The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume V Part 29

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he was a Catholic, the Protestants would as a body combine against him. Why? The churches have no confidence in each other. Why? Because they are acquainted with each other.

As a matter of fact, the infidel has a thousand times more reason to vote against the Christian, than the Christian has to vote against the infidel.

The Christian believes in a book superior to the Const.i.tution--superior to all Const.i.tutions and all laws. The infidel believes that the Const.i.tution and laws are superior to any book. He is not controlled by any power beyond the seas or above the clouds.

He does not receive his orders from Rome, or Sinai.

He receives them from his fellow-citizens, legally and const.i.tutionally expressed. The Christian believes in a power greater than man, to which, upon the peril of eternal pain, he must bow. His allegiance, to say the best of it, is divided. The Christian puts the for- tune of his own soul over and above the temporal welfare of the entire world; the infidel puts the good of mankind here and now, beyond and over all.

There was a time in New England when only church members were allowed to vote, and it may be instructive to state the fact that during that time Quakers were hanged, women were stripped, tied to

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carts, and whipped from town to town, and their babes sold into slavery, or exchanged for rum. Now in that same country, thousands and thousands of infidels vote, and yet the laws are nearer just, women are not whipped and children are not sold.

If all the convicts in all the penitentiaries of the United States could be transported to some island in the sea, and there allowed to make a government for themselves, they would pa.s.s better laws than John Calvin did in Geneva. They would have clearer and better views of the rights of men, than unconvicted Christians used to have. I do not say that these convicts are better people, but I do say that, in my judgment, they would make better laws. They cer- tainly could not make worse.

If these convicts were taken from the prisons of the United States, they would not dream of uniting church and state. They would have no religious test. They would allow every man to vote and to be voted for, no matter what his religious views might be. They would not dream of whipping Quakers, of burning Unitarians, of imprisoning or burning Uni- versalists or infidels. They would allow all the people to guess for themselves. Some of these convicts, of course, would believe in the old ideas, and would insist upon the suppression of free thought. Those coming from Delaware would probably repeat with great gusto the opinions of Justice Comegys, and insist that the whipping-post was the handmaid of Christianity.

It would be hard to conceive of a much worse government than that founded by the Puritans.

They took the Bible for the foundation of their political structure. They copied the laws given to Moses from Sinai, and the result was one of the worst governments that ever disgraced this world.

They believed the Old Testament to be inspired.

They believed that Jehovah made laws for all people and for all time. They had not learned the hypoc- risy that believes and avoids. They did not say: This law was once just, but is now unjust; it was once good, but now it is infamous; it was given by G.o.d once, but now it can only be obeyed by the devil. They had not reached the height of biblical exegesis on which we find the modern theologian perched, and who tells us that Jehovah has reformed.

The Puritans were consistent. They did what people must do who honestly believe in the inspiration of the Old Testament. If G.o.d gave laws from Sinai what right have we to repeal them?

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As people have gained confidence in each other, they have lost confidence in the sacred Scriptures.

We know now that the Bible can not be used as the foundation of government. It is capable of too many meanings. n.o.body can find out exactly what it upholds, what it permits, what it denounces, what it denies. These things depend upon what part you read. If it is all true, it upholds everything bad and denounces everything good, and it also denounces the bad and upholds the good. Then there are pa.s.sages where the good is denounced and the bad commanded; so that any one can go to the Bible and find some text, some pa.s.sage, to uphold anything he may desire. If he wishes to enslave his fellow- men, he will find hundreds of pa.s.sages in his favor.

If he wishes to be a polygamist, he can find his authority there. If he wishes to make war, to exter- minate his neighbors, there his warrant can be found.

If, on the other hand, he is oppressed himself, and wishes to make war upon his king, he can find a battle-cry. And if the king wishes to put him down, he can find text for text on the other side. So, too, upon all questions of reform. The teetotaler goes there to get his verse, and the moderate drinker finds within the sacred lids his best excuse.

