Terre Haute Weekly Gazette, Terre Haute, Vigo County, 4 March 1880 — Page 2

WENDLING.

His Lecture in Reply to Col. Ingersoll,

AS DELIVERED AT THE OPERA HOUSE LAST SUNDAY NIGHT.

OJeatlous to lngersall Um f'aretkly Expreiied.

Prom Friday's Daily.

With a desire to present the Wcture of Mr. Wendling an fullv as possible and to the largest number of cur readers we reserved its publication for the Saturday Issue. It will be read with interest by a large number of those who were no present at the lecture and may be read with profit by even those who wera there, lor it is so full of thought and logic as to bear more than one reading. The audience was of fair size and listened with rapt attention. Hon. B. W. Manna introduced «.he speaker in the following appropriate words:

ITadies and Gknilbmkk: Six weeks ago to-niulit, at thi6 same place, the pleasant office was assigned me of presenting to our people Col. Robert G. Ingersoll. He is indeed a most wonderftil ora'or, and in bewitching and bewildering graces of speech, without a peer, perhapo, in our day and generation. I •aid then that I did* not agree with him in his views a-»out the evidences of Christianity, and I say so now. I wanted to hear him, because I believe in free thought and untrammelled discussion about every subject where there exists a conflict between error and its opposite. We all want to know the truth. It is the prize above every other prize, the great jewel in the diadem of the sovereignity of sovereignities, the one beautiful, brilliant, solitary •tar upon which philosophy, reason and hope will gazt forever. 1 felt that Col. lngeraol 1, with his rare elcquence and mighty influence over the passions of men, could-say the be6t that could possibly be said against our cherished system of Christianity. When I had heard him, I felt, and believe you felt, if that was the best which could be urged against our Lord and His Kingdom,how can any find satisfaction and consolation in the dark vagaries ot infidelity? Ah,no ladies and gentleman, let this discussion go forward. We fear it not. Our cause is strong, and will stand when everything else has fallen and crumbled. Let the rains decend, and the lloods come, and the winds blow and beat upon our house, and it will fall not, because it is founded upon a rock. Error cannot stand up in strife with truth for a time it may bear the look of defiance, may proudlpr toss its imposing crest in the air, but in the ead it will as surely (all beneath the lance of the enemy, a» Goliath perished by the fchand of David, the appointed representative of the living God. An oratoricol David is with us here to-night, and how skillfully he will handle his sling, and how certainly make the 6tone he casts forth strike the brain of the Goli th of the boastful Philistines, I need not magnify with anticipation, I take much pleasure in presenting to you a gentleman who, on the rostrum, is what Light Horse Harry Lee was in the saddle, always impatisnt to dash forward to the front of the battle. I introduce to you Mr. George Wendling."

I have learned something in Illinois of the private life of the gentleman whose views I oppose. 1 not only honor his abilities, but I also respect his personal character, and therefore if any one has come here to-night to liMen to a personal detraction of Colonel Ingersoll he has come to be disappointed.

If Ineersoll be right every man makes his own God, and aside from that there is no God Christ was at best an enthusiast the Bible is a curse religion a sham a future reckoning a chimera and immortality perhaps a fancy. This is Ingerscllism stripped of its rhetorical drapery. It is a very ancient thing, but the genius of its modern sponsor entitles it to a modern name.

In my judgment these doctrines seriously affect our social and political structures as well as our religious institutions. I conceive that the inevitable business and political consequences of such teachings are of the gravest importance to every citizen. I come therefore to-night as a citizen, a business man, a lawyer, and, if you please, as a politician, discarding the narrow meaning of that word, and as 6uch would speak to tnen of all faiths and callings. I come as what the churches call a man ot the world,and as such would address myself to men of the world upon the business, social, and political phases of the teachings Ingersoll forces upon our atten Hon. I champion no.creed nor sect, place humanity above all creed?, and I place my country above all political and religious partnership.

