ethical and philosophical system, exhibit wis-
dom far beyond any known among men, I am
compelled to say, He indeed is the infallible
Teacher.
The infallibility of Christ is a broader and
stronger argument for the Book than all the
theories of inspiration that men have yet
devised. The seal of His approval is, even
on rationalistic ground, a sufficient warrant
for our acceptance of that Book. Such sur-
passing wisdom as His cannot be mistaken-
such surpassing purity and love cannot de-
ceive us. The impress of His royal signet
has placed the writings of Moses and all the
prophets where they cannot fall until He, the
Christ, Himself has fallen.
So we come at last to God, Christ, and the
Bible, and as rational men have reason for
the faith that is in us.
I OO INGERSOLLISM ;
Now what interest have we who come from
counting-room and store-room, from legisla-
tive halls and boards of trade, and from the
various industrial walks of life, what interest
have we in the aggregate of religious teach-
ings and influences to which I have already
referred as embodied in and derived from the
Bible ? I do not mean an interest so far as
they bear upon what is called " Salvation,"
but I have come to the practical view, and I
mean an interest so far as our immediate
objects are concerned.
What are those objects ? I think they
may be comprehended in three things :
I. As citizens, a stable and pure govern-
ment.
II. As business men, the acquisition of
property.
III. As social beings, happy homes.
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. IQI
We can best determine the bearing of the
church upon these three great objects of life
by considering the legitimate results of Inger-
sollism. Government, Property, and Home
shall now constitute our trinity, the business
man's trinity, neither element self-existent, all
co-dependent ; and when properly combined
and each properly adjusted in all its relations
to the other, we may call the result Civiliza-
tion. In this trinity may be foimd all the
elements of business, society, and politics.
Let us now take the Ingersoll creed,
" Happiness in this life," for our creed too.
Unquestionably the most happiness is de-
rived from the highest civilization, and the
highest civilization is obtained only when
Government, Property, and Home are each
and all conserved. In the name, then, of this
trinity I have come to arraign and denounce
Ingersoll's teachings as a crime against gov-
I O 2 INGERSOLLISM :
ernment and law ; as a crime against com-
merce and trade ; as a crime against
civilization ; and, in one word, as a crime
against humanity.
Now take human nature as it is and in
this way alone may we deal with social
problems take human nature as it is, and
can you conceive of free government and
civil law existing among, say fifty millions
of people, who have none of the restraints of
religious teaching and influence about them ?
Remember, it is not alone to compel your
profound philosopher to be just, that civil
government, and civil law with all its com-
plex variations, are instituted. Socrates,
Aristotle, and Solon may need neither civil
government nor civil law ; but the ever per-
plexing question which haunts your wise
statesman and your honest politician is, What
of the millions ?
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 103
The scholar in his easy chair may specu-
late and reason away all religion, and yet go
out into the world and perhaps for a time be
an honest and just man. The intuitive
decision of bright and thorough-edged intel-
lect may part error from crime, and the silver
flow of a subtle-paced counsel may make safe
citizens of Plato, Voltaire, and Ingersoll.
But what of the hewer of wood, whose life
is a struggle for bread, raiment, and shelter,
for himself, his wife, and his little ones ? We
often speak of the hewer of wood but when
we think of him in relation to time and
opportunity for acquiring any other than the
simple creed of Bible-taught morality, how
many of us become hewers of wood me-
chanics, farmers, merchants, tradesmen, pro-
fessional men, and all the toilers of the
thousand other laborious callings known
among men ? What shall I say of the mill-
INGERSOLLISM .
ions the people that surging, boundless
ocean of humanity we call the masses? In-
deed, my sceptical friend, the impenetrable
wall of an iron necessity shuts off from the
millions much of the Infidel's creed reason,
observation, and experience. Ninety out of
every hundred men, nay, more, pass almost
every waking hour in a struggle for bread.
"Thou shalt " and "Thou shalt not" may be
laws to which the deductive method of Aris-
totle or the inductive method of Bacon may
bring your philosopher for rules of action,
but what knowledge of those rules can be
acquired through philosophic reasoning by
those of us who are bound to the ever-
revolving wheel of unceasing toil ?