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Most intelligent people are now convinced that the bible is not a guide; that in reading it you must exercise your reason; that you can neither safely reject nor accept all; that he who takes one pa.s.sage for a staff, trips upon another; that while one text is a light, another blows it out; that it is such a ming- ling of rocks and quicksands, such a labyrinth of clews and snares--so few flowers among so many nettles and thorns, that it misleads rather than di- rects, and taken altogether, is a hindrance and not a help.

Another important point made by Mr. Talmage is, that if the Bible is thrown away, we will have nothing left to swear witnesses on, and that consequently the administration of justice will become impossible.

There was a time when the Bible did not exist, and if Mr. Talmage is correct, of course justice was im- possible then, and truth must have been a stranger to human lips. How can we depend upon the testi- mony of those who wrote the Bible, as there was no Bible in existence while they were writing, and con- sequently there was no way to take their testimony, and we have no account of their having been sworn on the Bible after they got it finished. It is extremely sad to think that all the nations of antiquity were left

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entirely without the means of eliciting truth. No wonder that Justice was painted blindfolded.

What perfect fetichism it is, to imagine that a man will tell the truth simply because he has kissed an old piece of sheepskin stained with the saliva of all cla.s.ses. A farce of this kind adds nothing to the testimony of an honest man; it simply allows a rogue to give weight to his false testimony. This is really the only result that can be accomplished by kissing the Bible. A desperate villain, for the purpose of getting revenge, or making money, will gladly go through the ceremony, and ignorant juries and su- perst.i.tious judges will be imposed upon. The whole system of oaths is false, and does harm instead of good. Let every man walk into court and tell his story, and let the truth of the story be judged by its reasonableness, taking into consideration the charac- ter of the witness, the interest he has, and the posi- tion he occupies in the controversy, and then let it be the business of the jury to ascertain the real truth --to throw away the unreasonable and the impossi- ble, and make up their verdict only upon what they believe to be reasonable and true. An honest man does not need the oath, and a rascal uses it simply to accomplish his purpose. If the history of courts

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proved that every man, after kissing the Bible, told the truth, and that those who failed to kiss it some- times lied, I should be in favor of swearing all people on the Bible; but the experience of every lawyer is, that kissing the Bible is not always the preface of a true story. It is often the ceremonial embroidery of a falsehood.

If there is an infinite G.o.d who attends to the affairs of men, it seems to me almost a sacrilege to publicly appeal to him in every petty trial. If one will go into any court, and notice the manner in which oaths are administered,--the utter lack of solemnity--the matter-of-course air with which the whole thing is done, he will be convinced that it is a form of no importance. Mr. Talmage would probably agree with the judge of whom the following story is told:

A witness was being sworn. The judge noticed that he was not holding up his hand. He said to the clerk: "Let the witness hold up his right hand."

"His right arm was shot off," replied the clerk. "Let "him hold up his left, then." "That was shot off, too, "your honor." "Well, then, let him raise one foot; "no man can be sworn in this court without holding "something up."

My own opinion is, that if every copy of the Bible in the world were destroyed, there would be some way to ascertain the truth in judicial proceedings; and any other book would do just as well to swear witnesses upon, or a block in the shape of a book covered with some kind of calfskin could do equally well, or just the calfskin would do. Nothing is more laughable than the performance of this ceremony, and I have never seen in court one calf kissing the skin of another, that I did not feel humiliated that such things were done in the name of Justice.

Mr. Talmage has still another argument in favor of the preservation of the Bible. He wants to know what book could take its place on the centre- table.

I admit that there is much force in this. Suppose we all admitted the Bible to be an uninspired book, it could still be kept on the centre-table. It would be just as true then as it is now. Inspiration can not add anything to a fact; neither can inspiration make the immoral moral, the unjust just, or the cruel merci- ful. If it is a fact that G.o.d established human slavery, that does not prove slavery to be right; it simply shows that G.o.d was wrong. If I have the right to use my reason in determining whether the Bible is

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inspired or not, and if in accordance with my reason I conclude that it is inspired, I have still the right to use my reason in determining whether the command- ments of G.o.d are good or bad. Now, suppose we take from the Bible every word upholding slavery, every pa.s.sage in favor of polygamy, every verse commanding soldiers to kill women and children, it would be just as fit for the centre-table as now. Sup- pose every impure word was taken from it; suppose that the history of Tamar was left out, the biography of Lot, and all other barbarous accounts of a barbarous people, it would look just as well upon the centre- table as now.