Looking at the subject now from the standpoint we have taken, very practical thconhtft at once sugge&t themselves. Gentlemen, there is a \ery important question of political economy involved in this who.e mailer. I turn from the

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iges of Adam Smith, Ricardo and fessor Bowen. and say that if the elementary teachings of political economy be true, and Ingertoll and his followers be right, every church spite in the land is a monument of financial stupidity, every pulpit a bad investment. We must go further still. We must transform our places of worship into warehouses and workshop*, stop every religious press, put stocks ot merchandise or steam engines and spindles into all Church buildings, convert our priests into pedagogues, our theolgical students into students cf medicine, and our great preachers into politicians. Consider the effect upon the balance of trade," our table df exports, it these millions of sren and money be driven into channels of productive industry. Take the footings of our last census. Sixty-three thousand church edifices and twenty-one million five hundred thousand church sittings in the United States. Three hundred

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and fifty-four millions of dollars invested in property devoted to the purposes of religion, and five times as many men consecrating their lives to the cause of religion as may be found in our standing army. Consider the details, infinite in number, variety and expense, from an international, or quadrennial or ecumenical council, conference or synod down to a mid wetk prayer-meeting. In your calculations include the fact that almost the entire number cf our forty millions suspend all remunerative employment once a week and sacrifice fifty-two days every year. Wli). free trade, the remonetization of silver, the resumption cf specie payments, and our schemes for river and harbor improvements are mere bagatelles* when compared with the practical question the*e facts involve. I put this phase of Ingersollism before you to-night as bankers, merchants, tradesmen, professional men, and laborers of all kinds, because the facts involved therein bear directly and most poweifully upon yeur financial interest?, and because having met more than one dishonest man calling himself religious, many of U6 lend willing ears to Ingersoli's destructive fallacies. Before 1 have done I shall more than once recur to this practical phase of Ingersollism but let us now rise for a while above this dollar view, and inquire if in the domain of history, science, or reason, he finds warrant for his doctrines. Of this inquiry I fear you may, perhaps, beepme impatient it may seem to you collateral, but in truth we shall find it very pertinent and vital. We do not propose a philosophical ii.q.rry into the existence of God, the truth ot the Bible, and the character of Jesus Christ. To different hands from mine must that inquiry be assigned, and from another standpoint than mine rnu.it that inquiry for the graver purposes of life be approached. Bear in mind, if you please, that I do not propose to myself the lofty task of furnishing argument which shall solve the mighty questions suggested by the words God and Christ. Nevertheless, I conceive it to be impossible to rationally discuss the bearings of' Ingersoli's teachings upon our secular interests without first inquiring into Ingersoli's doctrines concerning God, Christ and the Bible. That inquiry I propose to prosecute only so far as shall enable me to a&sert that as between the solutions offered by Ingersoll and his followers upon the one hand, and the Church upon the others, men of affairs and men who love thc4r homes and their country can not hesitate.

Here the lecturer asked his audience to admit, for a few moments, the authenticity of the Bible. Through the veil of prophecy may be seen the dim outlines of an unknown man. A strange spell binds the reader. Closing the old and opening the new volume, there passes before us, like a panorama, a quick succession of strange events, and a new philosophy comes into the world a. new ideal is offered, and the mightiest revolu tion known among men is inaugurated. With this Ideal Man for an exemplar, and his precepts as a code of morals, the Church passes into the arena of history. Here the lecturer rapidly traced the march of Christ and Christianity through the centuries, "marching with slow and stately tread across the realms, and across the ages until at last there pass before us the wonders of the nineteenth century, and there, there in the mid6t of the glare and glitter, in the midst of its millions of purposes and plans* in the midst of its engines, and telegraph^, and thoughts, and systems and philosophies, we find there has come, through all the blood and tears, and tyrannies of centuries, the Man-God of Christianity, and with a gentleness unutterable, and a majesty unspeakable, is winning the heart and moulding the character of the man whom we left with naught for a guide but the consciousness of one eternal and infinite Being—yea, winning his heart and moulding his character, to-day, in this great city of yours, by teaching him the two simple lessons of the Fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of Man."

