himself, if he be not a shallow man, if he be a man capable of being penetrated by a profound thought, will never answer the question by professing the creed of atheism which has been so lightly attributed to me."

Friends, I would sooner err with Bacon and Darwin and Tyndall and Huxley, and even Thomas Paine, believing in God's existence, than put my belief on this theme side by side with the man who would fain cheapen what might be a splended reputation in endeavoring to fasten the malignant failings of mankind upon the very name of Deity!

Christianity does not create civilization. It came in contact with the highest civilization of the ancient world, -civilizations, remember, which were the outgrowth mainly of the religious principle, and aimed to make them Christian civilizations. The followers of Christ have been recreant to the principles He taught. Christianity has been corrupted.

Ingersoll said in his lecture on Thomas Paine: "But the church is as unforgiving as ever, and still wonders why any infidel should be wicked enough to endeavor to destroy her power. I will tell the church why I hate it.

"You have imprisoned the human mind; you have been the enemy of liberty; you have burned us at the stake, roasted us before slow fires, torn our flesh with irons; you have covered us with chains, treated us as outcasts; you have filled the world with fear; you have taken our wives and children from our arms; you have confiscated our property; you have denied us the rights to testify in courts of justice; you have branded us with infamy; you have torn out our tongues; you have refused us burial. In the name of your religion, you have robbed us of every right; and after having inflicted upon us every evil that can be inflicted in this world, you have fallen upon your knees, and with clasped hands implored your God to finish the holy work in hell."

There should be no dissenting from this. The arraignment is a strong but a just one. Fanaticism has disturbed

its truths, zeal has hardened into bigotry, enthusiasm has degenerated into burning wrath, puerile glosses and worse than childish interpretations have been taken as the revelation of God Himself. We know that a Galileo has been forced to recant the truth; a Copernicus has been in mortal fear of his life; a Roger Bacon persecuted and tormented; the beautiful and philosophical Hypatin was rent limb from limb by the infuriated monks. Libraries have been burnt; justice has been denied. Liberty has been trampled upon. The mercy of God has been bought and sold. Fires have curled around the bodies of the martyrs of the truth, as it was hoped the flames of hell would be kindled around body and soul in the world to come.

Ingersoll's Defective Logic-The Church and Christianity Not Identical-Dr. Draper's Explanation.

But why enumerate? We will plead "guilty" for the church on every fearful count in the long and terrible indictment. But the church is not Christianity. In no way or manner can Christ or His apostles be arraigned for the inhuman and unchristian acts of their professed followers. It is unfair in the highest degree for any man claiming to be a candid investigator, and a faithful historian, to seem to implicate them in such misdeeds.

Neither is the church of the present responsible for the sins of the church of the past. No logic can fasten the guilt of the transgression of the father upon the children. The fathers may have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth set on edge, but while the effects of the acidity. are experienced by the children, they did not do the eating. The iniquities of the fathers shall be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generations, but the sin never!

Let the sword be unsparingly used against the corruptions of the faith. Let righteous indignation flame against all the unchristian additions which have been made to the sublime doctrines of Christianity. Let the anathemas of every pope in Romanism or Protestantism against free inquiry and the victorious march of the intellect be hurled back. This discrimination between the principles of Christianity and the teachings and practices of the church has been recognized by writers of eminence seemingly hostile to Christianity, however much they may have confounded the two or confused the public mind in their treatment of the Christian religion.

Dr. Draper says: For centuries after Christianity was the established religion of Europe, it failed to bear its natural fruit, because its lot was cast among a people whose ignorance compelled them to be supersti tious, and who, on account of their superstition, defaced a system which, in its original purity, they were unable to receive.

The intellectual bondage, then, of the dark ages was not owing to the teachings of Christianity, but to their perversion. But Mr. Ingersoll says

In all ages reason has been regarded as the enemy of religion. Nothing has been considered so pleasing to the Deity as a total denial of the authority of your own mind. Self-reliance has been thought deadly sin; and the idea of living and dying without the aid and consolation of superstition has always horrified the church. By some unaccountable infatuation, belief has been and still is considered of immense importance. All religions have been based upon the idea that God will forever reward the true believer, and etcrnally damn the man who doubts or denies Belief is regarded as the one essential thing. To practice justice, to love mercy, is not enough.

Col. Ingersoll, the propounder of the "new religion" has omitted to state that the Old Testament throughout teaches, in addition, that it is man's duty to walk humbly before God. To practice justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before God is the religion of the Bible and of Christianity

This is the religion of the Old Testament, and it is illustrated in not a few of the alleged incredible stories of the book. To come and tell Chicago people such truths, of which Ingersoll apparently was to be the great apostle, is to repeat enunciations four thousand years old. Canaanites might well be the executioners of revoltingly evil tribes and nations; and much else of the Old Testament, in its caviled-at facts, is the soundest philosophy.

The

Science is welcomed by religion, but not the science falsely so called; philosophy is welcomed, but not the counterfeit of vain conceits.

The Important Factors in Paine's Life-The Bishop and Ingersoll Concerning the So-called Church Persecutions.

Paine's religion has been summed up in: "The world is my country, and to do good is my religion." It is strange that Colonel Ingersoll, who takes such pains to abuse the Bible, should have overlooked its fundamental teachings.

Mr. Paine himself, in his intellectual nature and in his political history, was the product of the forces which were rife at the time on this continent and in Europe. He represented in his "Rights of Man" and in his "Common Sense," and in his political pamphlets the ideas which were prevalent, ideas which had been actualized in America's short, but glorious, history. In his "Age of Reason" he represented the ideas which were dominant in the French revolution.

Paine was the son of a Quaker, and I attribute his correct life, if that life did at the end fall into social eclipse, to their healthful influence.

Paine was also for a short time a dissenting minister, and preached. His mind was susceptible to all the views about him, and he did not come to this country to forward

liberty, but simply to make his living or fortune. His speeches and writings were characterized by Anglo-Saxon strength, vigor, and terseness, but when he went to France he swung from the moorings of early life and became saturated with the views of the French encyclopedists and infidels.

The arrogant, self-styled Church of Christ which caused the bloody revolution in France, deserved the terrible chastisement it received. That power which was seated upon the seven hills; which had arrogated to itself not only spiritual but temporal sovereignty; which placed its feet literally on the necks of kings and princes; which exercised a spiritual despotism over the minds and consciences of man; which went into the deepest recesses of the most sacred trusts of the heart; which claimed the prerogatives of God himself—this was the very power which hurried on all this madness and ruin of the French revolution to their culmination in the substitution of a nude street-walker as an object of worship. Ingersoll told the truth when he said that " Voltaire had driven a dagger into the heartless bosom of Rome." As Sir Isaac Taylor has well said "the old heathen Roman was far more human than his ecclesiastical successor, and. there was not one who would not fly from a Roman inquisitor to the feet of the Roman legionary for mercy and life."

Ingersoll's Fatal Mistake-True Christianity Not Within Range of the Ingersoll Guns.

But I insist that Ingersoll's indictment does not cover the whole case. Should Ingersoll go before a court, and say he hated the law, he would be requested to qualify or be considered mad. It was law that sent Christ to the cross, the martyrs to the stake, and which has done much