Will your philosophers come and teach us ?
A doubtful proposition but grant it. Ah,
in so doing you simply substitute one order
of priests for another a philosophic in lieu
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 1 05
of a theologic priesthood ; and your hated
order of priest and preacher will still remain !
And what if some man who in the opinion of
the masses is wiser than your philosopher
shall some day come and say the new priest-
hood are hypocrites and sponges all ? Who
shall say him nay ? Where is your arbiter ?
Let us destroy the Bible and annihilate among
men all consciousness of God, and I will grant
you we may do well enough, we and our chil-
dren, and perhaps our children's children.
The moral impetus given by Christianity to
civilization might, and doubtless would, be
projected on into the next fifty or seventy-five
years. But what then? Grant that our philos-
ophers will hold their self-taught code of
morals ; but remember that the millions, your
children and your children's children, will
have no God no Bible no Religion.
And right here let us have no self-decep-
1 06 INGERSOLLISM:
tion. The millions were hewers of wood yes-
terday, as many millions are hewers of wood
to-day, and as many millions more will be
hewers of wood to-morrow. Genius and learn-
ing and talents are not inheritable, and wealth
rarely reaches its second generation. While
storm and flood and pestilence shall come
and go, while improvidence and disease and
calamity in all its myriad forms beset the
paths of the human race, the millions will
still be hewers of wood. The children prat-
tling now around the knee of philosopher and
millionaire will go down into the depths to
struggle up again or die as toilers. It is one
of the saddest facts in human history. Build
as you will, accumulate as you may, struggle
as only strong and true men can struggle for
those they hold dear, yet to this complexion
it must come at last ; there are but one or
two coffins, one or two little grass-covered
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 1 07
mounds of earth, between luxury and toil.
Call it fate, call it God's curse in Eden, call
it what you will : it is an inexorable fact.
And let us not deceive ourselves in another
view. Let not the increase of national wealth,
the growth of colleges and schools, and the
progress of scientific thought, flatter us with
the fancy that while all these change labor in
kind they change it also in degree. Grant
that eight-hour laws, steam engines, and tele-
graphs, may shorten a day's labor ; yet all the
more intense does that labor become, and all
the more of rest must follow.
Then once more I ask you, what of the
millions what of the people what of your
children's children, with no consciousness of
God, and robbed by infidelity of the simple
but sublime creed of Bible-taught morality ?
Do you ask me now for an application of
all this to the question of civil government ?
1 08 INGERSOLLISM:
Then I ask you, does not all history teach
you that " Thou shalt " and " Thou shalt not "
are laws written in the hearts of the people
long before they are ever written on the
pages of our statute books ? Do you not
know that if those laws were not in the hearts
of the people not alone in the hearts of
your philosophers, but in the hearts of the
people they would not be on the pages of
our statutes, and when they are erased from
the hearts of the people they will be erased
from the statutes ? Remember that all legis-
lation, be the government free or despotic, is
in its last results the will of the people. Here
an election announces that will ; yonder it
requires a revolution ; but in the end, in all
governments, the voice of the law is the voice
of the people. Oh, the power, the terrible
power, of the people ! Before the people,
thrones and empires are baubles, and govern-
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. 109
ments and armies are pigmies and playthings.
Arouse the people, and the warnings of phi-
losophers are heeded as little as the notes of
the strange birds that fly before the tempest
are heeded by the storm king ! I appeal to
you as the champion of no sect, the repre-
sentative of no denomination, the exponent
of no creed but as a business man, as a
citizen, and I believe as a patriot ; and in the
name of all history I implore you to remem-
ber that the only power that can restrain and
safely guide ourselves and the millions is the
unseen but mighty power of " THUS SAITH
THE LORD GOD ALMIGHTY."
While universal infidelity must work ruin
to all civil government, yet it is peculiarly
true of a republic, where the relations of the
people to the government are so direct and
immediate. Here universal infidelity means
in its first results an armed centralization.
HO INGERSOLLISM.
Why ? Because a people without a God must
have a bayonet. Social order with Atheism
is a paradox, unless grounded on Catling guns
and repeating rifles. Remove the restraints
of religion, and you must immediately
strengthen the arm of the civil power for
your own protection. The church is to-day
the great conservator of the peace. There is
more power for the public safety in the whis-
pered utterances of a God-fearing priest or
preacher than in all your batteries and iron-
clads.