The lecturer here asked, what is there in this religion, and this alone, that gives it a distinctive and universal genius, and is its author merely a man? In reply to the first question, he asserted that Christianity alone destroys caste. Other religions teach that there are inequalities among men. Here all are equal, before the Infinite. Here every living soul is worth a kingdom. Yonder there is much in God for the wor.-hiper to adore but here there is much in man, in every man, worthy the attention of God. The unparalleled estimate put upon humanity is the distinctive feature of Christ's philosophy, and a feature that gives it a universal genius. Upon the ^question ol Christ's supernatural wisdom and origin the lecturer cited the testimony of Napoleon instituting a comparison between Christ and all other moral teachers, and closed this branch of the discussion by saying: "Yonder,upon that platform, and tipon that, a shoit timg ago, in this city, and to-morrow elsewhere, is Ingersoll, sneering at the religion of Christ. And yonder, at St. Helena, solemnly confessing Christ to be above humanity, calmly sits the prodigy of earth, autocrat of autocrats, genius ncarnate, the, the intellectual wonder of hr wot Id! And let Ingersoll and his followers profit by the comparison."

Of the remainder of the lecture, the following is a'verbatim report: I now ast-eft that we have found enough of argument to justify us in holding true two fundamental Beliefs first,God exists second, Christ is a God-given ideal. From these two facts a third must logically issue. It' Christ be God-given, so much of that book we found and called the Bible as faithfully records His works and truthfully reports his saying must be true. I reverse the ordinary method of orthodoxy and snm the argument up in what to my mind is an unanswerable sen'enc, and say that whatever is true of a God-given Christ must be God-given truth. That much of the Bible is enough. Now let theologians aay how mnch that excludes, or let them say it includes it all, it matters not to me, I say that so much of that book as bears upon tl Ideal man we may accept as a moral teacher. So we come at last to God, Christ and the Bible, and as rational men have reason for the faith that is in us. With God, Christ and the Bible comes the Church, and by the Church I mean, as I have said, the aggregate of religious teachings and influ ences derived from the Bible.

Now, gentlemen from the Board of

THE TERRE HAUTE WEEKLY GAZETTE

Trade, from counting-room and storeroom and court room, from all the indus trial walks of life, what interest have we in this aggregate of religious teach ings and influences I have called the church. I do not mean an interest so far as it bears upon what it calls "Salvation," but I have come to a practical view and I mean an interest so far as our immediate objects are concerned. What are those objects? I think they may be comprehended in three things: as citizens, a 6table and pure government as business men,the aiquisition of property as social beings, happy homes. Now we can best determine the bearing of the Church upon these three objects of life by considering the legitimate results of In ersollism. Government, Property and Home shall now ronstitute our Tnn ity, the business man's Trinitv, neither elerr ent self-existent, all co-dependent, and when property combined and each properly adjusted in all its relations to the other we may call the result Civili zation. In his trinity may be found all the elements of business socicty and politics. Let us now take the Ingersoll creed, "Happiness in this life," for our creed too. Unquestionably the most happiness is derived frpm the highest civilization, and the highest civilization is obtained only when government, property and home are each and all conserved. In the name then, of this trinity I have come to-nigl-.t to arraign and denounce Ingersoli's teachings as a crime against government and law as a crime against commerce aa'd trade as a crime against civilization and in one word, as a crime against humanity.

