You will see that at the last election Delaware lacked only six or seven hundred of being a civilized State, and probably in 1884 will stand redeemed and regenerated, with the laws of 1740 expunged from the statute book. Delaware has not had the best of opportunities. You must remember that it is next to New Jersey, which is quite an obstacle in the path of progress. It is just beyond Maryland, which is another obstacle. I heard the other day that God originally made oysters with legs, and afterward took them off, knowing that the people of Delaware would starve to death before they would run to catch anything. Judge Comegys is the last judge who will make such a charge in the United States. He has immortalized himself as the last mile-stone on that road. He is the last of his race. No more can be born. Outside of this he probably was a very clever man, and it may be, he does not believe a word he utters. The probability is that he has underestimated the intelligence of the people of Delaware. I am afraid to think that he is entirely honest, for fear that I may underestimate him intellectually, and overestimate him morally. Nothing could tempt me to do this man injustice, though I could hardly add to the injury he has done himself. He has called attention to laws that ought to be repealed, and to lectures that ought to be repeated. I feel in my heart that he has done me a great service, second only to that for which I am indebted to the grand jury. Had the Judge known me personally he probably would have said nothing. Should I have the misfortune to be arrested in his State and sentenced to two months of solitary confinement, the Judge having become acquainted with me during the trial, would probably insist on spending most of his time in my cell. At the end of the two months he would, I think, lay himself liable to the charge of blasphemy, providing he had honor enough to express his honest thought. After all, it is all a question of honesty. Every man is right. I cannot convince myself there is any God who will ever damn a man for having been honest. This gives me a certain hope for the Judge and the grand jury.
For two or three days I have been thinking what joy there must have been in heaven when Jehovah heard that Delaware was on his side, and remarked to the angels in the language of the late Adjt. Gen. Thomas: "The eyes of all Delaware are upon you."
A REPLY TO REV. DRS. THOMAS AND LORIMER.
* Col. Ingersoll filled McVickor's Theatre again yesterday
afternoon, when he answered the question "What Must We Do to
Be Saved?" But before doing so he replied to the recent
criticisms of city clergymen on his "Talmagian Theology"—
Chicago Tribune, Nov. 27, 1882.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
WHEREVER I lecture, as a rule, some ministers think it their duty to reply for the purpose of showing either that I am unfair, or that I am blasphemous, or that I laugh. And laughing has always been considered by theologians as a crime. Ministers have always said you will have no respect for our ideas unless you are solemn. Solemnity is a condition precedent to believing anything without evidence. And if you can only get a man solemn enough, awed enough, he will believe anything.
In this city the Rev. Dr. Thomas has made a few remarks, and I may say by way of preface that I have always held him in the highest esteem. He struggles, according to his statement, with the problem of my sincerity, and he about half concludes that I am not sincere. There is a little of the minister left in Dr. Thomas. Ministers always account for a difference of opinion by attacking the motive. Now, to him, it makes no difference whether I am sincere or insincere; the question is, Can my argument be answered? Suppose you could prove that the maker of the multiplication table held mathematics in contempt; what of it? Ten times ten would be a hundred still.
My sincerity has nothing to do with the force of the argument—not the slightest. But this gentleman begins to suspect that I am doing what I do for the sake of applause. What a commentary on the Christian religion, that, after they have been preaching it for sixteen or eighteen hundred years, a man attacks it for the sake of popularity—a man attacks it for the purpose of winning applause! When I commenced to speak upon this subject there was no appreciable applause; most of my fellow-citizens differed with me; and I was denounced as though I had been a wild beast. But I have lived to see the majority of the men and women of intellect in the United States on my side; I have lived to see the church deny her creed; I have lived to see ministers apologize in public for what they preached; and a great and glorious work is going on until, in a little while, you will not find one of them, unless it is some old petrifaction of the red-stone period, who will admit that he ever believed in the Trinity, in the Atonement, or in the doctrine of Eternal Agony. The religion preached in the pulpits does not satisfy the intellect of America, and if Dr. Thomas wishes to know why people go to hear infidelity it is this: Because they are not satisfied with the orthodox Christianity of the day. That is the reason. They are beginning to hold it in contempt.