I repeat, universal infidelity means central-
ization, centralization means despotism, des-
potism means ultimate revolution ; and once
let revolution come, and let there be in the
minds of fifty millions of people no God, and
-well, the French people saw such a sight
once, and though it is near a hundred years
ago, civilization shudders as it recalls the
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. \ \ \
time when Ingersollism ruled France. Inger-
soll may be, in truth is and as an Illinoisan
I have said it East and West with pride a
patriot ; but Ingersollism is high treason to
all civil government, and high treason to all
civil law.
Consider now the second element in our
trinity Property.
The very highest point that Infidelity can
reach here is the time-worn maxim, " Honesty
is the best policy." That maxim, it is true,
is the result of observation and experience,
and may indeed be confirmed by a process
of philosophic reasoning. But what concep-
tion of honesty shall the man have, young or
old, whose observation and experience are
not wide enough to teach him that honesty
is the best policy ? I ask you as business
men, is it that maxim, or is it the training
and influence, remote or direct, of Bible-
I I 2 INGERSOLLISM:
taught fathers and mothers, that give you
to-day a trustworthy class of young employes,
clerks, salesmen, messengers and all ? Which
commands your confidence to-day, a young
man's character founded on philosophy based
upon his reason, observation, and experience,
or a young man's character based upon a con-
science ? Infidelity, then, is a crime against
business and against trade.
Ingersoll annihilates conscience. Jf Her-
bert Spencer, with all his ethical data, fails to
find a sure foundation for conscience, what
foundation is left among the sweeping nega-
tions of Ingersollism ? Commerce without
conscience is a vampire. Gambling is a fine
art with conscience left out. Conscience
makes bank stock marketable. Confidence
and conscience are synonyms in the world of
trade. Infidel philosophy may originate a
few wise maxims, but it can never give
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIE W. 113
energy, form, and vitality to that soul of
business an honest conscience.
And once more, you who come from count-
ing-room and store-room, remember just here
the millions upon whose broad shoulders rest
your countless enterprises, and whose strong
arms produce and exchange all your objects
of trade. Take away from them the thought
-that you and they stand equal in the sight
of God, a thought given to them alone by
Christianity ; take away from yourselves the
thought that they are your equals in the
sight of God ; take away from them the feel-
ing of brotherhood, a feeling given to them
alone by the Ideal One ; leave to the toiling
millions naught but a toiler's life and a toil-
er's grave, with no reckoning beyond, where
the uneven things of this most uneven
world may at last be set even ; go forth
with Ingersoll and write upon the gates of
I 1 4 INGERSOLLISM:
your cities, " There is no God," and proclaim
from the walls that " Death is an eternal
sleep ;" in a word, kill, burn out, annihilate
conscience, all the way down to the nether-
most stratum of humanity, and woe woe
betide your comprehensive schemes of enter-
prise, and woe betide your every accumula-
tion of wealth ! Where is the power in this
land of ours that shall then stay that beetle-
browed hag, infidelity's twin sister in every
age and in every land, infidelity's twin sister
to-day in St. Louis, Chicago, Cincinnati, and
New York, where it may not be all a dream
under her foul incantations there is gath-
ering a storm that may some day rend the
earth beneath your feet like an earthquake-
infidelity's twin sister upon every page of
human history the commune ? Is there no
significance for American business men in
the fact that but a little while ago a few
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. \ 15
thousand honest but misguided laborers,
incited in some of our principal cities by
French, German, and American infidel com-
munists, made every business man in the
land cry out for a stronger government ? I
do not say that every infidel is a commu-
nist; but I do say, and say it deliberately,
that from the British line to the waters
of the gulf, from ocean to ocean, in every
city of our land, the avowed communistic
leaders as a class are Godless infidels. By
the light of Pittsburgh's conflagration I can
see Ingersoll's legend, " Religion is supersti-
tion," floating in the night over the heads of
a frenzied mob.
And now consider the third element in our
trinity Home.
