The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume V Part 5

We are not told how Adam learned the language, or how he understood what G.o.d said. I can hardly believe that any man can be created with the know- ledge of a language. Education cannot be ready made and stuffed into a brain. Each person must learn a language for himself. Yet in this account we find a language ready made for man's use. And not only man was enabled to speak, but a serpent also has the power of speech, and the woman holds a conversation with this animal and with her husband; and yet no account is given of how any language was

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learned. G.o.d is described as walking in the garden in the cool of the day, speaking like a man--holding conversations with the man and woman, and occa- sionally addressing the serpent.

In the nursery rhymes of the world there is nothing more childish than this "inspired" account of the creation of man and woman.

The early fathers of the church held that woman was inferior to man, because man was not made for woman, but woman for man; because Adam was made first and Eve afterward. They had not the gallantry of Robert Burns, who accounted for the beauty of woman from the fact that G.o.d practiced on man first, and then gave woman the benefit of his experience. Think, in this age of the world, of a well-educated, intelligent gentleman telling his little child that about six thousand years ago a mysterious being called G.o.d made the world out of his "omnipotence;" then made a man out of some dust which he is supposed to have moulded into form; that he put this man in a garden for the pur- pose of keeping the trees trimmed; that after a little while he noticed that the man seemed lonesome, not particularly happy, almost homesick; that then it oc- curred to this G.o.d, that it would be a good thing for

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the man to have some company, somebody to help him trim the trees, to talk to him and cheer him up on rainy days; that, thereupon, this G.o.d caused a deep sleep to fall on the man, took a knife, or a long, sharp piece of "omnipotence," and took out one of the man's sides, or a rib, and of that made a woman; that then this man and woman got along real well till a snake got into the garden and induced the woman to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; that the woman got the man to take a bite; that afterwards both of them were detected by G.o.d, who was walking around in the cool of the evening, and thereupon they were turned out of the garden, lest they should put forth their hands and eat of the tree of life, and live forever.

This foolish story has been regarded as the sacred, inspired truth; as an account substantially written by G.o.d himself; and thousands and millions of people have supposed it necessary to believe this childish falsehood, in order to save their souls. Nothing more laughable can be found in the fairy tales and folk-lore of savages. Yet this is defended by the leading Presbyterian divine, and those who fail to believe in the truth of this story are called "brazen "faced fools," "deicides," and "blasphemers."

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By this story woman in all Christian countries was degraded. She was considered too impure to preach the gospel, too impure to distribute the sacramental bread, too impure to hand about the sacred wine, too impure to step within the "holy of holies," in the Catholic Churches, too impure to be touched by a priest. Unmarried men were considered purer than husbands and fathers. Nuns were regarded as su- perior to mothers, a monastery holier than a home, a nunnery nearer sacred than the cradle. And through all these years it has been thought better to love G.o.d than to love man, better to love G.o.d than to love your wife and children, better to wors.h.i.+p an imaginary deity than to help your fellow-men.

I regard the rights of men and women equal. In Love's fair realm, husband and wife are king and queen, sceptered and crowned alike, and seated on the self-same throne.

_Question_. Do you still insist that the Old Testa- ment upholds polygamy? Mr. Talmage denies this charge, and shows how terribly G.o.d punished those who were not satisfied with one wife.

_Answer_. I see nothing in what Mr. Talmage has said calculated to change my opinion. It has been

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admitted by thousands of theologians that the Old Testament upholds polygamy. Mr. Talmage is among the first to deny it. It will not do to say that David was punished for the crime of polygamy or concubinage. He was "a man after G.o.d's own "heart." He was made a king. He was a successful general, and his blood is said to have flowed in the veins of G.o.d. Solomon was, according to the ac- count, enriched with wisdom above all human beings.

