Ingersoll's Lecture on Skulls, Part II of II. Now if men have been slaves, if they have crawled in the dust before one another, what shall I say of women? They have been the slaves of men. It took thousands of ages to bring women from abject slavery up to the divine height of marriage. I believe in marriage, if there is any heaven upon earth, it is in the family by the fireside, and the family is a unit of government. Without the family relation that is tender, pure and true, civilization is impossible.  The chains around your neck and the bracelets clasped upon your white arms by the thrilled hand of love have been changed by the wand of civilization from iron to shining glittering gold. Nearly every civilization in this world accounts for the devilment in it by the crimes of women. They say women brought all the trouble into the world. I don't care if she did. I would rather live in a world full of trouble with the woman I love than to live in heaven with nobody but men. I read in a book an account of the creation of the world. The book I have taken pains to say was not written by any God. And why do I say so? Because I can write a far better book myself.  Several ministers in this city have undertaken to answer me, notably those who don't believe the Bible themselves. I want to ask these men one thing. I want them to be fair. Every minister in the city of Chicago that answers me, and those who have answered me had better answer me again, I want them to say and without any sort of evasion, without resorting to any pious tricks, I want them to say whether they believe that the eternal God of this universe ever upheld the crime of polygamy. Say it square and fair. Don't begin to talk about that being a peculiar time and that God was easy on the prejudices of those old fellows. I want them to answer that question and to answer it squarely which they haven't done. Did this God which you pretend to worship ever sanctioned the institution of human slavery? Now answer fair. Don't slide it around. Don't begin and answer what a bad man I am, nor what a good man Moses was. Stick to the text. Do you believe in a God that allowed a man to be sold from his children?  And if you do, tell your congregation whether you are not ashamed to admit it.  Let him answer it. Don't say that those were very bad times. Tell whether he did it or not, and then your people will know whether to hate that God or not. Be honest. Tell them whether that God in war captured young maidens and turned them over to the soldiers, and then asked the wives and sweet girls of your congregation to get down on their knees and worship the infinite fiend that did that thing. And sir, it is your God I am talking about, and if that is what God did, please tell your congregation what, under the same circumstances, the devil would have done. Don't tell your people that is a poem. Don't tell your people that is pictorial. That won't do. Tell your people whether it is true or false. That is what I want you to do. In this book I read about gods making the world and one man. That is all he intended to make. The making of woman was a second thought, though I am willing to admit that as a rule, second thoughts are best. This God made a man and put him in a public park. In a little while he noticed that the man got lonesome. Then he found he had made a mistake, and that he would have to make somebody to keep him company. But having used up all the nothing he originally used in making the world and one man, he had to take a part of a man to start a woman with, so he causes sleep to fall on this man. Now understand me, I do not say this story is true. After the sleep had fallen on this man, the supreme being took a rib, or as the French would call it, a cutlet out of him, and from that he made a woman. And I am willing to swear, taking into account the amount and quality of the raw material he used, this was the most magnificent job ever accomplished in this world. Well, after he got the woman done she was brought to the man, not to see how she liked him, but to see how he liked her. He liked her, and they started housekeeping, and they were told of certain things they might do, and of one thing they could not do. And of course they did it. I would have done it in fifteen minutes, I know it. There would not have been an apple on that tree half an hour from date, and the limbs would have been full of clubs. And then they were turned out of the park, and extra policemen were put on to keep them from getting back, and then the trouble commenced, and we have been at it ever since. Nearly all the religions of this world account for the existence of evil by such a story as that. Well I read in another book what appeared to be an account of the same transaction. It was written about four thousand years before the other. All commentators agree that the one that was written last was the original, and the one that was written first was copied from the one that was written last. But I would advise you all not to allow your creed to be disturbed by a little matter of four or five thousand years. It is a great deal better to be mistaken in dates than to go to the devil. In this other account the supreme Brahma made up his mind to make the world and a man and woman. He made the world and he made the man and then the woman, and put them on the island of Ceylon. According to the account it was the most beautiful island of which man can conceive, such birds, such songs, such flowers, and such verdure. And the branches of the trees were so arranged that when the wind swept through them every tree was a thousand acolyan harps. Brahma, when he put them there, said, Let them have a period of courtship, for it is my desire and will that true love should forever precede marriage. When I read that it was so much more beautiful and lofty than the other that I said to myself, if either one of these stories ever turns out to be true, I hope it will be this one. Then they had their courtship with the nightingale singing and the stars shining and the flowers blooming and they fell in love. Imagine that courtship, no prospective fathers or mothers-in-law, no prying and gossiping neighbors, nobody to say, Young man, how do you expect to support her? Nothing of that kind, nothing but the nightingale singing its song of joy and pain as though the thorn already touched its heart. They were married by the supreme Brahma, and he said to them, Remain here, you must never leave this island. Well after a little while the man, his name was Adami, and the woman's name was Haver. Said to Haver, I believe I'll look about a little. He wanted to go west. He went to the western extremity of the island, where there was a little narrow neck of land connecting it with the mainland, and the devil who was always playing pranks with us produced a mirage, and when he looked over to the mainland such hills and veils, such dels and dales, such mountains crowned with snow, such cataracts clad in bows of glory, did he see there, that he went back and told Haver, The country over there is a thousand times better than this, let us migrate. She like every other woman that ever lived said, Let well enough alone, we have all we want, let us stay here. But he said no, let us go. Though she followed him, and when they came to this narrow neck of land, he took her on his back like a gentleman, and carried her over. But the moment they got over, they heard a crash, and looking back discovered that this narrow neck of land had fallen into the sea. The mirage had disappeared, and there was naught but rocks and sand, and the supreme Brahma cursed them both to the lowest hell. Then it was that the man spoke, and I have liked him ever since for it. Curse me, but curse not her. It was not her fault, it was mine. That's the kind of man to start a world with. The supreme Brahma said, I will save her, but not thee. And she spoke out of her fullness of love, out of a heart in which there was love enough to make all her daughters rich in holy affection, and said, if thou wilt not spare him, spare neither me. I do not wish to live without him. I love him. Then the supreme Brahma said, and I have liked him ever since I read it, I will spare you both, and watch over you and your children for ever. Honor bright is that not the better and grander story? And in that same book I find this, man is strength, woman is beauty. Man is courage, woman is love. When the one man loves the one woman, and the one woman loves the one man, the very angels leave heaven and come and sit in that house, and sing for joy. In the same book this, blessed is that man, and beloved of all the gods, who is afraid of no man, and of whom no man is afraid. Magnificent character! A missionary certainly ought to talk to that man. And I find this, never will I accept private individual salvation, but rather will I stay and work, strive and suffer until every soul from every star has been brought home to God. Compare that with the Christian that expects to go to heaven while the world is rolling over Niagara to an eternal and unending hell. So I say that religion lays all the crime and troubles of this world at the beautiful feet of woman. And then the church has the impudence to say that it has exalted women. I believe that marriage is a perfect partnership, that woman has every right that man has, and one more, the right to be protected. Above all men in the world I hate a stingy man, a man that will make his wife beg for money. What did you do with that dollar I gave you last week? And what are you going to do with this? It is vile. No gentleman will ever be satisfied with the love of a beggar and a slave. No gentleman will ever be satisfied except with the love of an equal. What kind of children does a man expect to have with a beggar for their mother? A man cannot be so poor but that he can be generous. And if you only have one dollar in the world and you have got to spend it, spend it like a lord, spend it as though it were a dry leaf, and you the owner of unbounded forests, spend it as though you had a wilderness of your own, that's the way to spend it.  