Government and law, and commerce and
trade, are seemingly distinct from the idea
I 1 6 INGERSOLLISM:
of Home ; and yet all lines leading from all
that we have said centre in Home. Recol-
lect that the Ingersoll creed, " Happiness in
this life," is our creed too. Yes, we dig
canals, hew down forests, overset our prai-
ries, build cities, operate railroads, network
with telegraph wire the continent, and with
an Atlantic cable turn the ocean depths into
a whispering gallery for the nations all that
we may be happy. But who ? What we?
Infidelity says the strong and self-reliant.
It must of necessity say the strong and self-
reliant. Infidelity, in proclaiming happiness,
has no word of comfort for a weak old man
or an aged woman.
Infidelity would stagger like a drunkard
if chosen for a pall-bearer. It would stam-
mer like a witless inmate of an asylum if
asked to frame an epitaph for a baby's grave.
For neither childhood nor motherhood, for
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. \ ij
neither the marriage altar nor the cradle, for
neither old age nor the death bed, has Infi-
delity one word in its vaunted creed of " Hap-
piness." Hence I say Infidelity can claim to
furnish " Happiness " only to the strong and
self-reliant and yet that claim is as false as
a new-coined lie !
Why, not one man in a thousand has
wrought for his own happiness alone. His
household be it composed of wife and child
or of mother or sister, in some form or other,
be the roof-tree his own or a borrowed tree
the household is the pivot around which turns
the whole existence of civilized man. Upon
the household altar he lays his accumula-
tions, and the happiness of the household is
the direct object of civilized man. Through
its happiness he seeks his. A nation of
happy homes is the brightest dream of states-
manship.
I I 8 INGERSOLLISM :
Am I indulging in sentiment, or am I not
stating a plain every-day fact, when I tell you
that your happiness depends in a full degree
upon the happiness of mother, wife, sister,
child, household ? Let us dwell a moment on
those words, Home and Household. They rep-
resent and encircle nearly all there is of life to
much more than half the civilized world.
Look behind the veil which that word Home
lets fall every morning between our business
world and the household, and we see cluster-
ing about the hearthstones of rich and poor,
many faithful wives and mothers and cradles ;
many millions of ungrown men and women,
unused as yet to the world and its devious
ways ; millions worn by labor and disease ; and
millions more chilled by the snow-drifts of age,
waiting for the end of life. Of such are our
households, and for these households civilized
man goes forth at morn and returns at night.
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW. \ 19
Now, bear in mind the question that infi-
delity presents is not, Shall we give to these
households of ours the hopes, promises, and
influences of religion? but the question infi-
delity presents here, in the afternoon of the
nineteenth century, is, Shall we take away
from our homes, from our ungrown millions,
from our aged and helpless ones, the promises
and influences of religion? Ingersoll says-
Aye, aye ; let fall upon every household in
the land, upon every child lisping its first
prayer, upon every marriage altar, upon every
death bed, and upon all the hallowed associa-
tions of Home, let fall the black pall of Athe-
ism ! and I say, he surely does not compre-
hend the effect of his teachings upon human
happiness, or his cruelty is unutterable and
his malevolence unspeakable. This one phase
of Ingersollism is enough to array against it
all the forces of civilized society. When I
I 2 O INGERSOLLISM ;
think of the bearings his teachings have upon
our hearthstone life, and then reflect that it is
a man with cultured brain and generous and
sympathetic heart who in the name of human
happiness proclaims these teachings, I cannot
but conclude that either he plays a part, trips
in his speech, or is upon this subject stark
mad.
Take one of a thousand things we think of
when we imagine that his teachings are, in
order to make us happier, installed at our
homes in lieu of religion's hopes and prom-
ises. Take the hour and to every house-
hold such hours must come when the
shadow of death lies upon the hearthstone.
In that hour, go home, business man, seat
yourself beside the coffin that holds your treas-
ure perchance a treasure that a day or two
before hung lovingly about your knees and
sung childish songs, or perchance a treasure
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIE IV. 121
that through most of a lifetime had been not
only bone and flesh of your bone and flesh,
but heart of your very heart seat yourself
beside the coffin that holds that treasure, read
Ingersoll's lectures there, and be comforted !