Now, gentleman, take human nature as it is, and in this way alone may we deal with social problems take human nature as it is, and can you conceive of tree government and civil law existing among, say forty millions of people who have none of the restraints of religious teaching and influence abput them. Remember it is not alone to compel your profound philosopher to be just that civil government and civil law with all its complex variations are instituted. Socrates, Aristole and Solon may need neither civil government nor civil law, but the ever-perplexing question that haunts your wise statesman and your honest poli'ician is, what of the millions? The scholar in his easy chair may speculate and reason away all religion, and yet go out into the world and perhaps be an honest and just man. The intuitive decision of bright and thorough edged intellect may part error from crime, and and the silvery flow of a subtle paced counsel may serve to make safe citizens of Plato, Voltaire and Ingersoll, but what of the hewer of wood whose life is a struggle for bread, raiment and shelter for himself, his wife and his little ones We often speak of the hewer of wood, but when we think of hiin in relation to time and opportunity for acquiring any other than the simple creed of Bible-taught morality, how many of us become hewers of wood—merchants, far.ners, tradesmen, professional men, and all the toilers of the thousand other laborious callings known among men? What, I say, of the millions, the people, the surging, boundless ocean of humanity we call the masses? My skeptical ffiend, the impenetrable wall of an iron necessity shuts off from them much of the infidel's creed, reason, observation and experience. Ninety out Of every hundred men, nay more, pass almost every waking hour in a struggle for bread'. "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not" may be laws to which the deductive method of Aristotle or the inductive method of Bacon may bring your philosopher to for rules of action, but what knowledge of those rules can# be acquired through philosophic reasoning by those of us who are bound to the everrevolving wheel of unceasing toil? Will your philosophers come and teach us? A doubtful proposition, but grant it. Ah, in so doing you simply substitute one order of priests for another, a philosophic in lieu of a theologic priesthood, and your hated order of priest and preacher will still remain! And what if some man who in the opinion of the masses is vfaser than your philosopher 6hall some day come and say the new priesthood are hypocrites arid sporges all! Who shall say him nay? Where is your arbiter? Let us destroy the Bible and annihilate among men all consciousness of God and I'll grant you we may do well enough, we and our children, and perhaps our children's children. The moral impetus given by Christianity to civilization, rright, doubtless would,be projected on into the next fifty or seventy-five years. But what then? Grant that our philosophers will still held their self-taught code of morals, but remember that the millions, your children and your children's children shall have uo'Ged, no Bible, no religion.

And right here let us have no self-de-ception. The millions were hewers of wood jesterday, as many millions are hewers ot wood to-day, and as many millions will be hewers of wood to-morrow. Genius, and learning, and talents are not inheritable, and wealth rarely reaches its second generation. While storm and flood and pestilence shall come and go while improvidence and disease ana calamity, in all its myriad forms beset the paths of the human race, the millions will still be the hewers of wood. The children prattling to-night around the knee of the philosopher and millionaire, will go down into the depths to struggle up again or die as toilers. It is ore of the saddest facts in human history. Build as ou will, accumulate as you may, struggle as only strong and true men can struggle for those they hold dear, yet to this complexion it must come at last—there are but one or two coffins, one or two grastf covered mounds of earth between luxury and toil. Call it fate, call it God's curse in Eden call it what you ill, it is an inexorable fact. And let us not deceive ourselves in another view. Let not the increase ot' National wealth, the growth of colleges and schools, and the progress of scientific thought flatter us with the fancy that while all these change labor in kind, they change it also in degree. Grant that eight hour laws, steam engines and telegraphs may shorten a day's labor, yet all the more intense does that labor become and all the more of rest must follow.

Then again I ask you, what of the millions, what of the people, what ofyour children's children, with np consciousness erf" God, and robbed by infidelity of the of Bible-taught simple but subljj/necrwed

jralitv? Do you ask ask me now for an application of all this to the question of civil government? Then I ask you, does not all history teach you that "Thau shalt" and "Thou shalt not" are laws written in the hearts of the people long before they were written or. the pages of our statute books? Do you know that if those laws were in the hearts of the people, not alone in the hearts of vour philosophers, but in the hearts of the people, they would not be on the pages of our statutes, and when they are erased from the hearts of the people they will be erased from the statutes? Remember that all legislation, be the government free or despotic, is in its last results the will of the people. Here an election announces that will, yonder it requires a revolution, but in the end in all govern ments the voice of the law is the voice of the people. Oh the power, the terri ble power of the people! Before the people, thrones and Empires are baubles, and governments and armies are pigmies and playthings. Arouse the people and the warnings of philosophers are as lit tie heeded as the notes of the strange birds that fly before the tempest are heeded by by the Storm King. Gentlemen I stand here to-night the champion of no sect, the representative of no denomination, the exponent of no creed, but I stand here as a business man and a citizen, and, as I believe, a patriot, and in the name of all history I implore you to remember that the only power that can restrain and safely guide the millions, is the unseen but mighty power of "Thus saith the Lord God Almighty."

