The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume XII Part 32

A TRIBUTE TO JOHN G. MILLS.

Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., April 15, 1883.

MY FRIENDS: Again we are face to face with the great mystery that shrouds this world. We question, but there is no reply. Out on the wide waste seas, there drifts no spar. Over the desert of death the sphinx gazes forever, but never speaks.

In the very May of life another heart has ceased to beat. Night has fallen upon noon. But he lived, he loved, he was loved. Wife and children pressed their kisses on his lips. This is enough. The longest life contains no more. This fills the vase of joy.

He who lies here, clothed with the perfect peace of death, was a kind and loving husband, a good father, a generous neighbor, an honest man,--and these words build a monument of glory above the humblest grave. He was always a child, sincere and frank, as full of hope as Spring. He divided all time into to-day and to-morrow. To-morrow was without a cloud, and of to-morrow he borrowed suns.h.i.+ne for to-day. He was my friend. He will remain so. The living oft become estranged; the dead are true. He was not a Christian. In the Eden of his hope there did not crawl and coil the serpent of eternal pain. In many languages he sought the thoughts of men, and for himself he solved the problems of the world. He accepted the philosophy of Auguste Comte. Humanity was his G.o.d; the human race was his Supreme Being. In that Supreme Being he put his trust. He believed that we are indebted for what we enjoy to the labor, the self-denial, the heroism of the human race, and that as we have plucked the fruit of what others planted, we in thankfulness should plant for others yet to be.

With him immortality was the eternal consequences of his own acts. He believed that every pure thought, every disinterested deed, hastens the harvest of universal good. This is a religion that enriches poverty; that enables us to bear the sorrows of the saddest life; that peoples even solitude with the happy millions yet to live,--a religion born not of selfishness and fear, but of love, of grat.i.tude, and hope,--a religion that digs wells to slake the thirst of others, and gladly bears the burdens of the unborn.

But in the presence of death, how beliefs and dogmas wither and decay!

How loving words and deeds burst into blossom! Pluck from the tree of any life these flowers, and there remain but the barren thorns of bigotry and creed.

All wish for happiness beyond this life. All hope to meet again the loved and lost. In every heart there grows this sacred flower.

Immortality is a word that Hope through all the ages has been whispering to Love. The miracle of thought we cannot understand. The mystery of life and death we cannot comprehend. This chaos called the world has never been explained. The golden bridge of life from gloom emerges, and on shadow rests. Beyond this we do not know. Fate is speechless, destiny is dumb, and the secret of the future has never yet been told. We love; we wait; we hope. The more we love, the more we fear. Upon the tenderest heart the deepest shadows fall. All paths, whether filled with thorns or flowers, end here. Here success and failure are the same. The rag of Wretchedness and the purple robe of power all difference and distinction lose in this democracy of death. Character survives; goodness lives; love is immortal.

And yet to all a time may come when the fevered lips of life will long for the cool, delicious kiss of death--when tired of the dust and glare of day we all shall hear with joy the rustling garments of the night.

What can we say of death? What can we say of the dead? Where they have gone, reason cannot go, and from thence revelation has not come. But let us believe that over the cradle Nature bends and smiles, and lovingly above the dead in benediction holds her outstretched hands.

A TRIBUTE TO ELIZUR WRIGHT.

New York. December 19, 1885.

ANOTHER hero has fallen asleep--one who enriched the world with an honest life.

Elizur Wright was one of the t.i.tans who attacked the monsters, the G.o.ds, of his time--one of the few whose confidence in liberty was never shaken, and who, with undimmed eyes, saw the atrocities and barbarisms of his day and the glories of the future.

When New York was degraded enough to mob Arthur Tappan, the n.o.blest of her citizens; when Boston was sufficiently infamous to howl and hoot at Harriet Martineau, the grandest Englishwoman that ever touched our soil; when the North was dominated by theology and trade, by piety and piracy; when we received our morals from merchants, and made merchandise of our morals, Elizur Wright held principle above profit, and preserved his manhood at the peril of his life.

When the rich, the cultured, and the respectable,--when church members and ministers, who had been "called" to preach the "glad tidings," and when statesmen like Webster joined with bloodhounds, and in the name of G.o.d hunted men and mothers, this man rescued the fugitives and gave asylum to the oppressed.

During those infamous years--years of cruelty and national degradation--years of hypocrisy and greed and meanness beneath the reach of any English word, Elizur Wright became acquainted with the orthodox church. He found that a majority of Christians were willing to enslave men and women for whom they said that Christ had died--that they would steal the babe of a Christian mother, although they believed that the mother would be their equal in heaven forever. He found that those who loved their enemies would enslave their friends--that people who when smitten on one cheek turned the other, were ready, willing and anxious to mob and murder those who simply said: "The laborer is worthy of his hire."

In those days the church was in favor of slavery, not only of the body but of the mind. According to the creeds, G.o.d himself was an infinite master and all his children serfs. He ruled with whip and chain, with pestilence and fire. Devils were his bloodhounds, and h.e.l.l his place of eternal torture.

Elizur Wright said to himself, why should we take chains from bodies and enslave minds--why fight to free the cage and leave the bird a prisoner?

He became an enemy of orthodox religion--that is to say, a friend of intellectual liberty.