If it has got to go, let it go. And this is my advice to the poor, for you can never be so poor that whatever you do you can't do in a grand and manly way. I hate a cross man. What right has a man to assassinate the joy of life? When you go home you ought to go like a ray of light so that it will even in the night burst out of the doors and windows and illuminate the darkness. Some men think their mighty brains have been in a turmoil. They have been thinking about who will be alderman from the fifth ward. They have been thinking about politics, great and mighty questions have been engaging their minds. They have bought calico at five cents or six and want to sell it for seven. Think of the intellectual strain that must have been upon that man and when he gets home everybody else in the house must look out for his comfort. A woman who has only taken care of five or six children and one or two of them sick has been nursing them and singing to them and trying to make one yard of cloth do the work of two. She of course is fresh and fine and ready to wait upon this gentleman, the head of the family, the boss. I was reading the other day of an apparatus invented for the ejecting of gentlemen who subsist upon free lunches.  I never hear of such a man, a boss, that I don't feel as though that machine ought to be brought into requisition for his benefit. Love is the only thing that will pay ten percent of interest on the outlay. Love is the only thing in which the height of extravagance is the last degree of economy. It is the only thing, I tell you, joy is wealth. Love is the legal tender of the soul, and you need not be rich to be happy. We have all been raised on success in this country, always been talked with about being successful and have never thought ourselves very rich unless we were the possessors of some magnificent mansion, and unless our names have been between the putrid lips of rumour we could not be happy. Every little boy is striving to be this and be that. I tell you the happy man is the successful man, the man that has won the love of one good woman is a successful man, the man that has been the emperor of one good heart, and that heart embraced all his has been a success. If another has been the emperor of the round world and has never loved and been loved, his life is a failure, it won't do. Let us teach our children the other way, that the happy man is the successful man, and he who is a happy man is the one who always tries to make someone else happy. The man who marries a woman to make her happy, that marries her as much for her own sake as for his own, not the man that thinks his wife is his property, who thinks that the title to her belongs to him, that the woman is the property of the man, wretches who get mad at their wives and then shoot them down in the street because they think the woman is their property. I tell you it is not necessary to be rich and great and powerful to be happy. A little while ago I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon, a magnificent tomb of guilt and gold fit almost for a dead deity and gazed upon the sarcophagus of black Egyptian marble where rest at last the ashes of the restless man. I leaned over the balustrade and thought about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world. I saw him walk upon the banks of the Seine contemplating suicide. I saw him at Toulon. I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris. I saw him at the head of the army of Italy. I saw him crossing the bridge of Lodi with the tricolor in his hand. I saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the pyramids. I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags. I saw him at Meringo, at Ulm and Austerlitz. I saw him in Russia where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winters withered leaves. I saw him at Leipzig in defeat and disaster driven by a million bayonets back upon Paris clutched like a wild beast banished to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an empire by the force of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of Waterloo where chance and fate combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I saw him at St. Helena with his hands crossed behind him gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea. I thought of the orphans and widows he had made, of the tears that had been shed for his glory and of the only woman who ever loved him pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition. And I said I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over the door and the grapes growing purple in the kisses of the autumn sun. I would rather have been that poor peasant with my loving wife by my side knitting as the day died out of the sky with my children upon my knees and their arms about me. I would rather have been that man and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust than to have been that imperial impersonation of force and murder known as Napoleon the Great. It is not necessary to be rich in order to be happy. It is only necessary to be in love. Thousands of men go to college and get a certificate that they have an education and that certificate is in Latin and they stop studying and in two years to save their life they couldn't read the certificate they got. It is mostly so in marrying. They stop courting when they get married. They think we have won her and that is enough. Ah, the difference before and after. How well they look, how bright their eyes, how light their steps and how full they were of generosity and laughter. I tell you a man should consider himself in good luck if a woman loves him when he is doing his level best. Good luck. Good luck. And another thing that is a cause of much trouble is that people don't count fairly. They do what they call putting their best foot forward. That means lying a little. I say put your worst foot forward. If you have got any faults admit them. If you drink say so and quit it. If you chew and smoke and swear say so. If some of your kindred are not very good people say so. If you have had two or three that died on the gallows or that ought to have died there say so. Tell all your faults and if after she knows your faults she says she will have you, you have got the dead wood on that woman forever. I claim that there should be perfect equality in the home and I cannot think of anything nearer heaven than a home where there is true republicanism and true democracy at the fireside. All are equal. And then do you know I like to think that love is eternal. That if you really love the woman for her sake you will love her no matter what she may do. That if she really loves you for your sake the same. That love does not look at alterations through the wrinkles of time through the mask of years.  And I like to think of it. If a man loves a woman she does not ever grow old to him and the woman who really loves a man does not see that he is growing older. He is not decrepit to her. He is not tremulous. He is not old. He is not bowed. She always sees the same gallant fellow that won her hand and heart. I like to think of it in that way. And as Shakespeare says, let time reach with his sickle as far as ever he can, although he can reach ruddy cheeks and ripe lips and flashing eyes, he cannot quite reach love. I like to think of it. We will go down the hill of life together and into the shadow one with the other. And as we go down we may hear the ripple of the laughter of our grandchildren and the birds and spring and youth. And love will sing once more upon the leafless branches of the tree of age. I love to think of it in that way. Absolute equals, happy, happy and free, all our own. But some people say, would you allow a woman to vote? Yes, if she wants to, that is her business, not mine. If a woman wants to vote, I am too much of a gentleman to say she shall not. But they say woman has not sense enough to vote. It don't take much. But it seems to me there are some questions as, for instance, the question of peace or war, that a woman should be allowed to vote upon, a woman that has sons to be offered on the altar of that mullock. It seems to me that such a woman should have as much right to vote upon the question of peace and war as some thrice-besotted sot that reels to the ballot box and deposits his vote for war. But if women have been slaves, what shall we say of the little children born in the sub-zellas, children of poverty, children of crime, children of wealth, children that are afraid when they hear their names pronounced by the lips of their mother, children that cower in fear when they hear the footsteps of their brutal father, the flotsam and jetsam upon the rude sea of life. My heart goes out to them one and all. Children have all the rights that we have, and one more, and that is to be protected. Treat your children in that way.  Don't pretend that the whole world is going into bankruptcy.  