Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest

by Robert Green Ingersoll

"We believe that Jesus Christ came to establish among men the Kingdom of God, the reign of truth and love, of righteousness and peace."

Well, that may have been the object of Jesus Christ. I do not deny it. But what was the result? The Christian world has caused more war than all the rest of the world besides; all the cunning instruments of death have been devised by Christians; all the wonderful machinery by which the brains are blown out of a man, by which nations are conquered and subdued—all these machines have been born in Christian brains. And yet He came to bring peace, they say. But the testament says otherwise: "I came not to bring peace, but a sword." And the sword was brought. What are the Christian nations doing today in Europe? Is there a solitary Christian nation that will trust any other? How many millions of Christians are in the uniform of everlasting forgiveness, loving their enemies? There was an old Spaniard upon the bed of death, and he sent for a priest, and the priest told him that he would have to forgive his enemies before he died. He says, "I have not any." "What! no enemies?" "Not one," said the dying man, "I killed the last one three weeks ago."

How many millions of Christians are now armed and equipped to destroy their fellow-Christians? Who are the men in Europe crying out against war? Who wishes to have the nations disarmed? Is it the church? No; it is the men who do not believe in what they call this religion of peace. When there is a war, and when they make a few thousand widows and orphans, when they strew the plain with dead patriots, then Christians assemble in their churches and sing "Te Deum Laudamus" to God. Why? Because He has enabled a few of His children to kill some others of His children. This is the religion of peace—the religion that invented the Krupp gun, that will hurl a bullet weighing 2,000 pounds through twenty-four inches of solid steel. This is the religion of peace, that covers the sea with men-of-war, clad in mail, all in the name of universal forgiveness.

What effect had this religion upon the nations of the earth? What have the nations been fighting about? What was the Thirty Years' War in Europe for? What was the war in Holland for? Why was it that England persecuted Scotland? Why is it that England persecutes Ireland even unto this day? At the bottom of every one of these conflicts you will find a religious question. The religion of Jesus Christ, as preached by His church, causes war, bloodshed, hatred, and all uncharitableness; and why? Because they say a certain belief is necessary to salvation. They do not say, if you behave yourself pretty well you will get there; they do not say, if you pay your debts and love your wife, and love your children, and are good to your friends, and your neighbors, and your country, you will get there; that will do you no good; you have got to believe a certain thing. Oh, yes, no matter how bad you are, you can instantly be forgiven then; and no matter how good you are, if you fail to believe that, the moment you get to the day of judgment nothing is left but to damn you forever, and all the angels will shout "Hallelujah!"

What do they teach today? Every murderer goes to heaven; there is only one step from the gallows to God; only one jerk between the halter and heaven. That is taught by this same church. I believe there ought to be a law to prevent the slightest religious consolation being given to any man who has been guilty of murder. Let a Catholic understand that if he imbrues his hands in his brother's blood, he can have no extreme unction; let it be understood that he can have no forgiveness through the church; and let the Protestant understand that when he has committed that crime, the community will not pray him into heaven. Let him go with his victim. The victim, you know, dying in his sins, goes to hell, and the murderer has the happiness of seeing him there. And if heaven grows dull and monotonous, the murderer can again give life to the nerve of pleasure by watching the agony of his victim. I am opposed to that kind of forgiveness. And yet that is the religion of universal peace to everybody.

Now, what is the next thing that I wish to call your attention to?

"We believe in the ultimate prevalence of the Kingdom of Christ over all the earth."

What makes you? Do you judge from the manner in which you are getting along now? How many people are being born a year? About fifty millions. How many are you converting a year; really, truthfully? Five or six thousand. I think I have overestimated the number. Is orthodox Christianity on the increase? No. There are a hundred times as many unbelievers in orthodox Christianity as there were ten years ago. What are you doing in the missionary World? How long is it since you converted a Chinaman? A fine missionary religion, to send missionaries, with their bibles and tracts, to China, but if a Chinaman comes here, mob him, simply to show him the difference between the practical and theoretical workings of the Christian religion. How long since you have had a convert in India? In my judgment, never; there never has been an intelligent Hindoo converted from the time the first missionary put his foot upon that soil; and never, in my judgment, has an intelligent Chinaman been converted since the first missionary touched that shore. Where are they? We hear nothing of them, except in the reports. They get money from poor old ladies, trembling on the edge of the grave, and go and tell them stories how hungry the average Chinaman is for a copy of the new testament, and paint the sad condition of a gentleman in the interior of Africa, without the work of Dr. McCosh, longing for a copy of the Princeton Review. In my judgment, it is a book that would suit a savage. Thus money is scared from the dying and frightened from the old and feeble. About how long is it before this kingdom is to be established?

What is the next thing here? They all also believe in the resurrection of the dead, and in their confession of faith hereto attached I find they also believe in the resurrection of the body. Does anybody believe that, that has ever thought? Here is a man, for instance, that weighs 200 pounds, and gets sick and dies weighing 120; how much will he weigh in the morning of the resurrection? Here is a cannibal, who eats another man; and we know that the atoms that you eat go into your body and become a part of you. After the cannibal has eaten the missionary, and appropriated his atoms to himself, and then he dies, who will the atoms belong to in the morning of the resurrection in an action of replevin brought by the missionary against the cannibal? It has been demonstrated again and again that there is no creation in nature, and no destruction in nature. It has been demonstrated again and again that the atoms that are in us have been in millions of other beings; grown in the forest, in the grass, blossomed in the flowers, been in the metals; in other words, there are atoms in each one of us that have been in millions of others, and when we die these atoms return to the earth, and again spring in vegetation, taken up in the leaves of the trees, turned into wood. And yet we have a church, in the nineteenth century, getting up this doctrine, presided over by professors, by presidents of colleges, and by theologians, who tell us that they believe in the resurrection of the body.

They know better. There is not one so ignorant but what knows better.