He lived to see the destruction of legalized larceny; to read the Proclamation of Emanc.i.p.ation; to see a country without a slave, a flag without a stain. He lived long enough to reap the reward for having been an honest man; long enough for his "disgrace" to become a crown of glory; long enough to see his views adopted and his course applauded by the civilized world; long enough for the hated word "abolitionist" to become a t.i.tle of n.o.bility, a certificate of manhood, courage and true patriotism.

Only a few years ago, the heretic was regarded as an enemy of the human race. The man who denied the inspiration of the Jewish Scriptures was looked upon as a moral leper, and the Atheist as the worst of criminals.

Even in that day, Elizur Wright was grand enough to speak his honest thought, to deny the inspiration of the Bible; brave enough to defy the G.o.d of the orthodox church--the Jehovah of the Old Testament, the Eternal Jailer, the Everlasting Inquisitor.

He contended that a good G.o.d would not have upheld slavery and polygamy; that a loving Father would not a.s.sist some of his children to enslave or exterminate their brethren; that an infinite being would not be unjust, irritable, jealous, revengeful, ignorant, and cruel.

And it was his great good fortune to live long enough to find the intellectual world on his side; long enough to know that the greatest'

naturalists, philosophers, and scientists agreed with him; long enough to see certain words change places, so that "heretic" was honorable and "orthodox" an epithet. To-day, the heretic is known to be a man of principle and courage--one blest with enough mental independence to tell his thought. To-day, the thoroughly orthodox means the thoroughly stupid.

Only a few years ago it was taken for granted that an "unbeliever" could not be a moral man; that one who disputed the inspiration of the legends of Judea could not be sympathetic and humane, and could not really love his fellow-men. Had we no other evidence upon this subject, the n.o.ble life of Elizur Wright would demonstrate the utter baselessness of these views.

His life was spent in doing good--in attacking the hurtful, in defending what he believed to be the truth. Generous beyond his means; helping others to help themselves; always hopeful, busy, just, cheerful; filled with the spirit of reform; a model citizen--always thinking of the public good, devising ways and means to save something for posterity, feeling that what he had he held in trust; loving Nature, familiar with the poetic side of things, touched to enthusiasm by the beautiful thought, the brave word, and the generous deed; friendly in manner, candid and kind in speech, modest but persistent; enjoying leisure as only the industrious can; loving and gentle in his family; hospitable,--judging men and women regardless of wealth, position or public clamor; physically fearless, intellectually honest, thoroughly informed; unselfish, sincere, and reliable as the attraction of gravitation. Such was Elizur Wright,--one of the staunchest soldiers that ever faced and braved for freedom's sake the wrath and scorn and lies of place and power.

A few days ago I met this genuine man. His interest in all human things was just as deep and keen, his hatred of oppression, his love of freedom, just as intense, just as fervid, as on the day I met him first.

True, his body was old, but his mind was young, and his heart, like a spring in the desert, bubbled over as joyously as though it had the secret of eternal youth. But it has ceased to beat, and the mysterious veil that hangs where sight and blindness are the same--the veil that revelation has not drawn aside--that science cannot lift, has fallen once again between the living and the dead.

And yet we hope and dream. May be the longing for another life is but the prophecy forever warm from Nature's lips, that love, disguised as death, alone fulfills. We cannot tell. And yet perhaps this Hope is but an antic, following the fortunes of an uncrowned king, beguiling grief with jest and satisfying loss with pictured gain. We do not know.

But from the Christian's cruel h.e.l.l, and from his heaven more heartless still, the free and n.o.ble soul, if forced to choose, should loathing turn, and cling with rapture to the thought of endless sleep.

But this we know: good deeds are never childless. A n.o.ble life is never lost. A virtuous action does not die. Elizur Wright scattered with generous hand the priceless seeds, and we shall reap the golden grain.

His words and acts are ours, and all he n.o.bly did is living still.

Farewell, brave soul! Upon thy grave I lay this tribute of respect and love. When last our hands were joined, I said these parting words: "Long life!" And I repeat them now.

A TRIBUTE TO MRS. IDA WHITING KNOWLES.

New York, Dec, 16, 1887.

MY FRIENDS: Again we stand in the shadow of the great mystery--a shadow as deep and dark as when the tears of the first mother fell upon the pallid face of her lifeless babe--a mystery that has never yet been solved.

We have met in the presence of the sacred dead, to speak a word of praise, of hope, of consolation.

Another life of love is now a blessed memory--a lingering strain of music.

The loving daughter, the pure and consecrated wife, the sincere friend, who with tender faithfulness discharged the duties of a life, has reached her journey's end.

A braver, a more serene, a more chivalric spirit--clasping the loved and by them clasped--never pa.s.sed from life to enrich the realm of death.

No field of war ever witnessed greater fort.i.tude, more perfect, smiling courage, than this poor, weak and helpless woman displayed upon the bed of pain and death.

Her life was gentle and her death sublime. She loved the good and all the good loved her.

There is this consolation: she can never suffer more; never feel again the chill of death; never part again from those she loves. Her heart can break no more. She has shed her last tear, and upon her stainless brow has been set the wondrous seal of everlasting peace.

When the Angel of Death--the masked and voiceless--enters the door of home, there come with her all the daughters of Compa.s.sion, and of these Love and Hope remain forever.