Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 July 1885 — Col. Robert Ingersoll. [ARTICLE]

Col. Robert Ingersoll.

The last man in the world to find fault with his Creator is ( 01. Robert Ingersoll. He is rich, healthy, fat if not greasy, and has escaped those acute sufferings which he states have afflicted the rest of mankind since the ill-judged introduction of Christianity. He thinks that the wisdom and benevolence of the Creator have been very much overestimated, and that if he could have the management of affairs he would soon make this world a paradise in which there should be no poverty or pain, and all mankind would become just as rich, fat, greasy, and dissatisfied with everything as he is himself. Col. Robert Ingersoll is a melancholy example of the influence of too much property upon the growth of an ungrateful heart and a captious spirit. Had he only a few real troubles’ like owing his . landlord or milkman, he would not go about /abusing his Maker and suggesting improvements in the motions of the planets, and the wise allotments of human discipline. What he needs is for one hour to define what Thomas De Quincy finely calls the hieroglyphics of suffering. The earnest desire of Col. Ingersoll to make the Creator of this world retire from all active direction of affairs, we fear, will not be realized. We trust that the rest of us are not so entirelyforgotten by the Divine wisdom that we shall escape those needed sufferings so wholesome to our souls, in spite of Col. Ingersoll’s protest against the rank injus.tio of all corrections and disciplines. The poor sewing girl, as Col. Ingersoll suggests, ought not to suffer as she doe 3, but if her sufferings can only be, alleviated by first depriving her of a heavenly Father, the remedy is worse than the disease. It would be like that celebrated case where the father cuts his little boy’s head off to cure him of squinting. One of the useful results of a long life, if one retains his mental faculties, is to realize how much better things have been planned for us than we could have planned them* for ourselves. What we thought was good fortune has not proved so, and out of disappointments and sufferings have come a lasting content. Col. Ingersoll is a smart man, and after making all allowances for his ability, we shall venture in closing to modestly suggest to him that perhaps he does not know quite as much as his Creator. —Providence Journal.