While universal infidelity must work ruin to all civil government, yet it is peculiarly true of a Republic, where the relations of the people to the government are so direct and immeditate. Here universal infidelity means in its first results centralization. Wh Because a people without a God must have a bayonet. Social order with atheism is a paradox, unless grounded on Gatling guns and repeating rifles. Remove the restraints of religion and you must immediately strengthen the arm of the civil power for your own protection. The Church is today the great conservator of the peace. There is more power for the public safety in the whispered utterance of a God-fear-ing priest br preacher than in all your batteries and iron-clads. I repeat, universal infidelity means centralization, centralization means despotism, despotism means ultimate revolution, and once let revolution come and there be in the minds of forty millions of people no God, and—well, the French people saw such a sight once, and though it is near a hundred years ago, civilization shudders as it recalls the time when Ingersoll men ruled France. Ingersoll may be, in truth is, and as an Illinosian, I have 6aid it East and West with pride, a patriot but Ingersollism is high treason to all civil government, and high treason to all civil law.

Consider now the second element In our trinity—Property. The 'very highest point that infidelity can reach here is the time-worn maxim, Honestyis the best policy." That maxim is the result of observation and experience and may be confirmed by a process of philosophic reasoning. But what conception of honesty shall the young man have, young or old, whose observation and experience are not wide enough to teach him that honesty is the best policy I ask you as business men is it that maxim or is it the training and influence, remote or direct, of religious fathers and mothers that give you to-day a trustworthy class of young employes, clerk?, salesmen, messengers and all. Which commands your confidence to-day, a young man's character as a philosopher based upon his reason, observation and experience* or a young man's character based upon a conscience. Infidelity then is a crime against business and against trade. Ingersoll annihilates conscience. Commerce without a conscience is* a vampire. Gambling is a fine art with conscience left out. Conscience makes bank stock marketable. Confidence and conscience are synonyms in the world of trade. Infidel philosophy may originate a few wise maxims, but it can never give energy, form and vitality to that soul ot business and honest conscience.

And, gentlemen from the Board of Trade, from counting-room and storeroom, remember again just here the millions upon whose broad shoulders rest your countless enterprises, and whose strong arms produce and exchange-all your objects ot trade. Take away from them the thought that you and they stand equal in the sight of God, a thought given to them by Christianity take away from yourselves the thought that they are your equals in the sight of God take aWay from them the feeling of brotherhood, a feeling given to them alone by Christianity leave to the toiling millions naught but a toiler's life and a toiler's grave, with no reckoning beyond where at last all the uneven things of this most uneven world may at last be set even go forth with Ingersoll and write upon the gates of your cities "There is no God," and proclaim that 'Death is an eternal sleep in a word, kill, burn out, annihilate conscience all the way down to the nethermost stratum of humanity, and woe, woe betide your comprehensive schemes of enterprise, and woe betide your every accumulation of wealth. Where is the power in this land of ours that shall then stay that beetle-browed hag,infidelity's twin sister in every age and and in every land, infidelity's twin sister to-day in St. Louis, Chicago, Cincinnati and New York City, where it may not be altogether a dream, that under her foul incantations there is gathering a storm that may some day rend the earth beneath your feet like an earthquake, infidelity's twin sister upon

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page of human history—the Commune. Is there no significance for American business men in the fact that but little more than a year ago a few thcyisand honest but misguided laborers incited in some of our principal cities by French, German and American infidel Communists, made every business man in the land cry out for a stronger Government? I do not say that every infidel is a Communist, but I do say, and say it deliberately, that from the British line to ttie waters of the gulf, from ocean to ocean, every avowed Communistic leader in this land is a godless infidel. By the light of Pittsburg's conflagration I can see Ingersoli's legend, "Religion is superstition," floating in the night over a frenzied mob.