Tell them, like an honest man, that you have told hundreds of lies yourself, and tell the dear little darling that it is not the best way, that it soils the soul. Think of the man that deals in stocks whipping his children for putting false rumors afloat. Think of an orthodox minister whipping his own flesh and blood for not telling all it thinks. Think of that. Think of a lawyer for beating his child for avoiding the truth when the old man makes about half his living that way. A lie is born of weakness on one side and tyranny on the other. That is what it is. Think of a great big man coming at a little bit of a child with a club in his hand. What is the little darling to do? Lie, of course. I think that mother nature put that ingenuity into the mind of the child when attacked by a parent to throw up a little breastwork in the shape of a lie to defend itself. When a great general wins a battle by what they call strategy, we build monuments to him. His strategy lies. Suppose a man as much larger than we are as we are larger than a child five years of age should come at us with a liberty pole in his hand and in tones of thunder want to know who broke that plate. There isn't one of us not accepting myself that wouldn't swear that we had never seen that plate in our lives or that it was cracked when we got it. Another good way to make children tell the truth is to tell it yourself. Keep your word with your child the same as you would with your banker. If you tell a child you will do anything, either do it or give the child the reason why. Truth is born of confidence. It comes from the lips of love and liberty. I was over in Michigan the other day. There was a boy over there at Grand Rapids about five or six years old, a nice smart boy as you will see from the remark he made, what you might call a 19th century boy. His father and mother had promised to take him out riding. They had promised to take him out riding for about three weeks and they would slip off and go without him. Well after a while that gut kind of played out with the little boy and the day before I was there they played the trick on him again. They went out and got the carriage and went away and as they rode away from the front of the house he happened to be standing there with his nurse and he saw them. The whole thing flashed on him in a moment. He took in the situation and turned to his nurse and said, pointing to his father and mother, there go the two damnest liars in the state of Michigan. When you go home fill the house with joy so that the light of it will stream out the windows and doors and illuminate even the darkness. It is just as easy that way as any in the world.  They will not have the same opinion of father when they grow up that they used to have. They will have to be in mighty bad luck if they ever do meaner things than you have done. When your child confesses to you that it has committed a fault, take that child in your arms and let it feel your heart beat against its heart and raise your children in the sunlight of love and they will be sunbeams to you along the pathway of life. Abolish the club and the whip from the house because if the civilized use a whip, the ignorant and the brutal will use a club and they will use it because you used the whip. Every little while some door is thrown open in some orphan asylum and there we see the bleeding back of a child whipped beneath the roof that was raised by love. It is infamous and a man that can't raise a child without the whip ought not to have a child. If there is one of you here that ever expect to whip your child again, let me ask you something.  If that little child should die, I cannot think of a sweeter way to spend an autumn afternoon than to take that photograph and go to the cemetery when the maples are clad in tender gold and when little scarlet runners are coming from the sad heart of the earth and sit down upon that mound and look upon that photograph and think of the flesh now dust that you beat. Just think of it. I could not bear to die in the arms of a child that I had whipped. I could not bear to feel upon my lips when they were withered beneath the touch of death the kiss of one that I had struck. Some Christians act as though they really thought that when Christ said, Suffer little children to come unto me, he had a rawhide under his coat. They act as though they really thought that he made that remark simply to get the children within striking distance. I have known Christians to turn their children from their doors, especially a daughter, and then get down on their knees and pray to God to watch over them and help them. I will never ask God to help my children unless I am doing my level best in that same wretched line. I will tell you what I say to my girls. Go where you will. Do what crime you may. Fall to what depth of degradation you may.  As long as I live, you have one sincere friend. Call me an atheist.  I intend so to live that when I die, my children can come to my grave and truthfully say, He who sleeps here never gave us one moment of pain. When I was a boy there was one day in each week too good for a child to be happy in. In these good old times Sunday commenced when the sun went down on Saturday night and closed when the sun went down on Sunday night. We commenced Saturday to get a good ready, and when the sun went down Saturday night there was a gloom deeper than midnight that fell upon the house. It could not crack hickory nuts then, and if you were caught chewing gum it was only another evidence of the total depravity of the human heart. Well, after a while we got to bed sadly and sorrowfully, after having heard heaven thanked that we were not all in hell, and I sometimes used to wonder how the mercy of God lasted as long as it did because I recollected that on several occasions I had not been at school when I was supposed to be there. Why I was not burned to a crisp was a mystery to me. The next morning we got ready for church, all solemn, and when we got there the minister was up in the pulpit about twenty feet high, and he commenced at Genesis about the fall of man, and he went on to about twenty thirdly. Then he struck the second application, and when he struck the application I knew he was about half way through, and then he went on to show the scheme of how the Lord was satisfied by punishing the wrong man. Nobody but a God would have thought of that ingenious way. Well, when he got through that then came the catechism, the chief end of man. Then my turn came, and we sat along a little bench where our feet came within about fifteen inches of the floor, and the dear old minister used to ask us, Boys, do you know that you ought to be in hell? And we answered up as cheerfully as could be expected under the circumstances. Yes, sir.  And we said yes, sir. And then came the great test.  You never heard of an auctioneer getting the bronchitis nor the second maid on a steamboat, never. What gives it to the minister is talking solemnly when they don't feel that way, and it has the same influence upon the organs of speech that it would have upon the cords of the calves of your legs to walk on your tiptoes, and so I call bronchitis parsonitis, and if the ministers would all tell exactly what they think they would all get well. But keeping back a part of the truth is what gives them bronchitis. Well the old man, the dear old minister, used to try and show us how long we would be in hell if we would only locate there. But to finish the other, the grand test question was, Boys, if it was God's will that you should go to hell, would you be willing to go?  Then in order to tell how long we would stay there, he used to say, Suppose once in a billion ages a bird should come from a far distant climb and carry off in its bill one little grain of sand. The time would finally come when the last grain of sand would be carried away.  Yes, sir. Boys, by that time it would not be sun up in hell. Where did the doctrine of hell come from? I will tell you, from that fellow in the dugout. Where did he get it? It was a souvenir from the wild beasts. Yes, I tell you, he got it from the wild beasts, from the glittering eye of the serpent, from the coiling, twisting snakes with their fanged mouths, and it came from the bark, growl, and howl of wild beasts. It was born of a laugh of the hyena, and got it from the depraved chatter of malicious apes. And I despise it with every drop of my blood, and defy it. If there is any god in this universe who will damn his children for an expression of honest thought, I wish to go to hell.  Oh, it is an infamous doctrine to teach that to little children, to put a shadow in the heart of a child, to fill the insane asylums with that miserable, infamous lie.   Is it possible, my goodness, that the flower will finally believe in the five points of Calvinism or in the eternal damnation of man? Is it possible that that little fairy will finally believe that she could be happy in heaven with her baby in hell? Think of it. Think of it. And that is the Christian religion.  But that is joy in comparison with the Christian mother's hope that she may be in salvation while her brave boy is in hell.  I want to kick it out every time I go by it. I want to get Americans in this country placed so they will be ashamed to preach it. I want to get the congregation so that they won't listen to it. We cannot divide the world off into saints and sinners in that way. There is a little girl, fair as a flower, and she grows up until she is twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old. Are you going to damn her in the fifteenth, sixteenth, or seventeenth year when the arrow from Cupid's bow touches her heart and she is glorified?  She marries and loves and holds in her arms a beautiful child.  When are you going to damn her because she has listened to some Methodist minister and after all that flood of light failed to believe?   A woman in the state of Indiana, forty or fifty years ago, who carted the wool and made rolls and spun them and made the cloth and cut out the clothes for the children and nursed them and sat up with them nights and gave them medicine and held them in her arms and wept over them, cried for joy and wept for fear, and finally raised ten or eleven good men and women with the ruddy glow of health upon their cheeks, and she would have died for any one of them, any moment of her life, and finally she, bowed with age and bent with care and labor, dies, and at the moment the magical touch of death is upon her face she looks as though she never had had a care, and her children burying her cover her face with tears.   