Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1879 — Colonel Ingersoll Pays a Tribute of Respect to a Dead Clergyman. [ARTICLE]

Colonel Ingersoll Pays a Tribute of Respect to a Dead Clergyman.

The Rev. Alexander Clark, of Pittsburg, Pa., a journalist and the editor of a Methodist organ, whose death was recently announced, has received most eulogistic and tender tributes from the religious press, of the country. He died in Georgia some two weeks ago while he was the guest Of the Governor of that State, Governor Colquit. As a Journalist Mr. Clark had been somewhat conspicuous for his zeal in combatting the views of Colonel Ingersoll, while treating that gentleman with personal fairness. He once visited him in his Peoria home, and in a Eublished letter sjoke in the very ighest terms of the personal and do* mestic character of his illustrious theological opponent Now that Mr. Clark is dead, Colonel Ingersoll has paid the following tribute to the manliness-and kindness of the deceased. Rev. Alexander Clark:

Upon the grave of Rev. Alexander Clark I wish to place one flower. Utterly destitute of cold, dogmatic pride, that often passes for the love of God; without the arrogance of the “elect”—simple, free and kind—this earnest man trade me bis friend by being mine. I forgot that he was a ■ Christian, and beseemed to forget that 1 1 was not, while each remembered that the other- was a man. Frank, candid and sincere, he practiced what he preached, and looked with the holy eves of charity-upon the failings and mistakes of men. He believed in the power of kindness, and span ed with divine sympathy the hidious gulf that separates the fallen from the pure. 1

Giving freely to others the rights that he Claimed for himself, it never occurred to him that bis God hated a brave and houest unbeliever. He remem tiered that even an. infidel has rights that love respects: that hatred has no saving power, and that in order to be a Christian it is necessary to become less than a man. He knew that no one can be maligned into kindness; that epithets cannot convince; that curses are not arguments and that the finger of scorn never points towards heaven. With the generosity of an honest man, he accorded to all the fullest liberty of thought, knowing, as he did, that in the realm of mind a chain is but a curse. For this man I entertained the profoundest respect. In spite of the taunts and jeers of his brethren, he publicly proclaimed that he would treat infidels with fairness and respect: that he would endeavor to convince them by argument and win them with love. He insisted that the God he worshiped

even of an atheist. I In this grand position he stood almost atone. Tender, just and loving whi re others were harsh, vindictive and cruel, he challenged the respect and admiration of every honest man. A few more Mich clergyman might drive calumny from the Kps of faith and render the pulpit worthy of respect Tne heartiness and kindness with which this generous man treated me can never be excelled. He admitted that I had not lost and could not lose a single right by the expression of my honest thought Neither did he believe that a servant could win the re-, sped of a generous master by persecuting and maligning those whom the master would willingly forgive. While the good man was living, his brethren blamed him for having treated me with fairness. But, I trust, now that be has left the shore touched by the mysterious sea that never yet has borne on any wave the image of a homeward sail, this Crime will he forgiven him by those who still remain to preach the love of God. His sympathies were not confined within the prison of a creed, but ran out and over the walls like vines, hiding the cruel rocks and rusted bars with leaf and flower. He could not echo with his heart the fiendish sentence of eternal fire. In spite of book and creed, he read “between the lines” the words of tenderness and love, with Eromises tor all the world. Above, eyond the dogmas of his church—humane even to the verge of heresy—causing some to doubt his love of God because he failed to hate unbelieving fellow-men, he labored for the welfare of mankind, and to his work gave up his life with ail his heart. Robert G. Ingersoll. Washington, D. C., July 11.