Was that a punishment for having had so many wives? Was Abraham pursued by the justice of G.o.d because of the crime against Hagar, or for the crime against his own wife? The verse quoted by Mr. Talmage to show that G.o.d was opposed to polygamy, namely, the eighteenth verse of the eight- eenth chapter of Leviticus, cannot by any ingenuity be tortured into a command against polygamy. The most that can be possibly said of it is, that you shall not marry the sister of your wife, while your wife is living. Yet this pa.s.sage is quoted by Mr. Talmage as "a thunder of prohibition against having more "than one wife." In the twentieth chapter of Leviticus it is enacted: "That if a man take a wife "and her mother they shall be burned with fire." A commandment like this shows that he might take his

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wife and somebody else's mother. These pa.s.sages have nothing to do with polygamy. They show whom you may marry, not how many; and there is not in Leviticus a solitary word against polygamy-- not one. Nor is there such a word in Genesis, nor Exodus, nor in the entire Pentateuch--not one word. These books are filled with the most minute directions about killing sheep, and goats and doves; about making clothes for priests, about fas.h.i.+oning tongs and snuffers; and yet, they contain not one word against polygamy. It never occurred to the in- spired writers that polygamy was a crime. Polygamy was accepted as a matter of course. Women were simple property.

Mr. Talmage, however, insists that, although G.o.d was against polygamy, he permitted it, and at the same time threw his moral influence against it.

Upon this subject he says: "No doubt G.o.d per- "mitted polygamy to continue for sometime, just "as he permits murder and arson, theft and gam- "bling to-day to continue, although he is against "them." If G.o.d is the author of the Ten Com- mandments, he prohibited murder and theft, but he said nothing about polygamy. If he was so terribly against that crime, why did he forget to

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mention it? Was there not room enough on the tables of stone for just one word on this subject?

Had he no time to give a commandment against slavery? Mr. Talmage of course insists that G.o.d had to deal with these things gradually, his idea being that if G.o.d had made a commandment against them all at once, the Jews would have had nothing more to do with him.

For instance: if we wanted to break cannibals of eating missionaries, we should not tell them all at once that it was wrong, that it was wicked, to eat missionaries raw; we should induce them first to cook the missionaries, and gradually wean them from raw flesh. This would be the first great step.

We would stew the missionaries, and after a time put a little mutton in the stew, not enough to excite the suspicion of the cannibal, but just enough to get him in the habit of eating mutton without knowing it.

Day after day we would put in more mutton and less missionary, until finally, the cannibal would be perfectly satisfied with clear mutton. Then we would tell him that it was wrong to eat missionary. After the can- nibal got so that he liked mutton, and cared nothing for missionary, then it would be safe to have a law upon the subject.

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Mr. Talmage insists that polygamy cannot exist among people who believe the Bible. In this he is mistaken. The Mormons all believe the Bible. There is not a single polygamist in Utah who does not insist upon the inspiration of the Old and New Testaments.

The Rev. Mr. Newman, a kind of peripatetic consu- lar theologian, once had a discussion, I believe, with Elder Orson Pratt, at Salt Lake City, upon the question of polygamy. It is sufficient to say of this discussion that it is now circulated by the Mormons as a campaign doc.u.ment. The elder overwhelmed the parson.

Pa.s.sages of Scripture in favor of polygamy were quoted by the hundred. The lives of all the patriarchs were brought forward, and poor parson Newman was driven from the field. The truth is, the Jews at that time were much like our forefathers. They were barbarians, and many of their laws were unjust and cruel. Polygamy was the right of all; practiced, as a matter of fact, by the rich and powerful, and the rich and powerful were envied by the poor. In such esteem did the ancient Jews hold polygamy, that the number of Solomons wives was given, simply to en- hance his glory. My own opinion is, that Solomon had very few wives, and that polygamy was not general in Palestine. The country was too poor, and

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Solomon, in all his glory was hardly able to support one wife. He was a poor barbarian king with a limited revenue, with a poor soil, with a spa.r.s.e popu- lation, without art, without science and without power.

He sustained about the same relation to other kings that Delaware does to other States. Mr. Talmage says that G.o.d persecuted Solomon, and yet, if he will turn to the twenty-second chapter of First Chronicles, he will find what G.o.d promised to Solomon. G.o.d, speaking to David, says: "Behold a son shall be born "to thee, who shall be a man of rest, and I will give him "rest from his enemies around about; for his name shall "be Solomon, and I will give peace and quietness "unto Israel in his days. He shall build a house in my "name, and he shall be my son and I will be his father, "and I will establish the throne of his kingdom over "Israel forever." Did G.o.d keep his promise?

So he tells us that David was persecuted by G.o.d, on account of his offences, and yet I find in the twenty-eighth verse of the twenty-ninth chapter of First Chronicles, the following account of the death of David: "And he died in a good old age, full of "days, riches and honor." Is this true?