If there is any God sitting above him in infinite serenity we have the figure of justice. Even a God must do justice, even a God must worship justice, and any form of superstition that destroys justice is infamous. Just think of teaching that doctrine to little children.  Oh, the idea there can be any day too good for a child to be happy in. Well after we got over the catechism then came the sermon in the afternoon, and it was exactly like the one in the forenoon except the other end too. Then we started for home a solemn march, not a soldier discharged his farewell shot, and when we got home if we had been really good boys we used to be taken up to the cemetery to cheer us up, and it always did cheer me those sunken graves, those leaning stones, those gloomy epitaphs covered with the moss of years always cheered me. When I looked at them I said, well, this kind of thing can't last always. Then we came back home and we had books to read which were very eloquent and amusing. We had Josephus and the History of the Waldenses, and Fox's Book of Martyrs, Baxter's Saints Rest, and Jynkin on the Atonement. I used to read Jynkin with a good deal of pleasure, and I often thought that the Atonement would have to be very broad in its provisions to cover the case of a man that would write such a book for boys. Then I would look to see how the sun was getting on, and sometimes I thought it had stuck from pure cussedness. Then I would go back and try Jynkin's again. Well, but it had to go down, and when the last rim of light sank below the horizon off would go our hats, and we would give three cheers for liberty once again. I tell you, don't make slaves of your children on Sunday. The idea that there is any God that hates to hear a child laugh. Let your children play games on Sunday. Here is a poor man that hasn't money enough to go to a big church, and he has too much independence to go to a little church that the big church built for charity. He doesn't want to slide into heaven that way.  And when the sun is about going down, kissing the summits of far hills, go home with your hearts filled with throbs of joy. There is more recreation and joy in that than going to a dry goods box with a steeple on top of it, and hearing a man tell you that your chances are about 99 to 1 for being eternally damned. Let us make this Sunday a day of splendid pleasure, not to excess, but to everything that makes man purer and grander and nobler. I would like to see now something like this. Instead of so many churches, a vast cathedral that would hold twenty or thirty thousands of people, and I would like to see an opera produced in it that would make the souls of men have higher and grander and nobler aims. I would like to see the walls covered with pictures and the niches rich with statuary. I would like to see something put there that you could use in this world now, and I do not believe in sacrificing the present to the future. I do not believe in drinking skimmed milk here with the promise of butter beyond the clouds. Space or time cannot be holy any more than a vacuum can be pious, not a bit, not a bit, and no day can be so holy, but what the laugh of a child will make it holier still. Strike with hand of fire on weird musician thy harp, strung with Apollo's golden hair, fill the vast cathedral aisles with symphonies, sweet and dim, deft toucher of the organ's keys. Blow, bugler, blow until thy silver notes to touch and kiss the moonlit waves, and charm the lovers wandering mid the vine-clad hills. But know your sweetest strains are discords all compared with childhood's happy laugh, the laugh that fills the eyes with light and every heart with joy. O rippling river of laughter, thou art the blessed boundary line between the beasts and men, and every wayward wave of thine doth drown some fretful fiend of care. O laughter, rose-lipped daughter of joy, there are dimples enough in thy cheeks to catch and hold and glorify all the tears of grief. Don't plant your children in long straight rows like posts. Let them have light and air, and let them grow beautiful as palms. When I was a little boy, children went to bed when they were not sleepy, and always got up when they were. I would like to see that changed, but they say we are too poor some of us to do it. Well all right, it is as easy to wake a child with a kiss as with a blow, with kindness as with curse. And another thing, let the children eat what they want to. Let them commence at whichever end of the dinner they desire. That is my doctrine. They know what they want much better than you do. Nature is a great deal smarter than you ever were. All the advance that has been made in the science of medicine has been made by the recklessness of patience. I can recollect when they wouldn't give a man water in a fever, not a drop. Now and then some fellow would get so thirsty he would say, well I'll die anyway, so I'll drink it. And thereupon he would drink a gallon of water, and thereupon he would burst into a generous perspiration and get well. And the next morning, when the doctor would come to see him, they would tell him about the man drinking the water, and he would say, how much? Well, he swallowed two pitchers full. Is he alive? Yes, so they would go into the room and the doctor would feel his pulse and ask him, did you drink two pitchers of water? Yes, my God, what a constitution you have got. I tell you there is something splendid in man that will not always mind. Why, if we had done as the kings told us 500 years ago, we would all have been slaves.  If we had done as the doctors told us, we would all have been dead. We have been saved by disobedience. We have been saved by that splendid thing called independence, and I want to see more of it day after day, and I want to see children raised so they will have it. That is my doctrine. Give the children a chance. Be perfectly honor bright with them, and they will be your friends when you are old. Don't try to teach them something they can never learn. Don't insist upon their pursuing some calling they have no sort of faculty for. Don't make that poor girl play 10 years on a piano when she has no ear for music. And when she has practiced until she can play Bonaparte Crossing the Alps, and you can't tell after she has played it whether Bonaparte ever got a cross or not. Men are oaks, women are vines, children are flowers, and if there is any heaven in this world, it is in the family. It is where the wife loves the husband, and the husband loves the wife, and where the dimpled arms of children are about the necks of both. That is heaven, if there is any, and I do not want any better heaven in another world than that. And if in another world I cannot live with the ones I loved here, then I would rather not be there. I would rather resign. Well, my friends, I have some excuses to make for the race to which I belong. In the first place, this world is not very well adapted to raising good men and good women. It is three times better adapted to the cultivation of fish than of people. There is one little narrow belt running zigzag around the world in which men and women of genius can be raised, and that is all. It is with man as it is with vegetation.  Every limb twisted as through pain, getting a scanty subsistence from the miserly crevices of the rocks. You go on and on until at last the highest crag is freckled with a kind of moss and vegetation ends. You might as well try to raise oaks and elms where the mosses grow as to raise great men and women where their surroundings are unfavorable.  There never has been a man or woman of genius from the Southern Hemisphere because the Lord didn't allow the right climate to fall upon the land. It falls upon the water. There never was much civilization except where there has been snow, an ordinarily decent winter. You can't have civilization without it. Where man needs no bedclothes but clouds, revolution is the normal condition of such a people. It is the winter that gives us the home. It is the winter that gives us the fireside and the family relation and all the beautiful flowers of love that adorn that relation. Civilization, liberty, justice, charity, and intellectual advancement are all flowers that bloom in the drifted snow. You can't have them anywhere else and that is the reason we of the North are civilized and that is the reason that civilization has always been with winter. That is the reason that philosophy has been here and in spite of all our superstitions we have advanced beyond some of the other races because we have had this assistance of nature that drove us into the family relation that made us prudent, that made us lay up at one time for another season of the year. So there is one excuse I have for my race. I have got another. I think we came from the lower animals. I am not dead sure of it, but I think so. When I first read about it, I didn't like it. My heart was filled with sympathy for those people who have nothing to be proud of except ancestors. I thought how terrible it will be upon the nobility of the old world. Think of their being forced to trace their ancestry back to the Duke orangutan or to the Princess chimpanzee. After thinking it all over, I came to the conclusion that I liked that doctrine. I became convinced in spite of myself. I read about rudimentary bone and muscles. I was told that everybody had rudimentary muscles extending from the ear into the cheek. I asked, what are they? I was told they are the remains of muscles that they became rudimentary from lack of use. They went into bankruptcy. They are the muscles with which your ancestors used to flap their ears. Well, at first I was greatly astonished and afterward I was more astonished to find they had become rudimentary. How can you account for John Calvin unless we came up from the lower animals? How could you account for a man that would use the extremes of torture unless you admit that there is in man the elements of a snake, of a vulture, of a hyena and a jackal? How can you account for the religious creeds of today?  