The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume V Part 17

I say nothing about people in this connection. The question is: Is the Bible a cruel book? not: Was Miss Nightingale a cruel woman? There have been thousands and thousands of loving, tender and char- itable Mohammedans. Mohammedan mothers love their children as well as Christian mothers can.

Mohammedans have died in defence of the Koran-- died for the honor of an impostor. There were millions of charitable people in India--millions in Egypt--and I am not sure that the world has ever

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produced people who loved one another better than the Egyptians.

I think there are many things in the Old Testament calculated to make man cruel. Mr. Talmage asks: "What has been the effect upon your children? As "they have become more and more fond of the "Scriptures have they become more and more fond "of tearing off the wings of flies and pinning gra.s.s- "hoppers and robbing birds' nests?"

I do not believe that reading the bible would make them tender toward flies or gra.s.shoppers. According to that book, G.o.d used to punish animals for the crimes of their owners. He drowned the animals in a flood. He visited cattle with disease. He bruised them to death with hailstones--killed them by the thousand. Will the reading of these things make children kind to animals? So, the whole system of sacrifices in the Old Testament is calculated to harden the heart. The butchery of oxen and lambs, the killing of doves, the perpetual destruction of life, the con- tinual shedding of blood--these things, if they have any tendency, tend only to harden the heart of child- hood.

The Bible does not stop simply with the killing of animals. The Jews were commanded to kill their

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neighbors--not only the men, but the women; not only the women, but the babes. In accordance with the command of G.o.d, the Jews killed not only their neighbors, but their own brothers; and according to this book, which is the foundation, as Mr. Talmage believes, of all mercy, men were commanded to kill their wives because they differed with them on the subject of religion.

Nowhere in the world can be found laws more un- just and cruel than in the Old Testament.

_Question_. Mr. Talmage wants you to tell where the cruelty of the Bible crops out in the lives of Chris- tians?

_Answer_. In the first place, millions of Christians have been persecutors. Did they get the idea of persecution from the Bible? Will not every honest man admit that the early Christians, by reading the Old Testament, became convinced that it was not only their privilege, but their duty, to destroy heathen nations? Did they not, by reading the same book, come to the conclusion that it was their solemn duty to extirpate heresy and heretics? According to the New Testament, n.o.body could be saved unless he believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. The early Chris-

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tians believed this dogma. They also believed that they had a right to defend themselves and their children from "heretics."

We all admit that a man has a right to defend his children against the a.s.saults of a would-be murderer, and he has the right to carry this defence to the extent of killing the a.s.sailant. If we have the right to kill people who are simply trying to kill the bodies of our children, of course we have the right to kill them when they are endeavoring to a.s.sa.s.sinate, not simply their bodies, but their souls. It was in this way Christians reasoned. If the Testament is right, their reasoning was correct. Whoever believes the New Testament literally--whoever is satisfied that it is absolutely the word of G.o.d, will become a perse- cutor. All religious persecution has been, and is, in exact harmony with the teachings of the Old and New Testaments. Of course I mean with some of the teachings. I admit that there are pa.s.sages in both the Old and New Testaments against persecu- tion. These are pa.s.sages quoted only in time of peace. Others are repeated to feed the flames of war.

I find, too, that reading the Bible and believing the Bible do not prevent even ministers from telling false-

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hoods about their opponents. I find that the Rev.

Mr. Talmage is willing even to slander the dead,-- that he is willing to stain the memory of a Christian, and that he does not hesitate to give circulation to what he knows to be untrue. Mr. Talmage has himself, I believe, been the subject of a church trial. How many of the Christian witnesses against him, in his judgment, told the truth? Yet they were all Bible readers and Bible believers. What effect, in his judgment, did the reading of the Bible have upon his enemies? Is he willing to admit that the testi- mony of a Bible, reader and believer is true? Is he willing to accept the testimony even of ministers?

--of his brother ministers? Did reading the Bible make them bad people? Was it a belief in the Bible that colored their testimony? Or, was it a belief in the Bible that made Mr. Talmage deny the truth of their statements?

_Question_. Mr. Talmage charges you with having said that the Scriptures are a collection of polluted writings?

_Answer_. I have never said such a thing. I have said, and I still say, that there are pa.s.sages in the Bible unfit to be read--pa.s.sages that never should

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have been written--pa.s.sages, whether inspired or uninspired, that can by no possibility do any human being any good. I have always admitted that there are good pa.s.sages in the Bible--many good, wise and just laws--many things calculated to make men better--many things calculated to make men worse.