If you think Ingersollism means happiness
for your household, go and gather that house-
hold about a new-made grave that holds the
family jewel, and invoke the aid of Ingersoll-
ism then ! Why, that tenderness of feeling
upon which the household is based, which
makes the household a possibility, and with-
out which the household could not exist as a
factor in society, must be eradicated from the
human heart, or Ingersollism forever remain
the most monstrous of parodies, the grimmest
of sarcasms, when named as a rule of happi-
ness in the household.
These considerations waiving a thousand
others make it unnecessary for us to fur-
I 2 2 INGERSOLLISM :
ther pursue the relations of Ingersollism to
the household.
And now, then, as rational men we have
glanced at the foundation thought upon which
all religion rests, the existence of God ; as
moral men we have seen the God-given
ideal and God-given book ; as citizens we
have seen that religion is one of the surest
props of civil government and civil law ; as
business men we have seen that we cannot
dispense with its influence ; and as social be-
ings we have found it a household blessing.
The question, therefore, with which I began
Ought we, upon the score of political econ-
omy, to keep up the church? is answered
now by another and a greater question: How
can we, as citizens and as business men, afford
to dispense with the power and the influence
of the church ? To this, every citizen and
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW, 123
business man must answer : We cannot afford
to lose the church.
I have said to you that we so often find
vice wrapped in the garb of religion that we
are coming to lend willing ears to attacks
upon Christianity. This leads me to remark
two things of Ingersoll, both of which con-
spire, in my judgment, to make his advent
into this field a public blessing. First, he
forces the issue between Infidelity and Reli-
gion. There is something vague and intangi-
ble in the underground movements of our
dilettante moralists and sceptical scientists.
But here is a foeman who comes squarely up
to the work in his bold assaults upon Reli-
gion. As a man of the world, he assails the
cherished beliefs of millions ; and men of the
world will come to the combat he invites.
The result may be looked for without fear or
I 2 4 INGERSOLLISM :
trembling. The truth will triumph, and in
the end be mightier in withstanding a new
assault, mightier in winning a new victory,
and mightier in gaining new allies.
The second and greater good he will in-
directly accomplish will be in preparing the
way for arraying against hypocrisy in the
church all the better elements of society.
It cannot be denied that the performances of
so many professed Christians fall so far below
their pretensions to superior morality that
they thereby furnish to infidelity its most
effective though most illogical weapons. A
kiss and a betrayal is an old story in the
history of Christianity. It is none the less
true to-day than it was eighteen hundred
years ago. Hypocrisy in the church is the
Judas Iscariotism of the age. We have seen
how intimately all our interests are inter-
woven with the maintenance of true religion.
FROM A SECULAR POINT OF VIEW, 125
It follows that our interests lie in the encour-
agement of the boldest and most effective
denunciation of that hypocrisy. Let that
hypocrisy be lashed through the world with a
whip of scorpions ; let it be scourged with
the contempt of every honest man ; let it be
pointed at with the finger of scorn in every
assemblage of men. I doubt not that crusade
is coming. What will be the result ? Its
logical end must be the checking of infidelity.
While it is one thing to denounce hypocrisy
in the interest of infidelity, and another to
denounce it in the interest of Christianity,
yet in the end the result must be the same
the discomfiture of infidelity.
I am no dreamer here. I look ahead, but
not with my eye fixed upon some Utopian
condition of society in which hypocrisy and
the church will be completely and forever
divorced ; but I do look for a time when* the
I 2 6 INGERSOLLISM :
influences of Christianity which now pervade
the civilized world and make honest and just
men out of many who do not kneel at the
altar of the church, shall, in the interest of
that church, be arrayed against the Judas
Iscariots of the nineteenth century. Such a
crusade, I repeat, will prove a lasting good,
and such a crusade, I repeat, will prove the
defeat of infidelity. To my mind, hypocrisy
in the church means infidelity in the church.
I do not say that infidels outside the church
are hypocrites, but I do say that your delib-
erate hypocrite inside the church is an infidel.
I paraphrase the text, and say it is as true
to-day as when first it was uttered, that the
man who says he loves his church, and yet
hates or cheats his brother, is a liar. Hold