How can you account for your conception of a god that would sell women and babes into slavery? Well, I thought that thing over and I began to like it after a while and I said it is not so much difference who my father was as who his son is. And I finally said I would rather belong to a race that commenced with the skullless vertebrates in the dim Laurentian seas that wriggled without knowing why they wriggled swimming without knowing where they were going that come along up by degrees through millions of ages, through all that crawls and swims and floats and runs and growls and barks and howls until it struck this fellow in the dugout. And then that fellow in the dugout getting a little grander and each one below calling everyone above him a heretic, calling everyone who had made a little advance an infidel or an atheist and finally the heads getting a little higher and looming up a little grander and more splendidly and finally produced Shakespeare who harvested all the field of dramatic thought and from whose day until now there have been none but gleaners of chaff and straw. Shakespeare was an intellectual ocean whose waves touched all the shores of human thought within which were all the tides and currents and pulses upon which lay all the lights and shadows and over which brooded all the calms and swept all the storms and tempests of which the soul is capable. I would rather belong to that race that commenced with that skullless vertebrate that produced Shakespeare a race that has before it an infinite future with the angel of progress leaning from the far horizon beckoning men forward and upward forever. I would rather belong to that race than to have descended from a perfect pair upon which the Lord has lost money every moment from that day to this. Now my crime has been this. I have insisted that the Bible is not the word of God. I have insisted that we should not whip our children. I have insisted that we should treat our wives as loving equals. I have denied that God, if there is any God, ever upheld polygamy and slavery. I have denied that that God ever told his generals to kill innocent babes and tear and rip open women with a sword of war. I have denied that and for that I have been assailed by the clergy of the United States. They tell me I have misquoted and I owe it to you and maybe I owe it to myself to read one or two words to you upon this subject. In order to do that I shall have to put on my glasses and that brings me back to where I started that man has advanced just in proportion as his thought has mingled with his labor. If man's eyes hadn't failed, he would never have made any spectacles. He would never have had the telescope and he would never have been able to read the leaves of heaven. End of Ingersoll's lecture on skulls. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. Ingersoll's lecture on skulls is from the book Lectures of Colonel Robert Green Ingersoll, read for you by Ted DeLorm in Fort Mill, South Carolina during August 2007. Colonel Ingersoll's replies to his critics. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Colonel Ingersoll's replies to his critics from the book, Lectures of Colonel Robert Green Ingersoll. Colonel Ingersoll's reply to Dr. Collier. Now they tell me, and there are several gentlemen who have spoken on this subject, the Reverend Mr. Collier, a gentleman standing as high as anybody and I have nothing to say against him. Because I denounced God who upheld murder and slavery and polygamy, he said that what I said was slang. I would like to have it compared with any sermon that ever issued from the lips of that gentleman and before he gets through he admits that the Old Testament is a rotten tree that will soon fall into the earth and act as a fertilizer for his doctrine. Is it honest in that man to assail my motive? Let him answer my argument. Is it honest and fair in him to say I am doing a certain thing because it is popular? Has it got to this that in this Christian country where they have preached every day hundreds and thousands of sermons, has it got to this that infidelity is so popular in the United States? If it has, I take courage and I not only see the dawn of a brighter day, but the day is here. Think of it. A minister tells me in this year of grace, 1879, that a man is an infidel simply that he may be popular. I am glad of it. Simply that he may make money. Is it possible that we can make more money tearing up churches than in building them up? Is it possible that we can make more money denouncing the God of slavery than we can praising the God that took liberty from man? If so, I am glad. I call publicly upon Robert Collier, a man for whom I have great respect, I call publicly upon Robert Collier to state to the people of this city whether he believes the Old Testament was inspired.  Do you believe that Robert Collier would obey such an order? Do you believe that he would rush to the cradle and drive the knife of theological hatred to the tender heart of a dimpled child? And yet when I denounce a God that will give such a hellish order, he says it is slang. I want him to answer, and when he answers he will say he does not believe the Bible is inspired. That is what he will say, and he holds these old worthies in the same contempt that I do.   Would he think that mankind ought to hold up his name forever for reverence? Robert Collier says that we should read and scan every word of the Old Testament with reverence, that we should take this book up with reverential hands. I deny it. We should read it as we do every other book and everything good in it, keep it. And everything that shocks the brain and shocks the heart, throw it away. Let us be honest. Ingersoll's reply to Professor Swing. Professor Swing has made a few remarks on this subject, and I say the spirit he has exhibited has been as gentle and as sweet as the perfume of a flower. He was too good a man to stay in the Presbyterian church. He was a rose among thistles. He was a dove among vultures, and they hunted him out, and I am glad he came out. I tell all the churches to drive all such men out, and when he comes I want him to state just what he thinks. I want him to tell the people of Chicago whether he believes the Bible is inspired in any sense, except that in which Shakespeare was inspired. Honor bright, I tell you that all the sweet and beautiful things in the Bible would not make one play of Shakespeare. All the philosophy in the world would not make one scene in Hamlet. All the beauties of the Bible would not make one scene in the Midsummer Night's Dream. All the beautiful things about women in the Bible would not begin to create such a character as Perditu or Imogen or Miranda, not one. I want him to tell whether he believes the Bible was inspired in any other way than Shakespeare was inspired. I want him to pick out something as beautiful and tender as Burns' poem to Mary in Heaven. I want him to tell whether he believes the story about the bears eating up children, whether that is inspired. I want him to tell whether he considers that a poem or not. I want to know if the same God made those bears that devoured the children because they laughed at an old man out of hair. I want to know if the same God that did that is the same God who said, suffer little children to come unto me, for such is the kingdom of heaven. I want him to answer it and answer it fairly. That is all I ask. I want just the fair thing. Now sometimes Mr. Swing talks as though he believed the Bible and then he talks to me as though he didn't believe the Bible. The day he made this sermon I think he did just a little believe it. He is like the man that passed a $10 counterfeit bill. He was arrested and his father went to see him and said, John, how could you commit such a crime? How could you bring my gray hairs in sorrow to the grave? Well, he says, Father, I'll tell you. I got this bill and some days I thought it was bad and some days I thought it was good. And one day when I thought it was good I passed it. I want it distinctly understood that I have the greatest respect for Professor Swing. But I want him to tell whether the 109th Psalm is inspired. I want him to tell whether the passages I shall afterward read in this book are inspired. That is what I want. Ingersoll's reply to Brooke Herford, D.D. Then there is another gentleman here. His name is Herford. He says it is not fair to apply the test of truth to the Bible. I don't think it is myself. He says, although Moses upheld slavery, that he improved it. They were not quite so bad as they were before and heaven justified slavery at that time. Do you believe that God ever turned the arms of children into chains of slavery?  