I admit that the Bible is a mixture of good and bad, of truth and falsehood, of history and fiction, of sense and nonsense, of virtue and vice, of aspiration and revenge, of liberty and tyranny.

I have never said anything against Solomon's Song. I like it better than I do any book that pre- cedes it, because it touches upon the human. In the desert of murder, wars of extermination, polygamy, concubinage and slavery, it is an oasis where the trees grow, where the birds sing, and where human love blossoms and fills the air with perfume. I do not regard that book as obscene. There are many things in it that are beautiful and tender, and it is calculated to do good rather than harm.

Neither have I any objection to the book of Eccle- siastes--except a few interpolations in it. That book was written by a Freethinker, by a philosopher.

There is not the slightest mention of G.o.d in it, nor of another state of existence. All portions in which

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G.o.d is mentioned are interpolations. With some of this book I agree heartily. I believe in the doctrine of enjoying yourself, if you can, to-day. I think it foolish to spend all your years in heaping up treas- ures, not knowing but he who will spend them is to be an idiot. I believe it is far better to be happy with your wife and child now, than to be miserable here, with angelic expectations in some other world.

Mr. Talmage is mistaken when he supposes that all Bible believers have good homes, that all Bible readers are kind in their families. As a matter of fact, nearly all the wife-whippers of the United States are orthodox.

Nine-tenths of the people in the penitentiaries are believers. Scotland is one of the most orthodox countries in the world, and one of the most intem- perate. Hundreds and hundreds of women are arrested every year in Glasgow for drunkenness.

Visit the Christian homes in the manufacturing dis- tricts of England. Talk with the beaters of children and whippers of wives, and you will find them be- lievers. Go into what is known as the "Black "Country," and you will have an idea of the Chris- tian civilization of England.

Let me tell you something about the "Black "Country." There women work in iron; there women

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do the work of men. Let me give you an instance: A commission was appointed by Parliament to ex- amine into the condition of the women in the "Black "Country," and a report was made. In that report I read the following:

"A superintendent of a brickyard where women "were engaged in carrying bricks from the yard to "the kiln, said to one of the women:

"'Eliza, you don't appear to be very uppish this "morning.'"

"'Neither would you be very uppish, sir,' she re- "plied, 'if you had had a child last night.'"

This gives you an idea of the Christian civilization of England.

England and Ireland produce most of the prize- fighters. The scientific burglar is a product of Great Britain. There is not the great difference that Mr.

Talmage supposes, between the morality of Pekin and of New York. I doubt if there is a city in the world with more crime according to the population than New York, unless it be London, or it may be Dublin, or Brooklyn, or possibly Glasgow, where a man too pious to read a newspaper published on Sunday, stole millions from the poor.

I do not believe there is a country in the world

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where there is more robbery than in Christian lands-- no country where more cas.h.i.+ers are defaulters, where more presidents of banks take the money of depositors, where there is more adulteration of food, where fewer ounces make a pound, where fewer inches make a yard, where there is more breach of trust, more respectable larceny under the name of embezzlement, or more slander circulated as gospel.

_Question_. Mr. Talmage insists that there are no contradictions in the Bible--that it is a perfect har- mony from Genesis to Revelation--a harmony as perfect as any piece of music ever written by Beethoven or Handel?

_Answer_. Of course, if G.o.d wrote it, the Bible ought to be perfect. I do not see why a minister should be so perfectly astonished to find that an inspired book is consistent with itself throughout.

Yet the truth is, the Bible is infinitely inconsistent.

Compare the two systems--the system of Jehovah and that of Jesus. In the Old Testament the doctrine of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" was taught. In the New Testament, "forgive your "enemies," and "pray for those who despitefully "use you and persecute you." In the Old Testament

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it is kill, burn, ma.s.sacre, destroy; in the New forgive.

The two systems are inconsistent, and one is just about as far wrong as the other. To live for and thirst for revenge, to gloat over the agony of an enemy, is one extreme; to "resist not evil" is the other extreme; and both these extremes are equally distant from the golden mean of justice.

The four gospels do not even agree as to the terms of salvation. And yet, Mr. Talmage tells us that there are four cardinal doctrines taught in the Bible-- the goodness of G.o.d, the fall of man, the sympathetic and forgiving nature of the Savior, and two desti- nies--one for believers and the other for unbelievers.

That is to say:

1. That G.o.d is good, holy and forgiving.

2. That man is a lost sinner.