Suppose that we should become convinced that the writers of the New Testament were mistaken as to the eternity of punishment, or that all the pa.s.sages now relied upon to prove the existence of perdition were shown to be interpolations, and were thereupon expunged, would not the book be dearer still to every human being with a heart? I would like to see every good pa.s.sage in the Bible preserved. I would like to see, with all these pa.s.sages from the Bible, the loftiest sentiments from all other books that have ever been uttered by men in all ages and of all races, bound in one volume, and to see that

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volume, filled with the greatest, the purest and the best, become the household book.

The average Bible, on the average centre-table, is about as much used as though it were a solid block.

It is scarcely ever opened, and people who see its covers every day are unfamiliar with its every page.

I admit that some things have happened some- what hard to explain, and tending to show that the Bible is no ordinary book. I heard a story, not long ago, bearing upon this very subject.

A man was a member of the church, but after a time, having had bad luck in business affairs, became somewhat discouraged. Not feeling able to con- tribute his share to the support of the church, he ceased going to meeting, and finally became an average sinner. His bad luck pursued him until he found himself and his family without even a crust to eat. At this point, his wife told him that she be- lieved they were suffering from a visitation of G.o.d, and begged him to restore family wors.h.i.+p, and see if G.o.d would not do something for them. Feeling that he could not possibly make matters worse, he took the Bible from its resting place on a shelf where it had quietly slumbered and collected the dust of many months, and gathered his family about him.

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He opened the sacred volume, and to his utter as- tonishment, there, between the divine leaves, was a ten-dollar bill. He immediately dropped on his knees. His wife dropped on hers, and the children on theirs, and with streaming eyes they returned thanks to G.o.d. He rushed to the butcher's and bought some steak, to the baker's and bought some bread, to the grocer's and got some eggs and b.u.t.ter and tea, and joyfully hastened home. The supper was cooked, it was on the table, grace was said, and every face was radiant with joy. Just at that happy moment a knock was heard, the door was opened, and a police- man entered and arrested the father for pa.s.sing counterfeit money.

Mr. Talmage is also convinced that the Bible is inspired and should be preserved because there is no other book that a mother could give her son as he leaves the old home to make his way in the world.

Thousands and thousands of mothers have pre- sented their sons with Bibles without knowing really what the book contains. They simply followed the custom, and the sons as a rule honored the Bible, not because they knew anything of it, but because it was a gift from mother. But surely, if all the pa.s.sages upholding polygamy were out, the mother would give

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the book to her son just as readily, and he would re- ceive it just as joyfully. If there were not one word in it tending to degrade the mother, the gift would cer- tainly be as appropriate. The fact that mothers have presented Bibles to their sons does not prove that the book is inspired. The most that can be proved by this fact is that the mothers believed it to be inspired.

It does not even tend to show what the book is, neither does it tend to establish the truth of one miracle recorded upon its pages. We cannot believe that fire refused to burn, simply because the state- ment happens to be in a book presented to a son by his mother, and if all the mothers of the entire world should give Bibles to all their children, this would not prove that it was once right to murder mothers, or to enslave mothers, or to sell their babes.

The inspiration of the Bible is not a question of natural affection. It can not be decided by the love a mother bears her son. It is a question of fact, to be substantiated like other facts. If the Turkish mother should give a copy of the Koran to her son, I would still have my doubts about the in- spiration of that book; and if some Turkish soldier saved his life by having in his pocket a copy of the Koran that accidentally stopped a bullet just

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opposite his heart, I should still deny that Mohammed was a prophet of G.o.d.

Nothing can be more childish than to ascribe mysterious powers to inanimate objects. To imagine that old rags made into pulp, manufactured into paper, covered with words, and bound with the skin of a calf or a sheep, can have any virtues when thus put together that did not belong to the articles out of which the book was constructed, is of course infinitely absurd.