You cannot have your children unless you will lose your liberty and unless you are willing to throw them from your heart forever, you cannot be free. I want Mr. Herford to state whether he loves such a God. Be honor bright about it. Don't begin to talk about civilization or what the church has done or will do. Just walk right up to the rack and say whether you love and worship a God that established slavery. Honest and love and worship a God that would allow a little babe to be torn from the breast of its mother and sold into slavery. Now tell it fair, Mr. Herford. I want you to tell the ladies in your congregation that you believe in a God that allowed women to be given to the soldiers. Tell them that. And then if you say it was not the God of Moses, then don't praise Moses anymore. Don't do it. Answer these questions. Ingersoll Gatlinggun turned on Dr. Rider. Then here is another gentleman, Mr. Rider, the Reverend Mr. Rider, and he says that Calvinism is rejected by a majority of Christendom. He is mistaken. There is what they call the Evangelical Alliance. They met in this country in 1875 or 1876 and there were present representatives of all the evangelical churches in the world and they adopted a creed. And that creed is that man is totally depraved. That creed is that there is an eternal universal hell and that every man that does not believe in a certain way is bound to be damned forever and that there is only one way to be saved and that is by faith and by faith alone. And they would not allow anybody to be represented there that did not believe that and they would not allow a Unitarian there and would not have allowed Dr. Rider there because he takes away from the Christian world the consolation naturally arising from the belief in hell. Dr. Rider is mistaken. All the orthodox religion of the day is Calvinism. It believes in the fall of man. It believes in the atonement. It believes in the eternity of hell and it believes in salvation by faith that is to say by credulity. That is what they believe and he is mistaken and I want to tell Dr. Rider today if there is a God and he wrote the Old Testament there is a hell.  I want to tell him that the Bible upholds the doctrine of hell. I want to tell him that if there is no hell somebody ought to have said so and Jesus Christ should not have said I will at the last day say depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. If there was not such a place Christ would not have said depart from me ye cursed and these shall go hence into everlasting fire and if you Dr. Rider are depending for salvation on the God that wrote the Old Testament you will inevitably be eternally damned. There is no hope for you.  It is just as much blasphemy to deny the devil as to deny God according to the Orthodox Creed. He admits that the Jews were polygamists but he says how was it that they finally quit it? I can tell you the soil was so poor they couldn't afford it. Professor Swing says the Bible is a poem. Dr. Rider says it is a picture. The Garden of Eden is pictorial, a pictorial snake and a pictorial woman I suppose and a pictorial man. And maybe it was a pictorial sin and only a pictorial atonement. Ingersoll's reply to Rabbi Bienn. Then there is another gentleman and he a Rabbi, a Rabbi Bienn or Bean or whatever his name is and he comes to the defense of the great law giver. There was another Rabbi who attacked me in Cincinnati and I couldn't help but think of the old saying that a man got off when he said the tallest man he ever knew his name was short and the fattest man he ever saw his name was Lean and it is only necessary for me to add that this Rabbi in Cincinnati was wise. The Rabbi here I will not answer him and I will tell you why because he has taken himself outside of all the limits of a gentleman because he has taken it upon himself to traduce American women in language the beastliest I ever read and any man who says that the American women are not just as good women as any God can make and pick his mud today is an unappreciative barbarian. I will let him alone because he denounced all the men in this country, all the members of Congress, all the members of the Senate and all the judges upon the bench. In his lecture, he denounced them as thieves and robbers. That won't do. I want to remind him that in this country the Jews were first admitted to the privileges of citizens that in this country they were first given all their rights and I am as much in favor of their having their rights as I am in favor of having my own. But when a Rabbi so far forgets himself as to traduce the women and men of this country I pronounce him a vulgar falsifier and let him alone. Strange that nearly every man that has answered me has answered me mostly on the same side. Strange that nearly every man that thought himself called upon to defend the Bible was one who did not believe in it himself. Isn't it strange? They are like some suspected people always anxious to show their marriage certificate. They want at least to convince the world that they are not as bad as I am. Now I want to read you just one or two things and then I am going to let you go. I want to see if I have said such awful things and whether I have got any scripture to stand by me. I will read only two or three verses. Does the Bible teach man to enslave his brother? If it does it is not the word of God unless God is a slaveholder. Moreover all the children of the strangers that do not sojourn among you of them shall ye buy of their families which are with you, which they beget in your land and they shall be your possession. Ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you to inherit them. They shall be your bondsmen forever. Old Testament. Upon the limbs of unborn babes this fiendish God put the chains of slavery. I hate him. Both thy bondmen and bondwomen shall be of the heathen round about thee and them shall ye buy bondmen and bondwomen. Now let us read what the New Testament has. I could read a great deal more but that is enough. Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh in fear and trembling in singleness of your heart as unto Christ. This is putting the dirty thief that steals your labor on an equality with God. Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear not only to the good and gentle but also to the froad. For this is thankworthy if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongly. The idea of a man on account of conscience toward God stealing another man or allowing him nothing but lashes on his back as legal tender for labor performed. Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed. How can you blaspheme the name of God by asserting your independence? How can you blaspheme the name of a God by striking fetters from the limbs of men? I wish some of your ministers would tell you that and they that have believing masters let them not despise them. That is to say a good Christian could own another believer in Jesus Christ, could own a woman and her children and could sell the child away from its mother. That is a sweet belief. Oh, hypocrisy! Let them not despise them because they are brethren but rather do them service because they are faithful and beloved partakers of the benefit. Oh, what slush! Here is what they will tell the poor slave so that he will serve the man that stole his wife and children from him. For we have brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out. Having food and raiment, let us be there with content. Don't you think that it would do just as well to preach to the thieving man as to the suffering slave? I think so. Then this same Bible teaches witchcraft that spirits go into the bodies of the man and pigs and that God himself made a trade with the devil and the devil traded him off. A man for a certain number of swine and the devil lost money because the hogs ran right down into the sea. He got a corner on that deal. Now let us see how they believed in the rights of children.  And they shall say unto the elders of his city, this our son is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey our voice. He is a glutton and a drunkard and all the men of this city shall stone him with stones that he die, so shall to thou put evil away. That is a very good way to raise children. Here is the story of Jephthah. He went off and he asked the Lord to let him whip some people and he told the Lord if he would let him whip them he would sacrifice to the Lord the first thing that met him on his return and the first thing that met him was his own beautiful daughter and he sacrificed her. Is there a sadder story in all history than that? What do you think of a man that would sacrifice his own daughter? What do you think of a God that would receive that sacrifice? Now then they come to women in this blessed gospel and let us see what the gospel says about women. Then you ought all to go to church girls next Sunday and hear it. Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection but I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man but to be in silence for Adam was formed first, not Eve. Don't you see? And Adam was not deceived but the woman being deceived was in the transgression notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety that is Mr. Timothy. But I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ and the head of the woman is the man and the head of Christ is God. I suppose that every old maid is acephalus for a man indeed ought not to cover his head for as much as he is the image and glory of God but the woman is the glory of the man for the man is not of the woman but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman but the woman for the man. Wives submit yourselves unto your own husband as unto the Lord for the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church. Do you hear that? You didn't know how much we were above you. When you go back to the Old Testament to the great lawgiver you'll find that the woman has to ask forgiveness for having born a child. If it was a boy, 33 days she was unclean. If it was a girl, 66, nice laws, good laws.  Yes, I think more of a good woman and a child than I do of all the gods I have ever heard these people tell about. Just think of this. When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies and the Lord thy God hath delivered them into thine hands and thou hast taken them captive and seized among the captives a beautiful woman and hast a desire unto her that thou wouldst have her to thy wife.  Wherefore ye must needs be subject not only for wrath but for conscience's sake. For this cause pay you tribute also for they are God's ministers. I despise this wretched doctrine. Wherever the sword of rebellion is drawn in favor of the right I am a rebel. I suppose Alexander saw of Russia was put there by the order of God, was he? I am sorry that he was not removed by the nihilist that shot at him the other day. I tell you in a country like that where there are hundreds of girls, not 16 years of age, prisoners in Siberia simply forgiving their ideas about liberty and we telegraph to that country congratulating that wretch that he was not killed. My heart goes into the prison. My heart goes with the poor girl working as a miner in the mines crawling on her hands and knees getting the precious ore out of the mines and my sympathies go with her and my sympathies cluster around the point of the dagger. Does the Bible describe a God of mercy? Let me read you a verse or two. I will make mine arrows drunk with blood and my sword shall devour flesh. Thy foot may be dipped in the blood of thine enemies and the tongue of thy dogs in the same and the Lord thy God will put out those nations before thee by little and little.  There shall no man be able to stand before thee until thou have destroyed them. I can see what he had her nails paired for. Does the Bible teach polygamy? The Reverend Dr. Newman, consul general to all the world had a discussion with elder Abur of Kimball or some such wretch in Utah whether the Bible sustains polygamy and the Mormons have printed that discussion as a campaign document. Read the order of Moses in the 31st chapter of Numbers. A great many chapters I dare not read to you. They are too filthy. I leave all that to the clergy. Read the 31st chapter of Exodus, the 31st chapter of Deuteronomy, the life of Abraham and the life of David and the life of Solomon and then tell me that the Bible does not uphold polygamy and concubinage. Let them answer. Then I said that the Bible upheld tyranny. Let me read you a little. Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers for there is no power but of God, the powers that be are ordained of God. George III was king by the grace of God and when our fathers rose in rebellion according to this doctrine, they rose against the power of God and if they did, they were successful and so it goes on telling of all the cities that were destroyed and of the great hearted men that they dashed their brains out and all the little babes and all the sweet women that they killed and plundered all in the name of a most merciful God. Well, think of it. The Old Testament is filled with anathemas and with curses and with words of revenge and jealousy and hatred and meanness and brutality. Have I read enough to show you that what I said is so? I think I have. I wish I had time to read to you further of what the dear old fathers of the church said about women. Wait a minute and I will read you a little. We've got them running. St. Augustine in his 22nd book says, a woman ought to serve her husband as unto God, affirming that women ought to be braced and bridled be times if she aspire to any dominion, alleging that dangerous and perilous it is to suffer her to proceed, although it be intemporal and corporeal things. How can woman be in the image of God seeing she is subject to man and hath no authority to teach, neither to be a witness, neither to judge, much less to rule or bear the rod of empire? Oh, he is a good one. These are the very words of Augustine. Let me read some more. Woman shall be subject unto man as unto Christ. That is St. Augustine and this sentence of Augustine ought to be noted of all women, for in it he plainly affirms that women are all the more subject to man. And now, St. Anbrose, he is a good boy. Adam was deceived by Eve called Haver, not Haver by Adam, and therefore just it is that woman receive and acknowledge him for governor whom she called sin, lest that again she slip and fall with womanly facility. Don't you see that woman has sinned once and man never? If you give woman an opportunity, she will sin again, whereas if you give it to man who never, never betrayed his trust in the world, nothing bad can happen. Let women be subject to their own husbands as unto the Lord, for man is the head of woman and Christ is the head of the congregation. They are all real good men, all of them. It is not permitted to woman to speak. Let her be in silence. As the law said, unto thy husband shall thou ever be, and he shall bear dominion over thee. And so, St. Chrysostom, he is another good man. Woman, he says, was put under the power of man, and man was pronounced Lord over her, that she should obey man, that the head should not follow the feet. False priests do commonly deceive women because they are easily persuaded to any opinion, especially if it be again given, and because they lack prudence and right reason to judge the things that be spoken, which should not be the nature of those that are appointed to govern others, for they should be constant, stable, prudent, and doing everything with discretion and reason, which virtues woman cannot have inequality with man. I tell you women are more prudent than men. I tell you as a rule women are more truthful than men. I tell you that women are more faithful than men ten times as faithful as man. I never saw a man pursue his wife into the very ditch and dust of degradation and take her in his arms. I never saw a man stand at the shore where she had been morally wrecked, waiting for the waves to bring back even her corpse to his arms. But I have seen woman do it. I have seen woman with her white arms lift man from the admire of degradation and hold him to her bosom as though he were an angel. And these men thought woman not fit to be held as pure in the sight of God as man. I never saw a man that pretended that he didn't love a woman, that pretended that he loved God better than he did a woman, that he didn't look hateful to me, hateful and unclean. I could read you twenty others, but I haven't time to do it. They are all to the same effect exactly. They hate woman and say man is as much above her as God is above man. I am a believer in absolute equality. I am a believer in absolute liberty between man and wife. I believe in liberty and I say, oh liberty float not forever in the far horizon, remain not forever in the dream of the enthusiast, the philanthropist and poet, but come and make thy home among the children of men. I know not what discoveries, what inventions, what thoughts may leap from the brain of the world. I know not what garments of glory may be woven by the years to come. I cannot dream of the victories to be won. I do know that coming upon the field of thought, but down the infinite sea of the future, there will never touch this bank and shoal of time, a richer gift, a rarer blessing than liberty for man, woman and child. I never addressed a more magnificent audience in my life and I thank you. I thank you a thousand times over. Ingersoll's Catechism and Bible Class. Nothing is more gratifying than to see ideas that were received with scorn, flourishing in the sunshine of approval. Only a few weeks ago, I stated that the Bible was not inspired, that Moses was mistaken, that the flood was a foolish myth, that the Tower of Babel existed only in credulity, that God did not create the universe from nothing, that he did not start the first woman with a rib, that he never upheld slavery, that he was not a polygamist, that he did not kill people for making hair oil, that he did not order his generals to kill the dimpled babes, that he did not allow the roses of love and the violets of modesty to be trodden under the brutal feet of lust, that the Hebrew language was written without vowels, that the Bible was composed of many books written by unknown men, that all translations differed from each other and that this book had filled the world with agony and crime. At that time I had not the remotest idea that the most learned clergyman in Chicago would substantially agree with me. In public, I have read the replies of the Reverend Robert Collier, Dr. Thomas Rabbi Kohler, Reverend Brooke Hurford, Professor Swing and Dr. Ryder and will now ask them a few questions, answering them in their own words. First, Reverend Robert Collier, question, what is your opinion of the Bible? Answer, it is a splendid book. It makes the noblest type of Catholics and the meanest bigots. Through this book men give their hearts for good to God or for evil to the devil. The best argument for the intrinsic greatness of the book is that it can touch such wide extremes and seem to maintain us in the most unparalleled cruelty, as well as the most tender mercy, that it can inspire purity like that of the great saints and afford arguments in favor of polygamy. The Bible is the textbook of ironclad Calvinism and sunny universalism. It makes the Quaker quiet and the Millerite crazy. It inspired the Union soldier to live and grandly die for the right and Stonewall Jackson to live nobly and die grandly for the wrong. Question, but Mr. Collier, do you really think that a book with as many passages in favor of wrong as right is inspired? Answer, I look upon the Old Testament as a rotting tree. When it falls it will fertilize a bank of violets. Question, do you believe that God upheld slavery and polygamy? Do you believe that he ordered the killing of babes and the violation of maidens? Answer, there is a threefold inspiration in the Bible, the first, peerless and perfect, the word of God to man, the second, simply and purely human, and then below this again there is an inspiration born of an evil heart, ruthless and savage there and then as anything well can be. A threefold inspiration of heaven first, then of the earth, and then of hell, all in the same book, all sometimes in the same chapter and then besides a great many things that need no inspiration. Question, then after all you do not pretend that the scriptures are really inspired. Answer, the scriptures make no such claim for themselves as the church makes for them. They leave me free to say this is false or this is true. The truth even within the Bible dies and lives, makes on this side and loses on that. Question, what do you say to the last verse in the Bible where a curse is threatened to any man who takes from or adds to the book? Answer, I have but one answer to this question and it is let who will have written this. I cannot for an instant believe that it was written by divine inspiration. Such dogmas and threats as these are not of God but of man and not of any man of a free spirit and heart eager for the truth, but a narrow man who would cripple and confine the human soul in its quest after the whole truth of God and back those who have done the shameful things in the name of the most high. Question, do you not regard such talk as slang? Supposed answer. If an infidel had said that the writer of revelations was narrow and bigoted, I might have denounced his discourse as slang but I think that unitarian ministers can do so with the greatest propriety. Question, do you believe in the stories of the Bible about jail and the sun standing still and the walls falling at the blowing of horns? Answer, there may be legends, mid poems are what they will but they are not the word of God. So I say again it was not the God and father of us all who inspired the woman to drive that nail crashing through the king's temple after she had given him that bowl of milk and bid him sleep in safety but a very mean devil of hatred and revenge that I should hardly expect to find in a squaw on the plains. It was not the ram's horns and the shouting before which the walls fell flat. If they went down at all it was through good, solid pounding and not for an instant did the steady son stand still or let his planet stand still while barbarian fought barbarian. He kept just a time then he keeps now. They might believe it who made the record. I do not. And since the whole Christian world might believe it still we do not who gather in this church. A free and reasonable mind stands right in our way. Newton might believe it as a Christian and disbelieve it as a philosopher. We stand then with the philosopher against the Christian for we must believe what is true to us in the last test and these things are not true. Second Reverend Dr. Thomas question what is your opinion of the Old Testament? Answer my opinion is that it is not one book but many thirty nine books bound up in one. The date and authorship of most of these books are wholly unknown. The Hebrews wrote without vowels and without dividing the letters into syllables, words or sentences. The books were gathered up by Ezra. At that time only two of the Jewish tribes remained. All progress had ceased. In gathering up the sacred book copyists exercised great liberty in making changes and additions. Question yes we all know that but is the Old Testament inspired? Answer there may be the inspiration of art of poetry or oratory of patriotism and there are such inspirations. There are moments when great truths and principles come to men. They seek the man and not the man them. Question yes we will admit that but is the Bible inspired? Answer but still I know of no way to convince anyone of spirit and inspiration and God only as his reason may take hold of these things. Question do you think the Old Testament true? Answer the story of Eden may be an allegory. The history of the children of Israel may have mistakes. Question must inspiration claim infallibility? Answer it is a mistake to say that if you believe one part of the Bible you must believe it all. Some of the 39 books may be inspired others not or there may be degrees of inspiration. Question do you believe that God commanded the soldiers to kill the children and the married women and save for themselves the maidens as recorded in Numbers 31-2? Do you believe that God upheld slavery? Do you believe that God upheld polygamy? Answer the Bible may be wrong in some statements. God and right cannot be wrong. We must not exalt the Bible above God. It may be that we have claimed too much for the Bible and thereby given not a little occasion for such men as Mr. Ingesol to appear at the other extreme denying too much. Question what then shall be done? Answer we must take a middle ground. It is not necessary to believe that the bears devoured the 42 children nor that Jonah was swallowed by the whale. Third Reverend Dr. Kohler. Question what is your opinion about the Old Testament? Answer I will not make futile attempts of artificially interpreting the letter of the Bible so as to make it reflect the philosophical, moral and scientific views of our time. The Bible is a sacred record of humanity's childhood. Question are you an Orthodox Christian?  A pillar of salt. Question do you really believe the Old Testament was inspired? Answer I greatly acknowledge our indebtedness to men like Voltaire and Thomas Paine whose bold denial and cutting wit was so instrumental in bringing about this glorious era of freedom so congenial and blissful particularly to the long abused Jewish race. Question do you believe in the inspiration of the Bible? Answer of course there is a destructive axe needed to strike down the old building in order to make room for the grander new. The divine origin claimed by the Hebrews for their national literature was claimed by all nations for their old records and laws as preserved by the priesthood. As Moses the Hebrew lawgiver is represented as having received the law from God on the holy mountains so is Zoroaster the Persian, Manu the Hindu, Minos the Cretan, Lakerges the Spartan, and Numa the Roman. Question do you believe all the stories in the Bible? Answer all that can and must be said against them is that they have been too long retained around the arms and limbs of grown-up manhood to check the spiritual progress of religion that by Jewish ritualism and Christian dogmatism they became fetters unto the soul turning the light of heaven into a misty haze to blind the eye and even into a hell fire of fanaticism to consume souls. Question is the Bible inspired? Answer true the Bible is not free from errors nor is any work of man and time it abounds in childish views and offensive matters. I trust it will in a time not far off be presented for common use in families, schools, synagogues and churches in a refined shape cleansed from all dross and chaff and stumbling blocks on which the scoffer delights to dwell. Fourth Reverend Mr. Herford. Question is the Bible true? Answer Egersoll is very fond of saying the question is not is the Bible inspired but is it true? That sounds very plausible but you know as applied to any ancient book it is simply nonsense. Question do you think the stories in the Bible exaggerated? Answer I dare say the numbers are immensely exaggerated. Question do you think that God upheld polygamy? Answer the truth of which simply is that 4,000 years ago polygamy existed among the Jews as everywhere else on earth then and even their prophets did not come to the idea of its being wrong but what is there to be indignant about in that? And so you really wonder why any man should be indignant at the idea that God upheld and sanctioned that beastliness called polygamy? What is there to be indignant about in that? Fifth Professor Swing. Question what is your idea of the Bible? Answer I think it is a poem. Sixth Reverend Dr. Ryder. Question and what is your idea of the sacred scriptures? Answer like other nations the Hebrews had their patriotic descriptive didactic and lyrical poems in the same varieties as other nations but with them unlike other nations whatever may be the form of their poetry it always possesses the characteristic of religion. Question I suppose you fully appreciate the religious characteristics of the song of Solomon. No answer. Question does the Bible uphold polygamy? Answer the law of Moses did not forbid it and contained many provisions against its worst abuses and such as were intended to restrict it within narrow limits. Question so you think God corrected some of the worst abuses of polygamy but preserved the institution itself? I might question many others but have concluded not to consider those as members of my Bible class who deal in colonies and epithets. From the so-called replies of such ministers it appears that while Christianity changes the heart it does not improve the manners and one can get into heaven in the next world without having been a gentleman in this. It is difficult for me to express the deep and thrilling satisfaction I have experienced in reading the admissions of the clergy of Chicago. Surely the battle of intelligent liberty is almost won when ministers admit that the Bible is filled with ignorant and cruel mistakes that each man has the right to think for himself and that it is not necessary to believe the scriptures in order to be saved. From the bottom of my heart I congratulate my pupils on the advance they have made and hope soon to meet them on the serene heights of perfect freedom. End Ingersoll's response to his critics. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. Ingersoll's response to his critics is part of the book Lectures of Colonel Robert Green Ingersoll Read for you by Ted DeLorm in Fort Mill, South Carolina during August 2007.