And now consider the third element of our trinity—Home. Government and law and commerce and trade

are seeming distinct from home, and thus it is that I have taken the liberty to step aside now and then to-night, to address myself at times, gentlemen, especially to you. And yet all lines leading from all that we have said, center in home. Recollect that the Ingersoll creed, "Happiness in this life," is our creed too. Yes, we dig canals, hew down forests, overset our prairies, build cities, operate railroads, network with telegraph wires the continent, and with an Atlantic cable turn the ocean's depths into a whispering gallery for the Nations—all that we may be happy, and self-reliant, and I say ialse as a new coined lie! Not one man in a thousand has wrought for his own happiness alone. His household, be it composed of wife and child or of mother, or ot sister, in some form or other, be the roof tree his own or a borrowed tree, the household is the pivot around which turns the whole existence of civilized man. Upon the household altar he lays his accumulations, and the happiness of the household is the direct object of civilized man. Through its happiness he seeks his. A Nation of happy homes is the brightest dream of statesmanship.

Am I indulging in sentiment, gentlemen, or am I not stating a plain, everyday fact, when I tell you that your happiness depends, in almost the full degree, upon the happiness of mother, wife, 6ister, child, household? Let us dwell a :noment on these words, home and household. They represent and encircle nearly all there is of life to much more than half the civilized wcr d. Look behind the veil which that word home lets fall between our business world and the household, and we see, clustering about the hearth stones of rich and poor, many millions of faithful wives and mothers, and cradles many millions of ungrown men and women, unused, as yet, to the world 4nd its devious ways millions worn by labor or disease, and millions more chilled by the snow-drift of age, waiting for the end of life. Of such are our households, and for these households civilized man goes forth at morn and returns at night. Now bear in miad the question that infidelity presents i«, not* shall we give to these households of ours the hopes, promises, and influences of religion but the question infidelity presents here, in the afternoon of the nineteenth century is, shall we take away from our homes^ from our ungrown millions, from our aged and helpless ones, the promises and influences of religion. Ingersoll says: Aye, aye let fall upon every household in the land, upon every child lisping its first prayer, upon every marriage altar, upon every death bed, and upon all the hallowed associations of home, let fall the black pall of atheism— and I say, either he does not comprehend the effect of his teachings upon human happiness, or his cruelty is unutterable and his malevolence unspeakable. This one phase of Ingersollism is enough to array against it all the forces of civilized society. When I think of the bearings his teachings have upon our hearth-stone life, and then reflect that it is a man with cultured brain and (generous add sympathetic heart who, in the name of human happiness, proclaims these teachings, I can not but conclude that either he plays a part, trips in his speech, or is upon this subject stark mad Take one of a thousand things we think of, when we imagine that his teachings are in order to make us happier installed in our homes in lieu of religion's hopes and promises. Take the hour, and to every household such hours must come, when the shadow of death lies upon the hearthstone. In that hour go home, business man, seat yourself beside the coffin that holds your treasure, perchance a treasure that a day or two before hung lovingly about you, and sung childish songs or perchance a treasure that through most of a life time, had been not only bone and flesh of your bone and flesh, but heart of your very heart seat yourself beside the coffin that holds that treasure—read "Ingersoli's lectures and be comforted. If you think Ingersollism means happi ness for your household go and gather that household about a new-made gave that holds the family jewel, and invoke the aid of Ingersollism there. Why, that tenderness of feeling upon which the household is based, which makes the household a possibility, and without which the household could not exist as a factor in society, must be eradicated from the human heart or Ingersollism forever remain the most monstrous of parodies, the grimmest ot sarcasm, when named as a rule of happiness in the household. These considerations, waiving a thousand others, make it necessary for us to further pursue the relations of Ingersollism to the household.

As rational inen we have glanced tonight at the foundation thought upon whjch all religion rests, the existence of God as moral men we have seen the God-given ideal and the God-given book as citizens we have seen that religion is one of the surest props of civil government and civil law as business men we have seen that we can not dispense with its influence and as social beings we have found it a household blessing. The questiar. then with which I began this evening, ought we upon the score of political economy to keep up the church, is answered now by another and a greater question, how can we as*citizens and business men afford to dispense with the power and influence of the church? The answer of every citizen and business man must be, we can not afford to lose the Church.

