dishonor me by being nearer right than I am. If I have made a mistake, I want my children to correct it. My mother died when I was 2 years old. Were she living tonight, or if she does live, she would say, be absolutely true to yourself and preserve your manhood. If Talmage had been born in Constantinople he would have been a dervish. He is what he is because he can't help it. His head is just that shape. I am taking away the hope and consolation of the world, he says. His consolation is that ninety-nine out of every hundred are going to hell. His church was founded by John Calvin, a murderer. Better have no heaven than a hell. I would rather God would commit suicide this minute than that a single soul should go to hell. I want no Presbyterian consolation, I want no fore-ordination, no consolation, no damnation.
[Col. Ingersoll concluded with a few remarks about the bible women, saying that women today are as true to the gallows as Mary Magdalene was to the cross.]
Wherever there are women there are heroines. Shakespeare's women are vastly superior to the bible women. I am accused of putting out the light-houses on the shores of the other world. The Christians are trimming invisible wicks and pouring in allegorical oil. The Christian is willing wife, children and parents shall burn if only he can sing and have a harp. Mr. Talmage can see countless millions burn in hell without decreasing the length of his orthodox smile.
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg