"Dear Mr. Loveland.—A day or two since, I received from Mr. Hine the exhilarating intelligence that through his lectures on the 'Identity of the British Nation with Lost Israel,' in Canada and the United States, that Col. Bob Ingersoll, the arch Atheist, has been converted to Christianity, and has joined the Episcopal Church. Praise the Lord!!! 5,000 of his followers have been won for Christ through Mr. Hine's grand mission work, the other side of the Atlantic. The Colonel's cousin, the Rev. Mr. Ingersoll, wrote to Mr. Hine soon after he began lecturing in America, informing him that his lectures had made a great impression on the Colonel and other Atheists. I noted it at the time in the Messenger. Bradlaugh will yet be converted; his brother has been, and has joined a British Israel Identity Association. This is progress, and shows what an energetic, determined man (like Mr. Hine), who is earnest in his faith, can do.
"Very faithfully yours,
"H. HODSON RUGG.
"Grove-road, St. John's Wood, London."
How can we account for an article like that? Who made up this story? Who had the impudence to publish it?
As a matter of fact, I never saw Mr. Hine, never heard of him until this extract was received by me in the month of December. I never read a word about the "Identity of Lost Israel with the British Nation." It is a question in which I never had, and never expect to have, the slightest possible interest.
Nothing can be more preposterous than that the Englishman in whose veins can be found the blood of the Saxon, the Dane, the Norman, the Piet, the Scot and the Celt, is the descendant of "Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." The English language does not bear the remotest resemblance to the Hebrew, and yet it is claimed by the Reverend Hod-son Rugg that not only myself, but five thousand other Atheists, were converted by the Rev. Mr. Hine, because of his theory that Englishmen and Americans are simply Jews in disguise.
This letter, in my judgment, was published to be used by missionaries in China, Japan, India and Africa.
If stories like this can be circulated about a living man, what may we not expect concerning the dead who have opposed the church?
Countless falsehoods have been circulated about all the opponents of superstition. Whoever attacks the popular falsehoods of his time will find that a lie defends itself by telling other lies. Nothing is so prolific, nothing can so multiply itself, nothing can lay and hatch as many eggs, as a good, healthy, religious lie.