_Question_. What have you to say to the charge that you were mistaken in the number of years that

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the Hebrews were in Egypt? Mr. Talmage says that they were there 430 years, instead of 215 years.

_Answer_. If you will read the third chapter of Galatians, sixteenth and seventeenth verses, you will find that it was 430 years from the time G.o.d made the promise to Abraham to the giving of the law from Mount Sinai. The Hebrews did not go to Egypt for 215 years after the promise was made to Abraham, and consequently did not remain in Egypt more than 215 years. If Galatians is true, I am right.

Strange that Mr. Talmage should belittle the mira- cles. The trouble with this defender of the faith is that he cares nothing for facts. He makes the strangest statements, and cares the least for proof, of any man I know. I can account for what he says of me only upon the supposition that he has not read my lectures. He may have been misled by the pirated editions; Persons have stolen my lectures, printed the same ones under various names, and filled them with mistakes and things I never said. Mr. C. P. Farrell, of Was.h.i.+ngton, is my only authorized publisher.

Yet Mr. Talmage prefers to answer the mistakes of literary thieves, and charge their ignorance to me.

_Question_. Did you ever attack the character of Queen Victoria, or did you draw any parallel between

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her and George Eliot, calculated to depreciate the reputation of the Queen?

_Answer_. I never said a word against Victoria.

The fact is, I am not acquainted with her--never met her in my life, and know but little of her. I never happened to see her "in plain clothes, reading the "Bible to the poor in the lane,"--neither did I ever hear her sing. I most cheerfully admit that her reputation is good in the neighborhood where she resides. In one of my lectures I drew a parallel between George Eliot and Victoria. I was showing the difference between a woman who had won her position in the world of thought, and one who was queen by chance. This is what I said:

"It no longer satisfies the ambition of a great man "to be a king or emperor. The last Napoleon was "not satisfied with being the Emperor of the French.

"He was not satisfied with having a circlet of gold "about his head--he wanted some evidence that he "had something of value in his head. So he wrote "the life of Julius Caesar that he might become a "member of the French Academy. The emperors, "the kings, the popes, no longer tower above their "fellows. Compare King William with the philoso- "pher Haeckel. The king is one of the 'anointed

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"'of the Most High'--as they claim--one upon "whose head has been poured the divine petroleum "of authority. Compare this king with Haeckel, who "towers an intellectual Colossus above the crowned "mediocrity. Compare George Eliot with Queen "Victoria. The queen is clothed in garments given "her by blind fortune and unreasoning chance, while "George Eliot wears robes of glory, woven in the "loom of her own genius. The world is beginning "to pay homage to intellect, to genius, to heart."

I said not one word against Queen Victoria, and did not intend to even intimate that she was not an ex- cellent woman, wife and mother. I was simply trying to show that the world was getting great enough to place a genius above an accidental queen. Mr. Tal- mage, true to the fawning, cringing spirit of ortho- doxy, lauds the living queen and cruelly maligns the genius dead. He digs open the grave of George Eliot, and tries to stain the sacred dust of one who was the greatest woman England has produced. He calls her "an adultress." He attacks her because she was an atheist--because she abhorred Jehovah, denied the inspiration of the Bible, denied the dogma of eternal pain, and with all her heart despised the Presbyterian creed. He hates her because she was great and brave

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and free--because she lived without "faith" and died without fear--because she dared to give her honest thought, and grandly bore the taunts and slanders of the Christian world.

George Eliot tenderly carried in her heart the burdens of our race. She looked through pity's tears upon the faults and frailties of mankind. She knew the springs and seeds of thought and deed, and saw, with cloudless eyes, through all the winding ways of greed, ambition and deceit, where folly vainly plucks with thorn-pierced hands the fading flowers of selfish joy--the highway of eternal right. Whatever her relations may have been--no matter what I think, or others say, or how much all regret the one mistake in all her self-denying, loving life--I feel and know that in the court where her own conscience sat as judge, she stood acquitted--pure as light and stainless as a star.

How appropriate here, with some slight change, the wondrously poetic and pathetic words of Laertes at Ophelia's grave:

_Leave her i' the earth; And from her fair and unpolluted flesh May violets spring!

I tell thee, churlish priest, A ministering angel shall this woman be, When thou liest howling!_