REMARKS.
The above dictionary is in my possession. It was published in 1817 by James Eastburn & Company at the literary rooms, corner of Broadway and Pine streets, New York, and by Cummings and Hilliard, No. 1 Cornhill, Boston. The author credits the above article to the above-named magazine, so we may rely upon it as the freethinker's own presentation of his theory in its early history. It will be of great interest to all our readers, as it will enable them to see, at once, the origin of so-called free-thought. It had its origin with Calvinistic errors upon the subject of the Trinity, a vicarious atonement, and kindred ideas concerning human redemption. It will be of interest also to mark the improvements (?) of free-thinkers, who are always boasting of being in the advance guard in warring with error and ignorance.
They had neither singing nor prayers when they started out, and in these regards they have not apostatized from their first faith, for they are up to this time a praiseless and prayerless people, never praying unless it is when they have the cramp or some other disease. Their wants seem to be few and easily supplied. Health and hominy are the staples of spiritual food with them at the present. The time was when, as a society, they wished to wear some of the main elements of the Christian religion, such as belief in the existence of God; the existence of the church of God, and belief in the resurrection of Christ, and through him the resurrection of all men; but they have long ere this thrown aside all these. In the beginning of their history they were noted, as our author says, for their disposition to promptly "controvert the current doctrines of the Christian world," and "show their dissent from all sects and parties, and their aversion to the clergy, and to Christian ministers of all denominations." This trait of character they still retain, regardless of the advance of Christians from Calvinistic errors. This looks like they were determined on hating the profession of Christianity, regardless of its character. Such is their chronic disease.
They talk no more of worshiping the eternal God, nor of obeying the commands of Jesus. But it is just to say of their most noted leaders that they confess that the Christ life was, and is, the most exalted and praiseworthy life of all the ages. And, while this life remains to challenge the world to imitation, we Christians shall rejoice, believing in Christ and realizing that our foundation stands sure and secure. In their origin they built a fine church house, but now they go to China and borrow "Josh house," as an odius epithet for church house, forgetting that their China brethren are simply clinging to their own old philosophy of nature and her lessons, without the religion of the Bible; and, also, forgetting that they, themselves, allow that all that is, is right, being, from natural selection, simply the survival of the fittest. Eight years more and a century will have passed since free thought started out in Parliament Court Chapel, and from present indications we are inclined to think that all men will be under the necessity of conceding that Christianity is the fittest, for it stoutly refuses to die.
In their beginning they repudiated the idea of the inspiration of the Bible; to this they have held without change. Further than this, they acknowledged that the Bible was an authentic history, but now they calumniate the idea, and blaspheme the Bible and its God. In these respects they have grown backwards; and they no longer claim to "worship one God, eternal, just and good," nor to "obey the commands of Jesus," "rejecting sacraments, forms, ordinances, parade and show, along with song and prayer." Perhaps they cast up their accounts, and found that there could, in the very nature of things, be no worship outside of all these elements of worship, and then determined to be more honest at least, and endeavor in the future to people the earth with a non-worshipping, Godless, Christless, praiseless, prayerless, non-hoping set of inhabitants, who would give all up in death for the sake of free thought.
WHAT A MAN MAY BE AND BE A CHRISTIAN IN THE ESTIMATION OF COL. INGERSOLL.
We find the following in the Colonel's speech, which was delivered at Rockford, Ill., on Tuesday, October 5, 1880. We publish it in order to show the utter fallacy of the infidel's claim that Christianity is necessarily in conflict with education; that Christians are necessarily bigots, narrow-minded men, dangerous to the liberty of man, woman and child. Read it, ye fault-finding skeptics and infidels, and save your claims against the Christian religion if you can. Correllate it with the hollow utterances of Colonel Ingersoll, which are so often repeated by him in other addresses directed wholly against Christianity, if you can. Here it is:
"I have known him (Garfield) for years. I know him as well as I know any other man, and I tell you he has more brains, more education, wider and more splendid views than any other man who has been nominated for the Presidency by any party since I was born. Some people say to me: 'How can you vote for Garfield when he is a Christian and was a preacher?' I tell them: 'I have two reasons: One is, I am not a bigot, and the other is, General Garfield is not a bigot. He does not agree with me; I do not agree with him on thousands of things; but on the great luminous principle that every man must give to every other man every right that he claims for himself we do absolutely agree.' [Italics mine.—Ed.] I would despise myself if I would vote against a man in politics simply because we differed about what is known as religion. I will vote for a liberal Catholic, a liberal Presbyterian, a liberal Methodist, a liberal anything ten thousand times quicker than I would vote for an illiberal free-thinker. I believe in the right. I believe in doing to other people in these matters as I would like them to do to me. General Garfield is an honest man every way; intellectual every way. He is a poor man; he is rich in honor, in integrity he is wealthy, and in brains he is a millionaire. * * * He is a great, good, broad, kind, tender man, and he will do, if elected President, what he believes to be right."