I stated to you this evening that we of late so often find vice wrapped in the garb of religion that we are coming to lend willing ears to attacks upon Christianity. This leads me to remark, in conclusion, two things of Ingersoll, both of which conspire in my judgment to make his advent into this field a public blessing. First, he forces the issue between infidelity and religion. There is something vague and intangible in the underground movements of our dilettante moralists and skeptical scientists.. But here is a foeman who comes squarely up to the wtrk in his bold assaults upon religion. As a man of the world he assails the cherished belief of millions, and men of the world will come to the coinbat he invites. The result may be looked for without fear or trembling. The truth will triumph, and in the end be mightier in withstanding a new assault, mightier in winning a new victory, and mightier in gaining new allies.

The second and great good he will indirectly accomplishwill be ^e preparing

the way for arraying against hypocrisy in the church all the better elements of society. It cannot be denied that the performances of so many professed Christians fall so far below their pretensions to superior morality that they thereby furnish to infidelity its most effective though most illogical weapons. A kiss and a betrayal is an old story in the his* tory of Christianity, but none the less true to-day than it was eighteen hundred years ago. Hypocrisy in the church is the Judas Iscariotism of the age, and as we have seen to-night how intimately all our interests are interwoven with the maintenance of true religion, it follows that our interests lie in the encourage-

Remember, gentlemen, that that mpral sense which enables you to discrimi-.. nate between a good man who calls him-, self a Christian and a bad man who calls himself a Christian is a moral sense fostered and enlightened by Christianity itself, and in so far as you possess that^ moral sense you possets an inestimable blessing. The spirit of patriotism it is which enables you to say who was the patriot, the immortal Washington or

whether we be in the Church or out, we can not afford to let the infidelity o( Ingersoll supplant Christianity.

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life!

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ment of the boldest and most effective denunciation of that hypocrisy. Let that?** hypocrisy be lashed through the world with a whip of scorpions, let it be? scourged with the contempt of ever/ honest tnan, and let it be pointed at with the finger of scorn in every assemblage of men. I doubt not that crusade is coming. What shall be the result? Its log-' ical end must be the checking of infideliitv. While it is one thing to denounce hypocrisy in the interest of infidelity, and another to denounce it in the interest of Christianity, yet in the end the result must be the same—the discomfiture of infidelity. IH am no dreamer here. I look ahead, but^ not with my eye fixed upon some Utopi an condition of society in which hypocrisy and the Church will be forever completely divorced but I do look for at$ time when the influences of Christianity, which now pervade the civilized world, and make honest and just men out of many who do not kneel at the altar of the Church, will, in the interest of that Church, be arrayed against the Jndas Iscariots of the nineteenth century. Such* a crusade. I repeat, will prove a lasting?' good, and such a crubade, I repeat will prove the checking of infidelity. To my I mind, hypocrisy in the Church means infidelity in the Church. I do not say that infidelspuUide the Church are hypo-, crites, but I do Kay that your deliberate hypocrite inside the Church wan infidel. I paraphrase the text and say it is as true^ to-day as when first it was uttered, that the man who says he loye« his church' and yet hateth or cheateth his brother is a liar! Hold fast to the thought, then,. when the great apostle of infidelity comes into your midst and denounces the bad men inside the church, hold fast to the thought that hypocrisy in the churchmeans infidelity in the church, and then 3 let all the people say God speed Ingersoll, in scourging his own disciples. Every rule of reason drives us irresistably to the conclusion that the man who deliberately uses. Christianity for no other purpose than as a cloak for evil deeds is necessarily an $ unbeliever in disguise. Let the war go on then until public sentiment shall brand as worse than thief the infidel who steals the livery ot Christianity, And! Ingersoli's secret worshippers be drag-.-** ged by the force of public opinion from the sacred altars they disgrace. It is idle to attempt to palliate the charge of hypocrisy, and it is as idle to fear that the charge will in the end cripple the Church. Our men of affairs will discern the false from the true and their own interests will (prevent their spurning the genuine because of,- ,if the counterfeit. Infidelity can not pre-, vail. It destroys the best standard of*» truth and right in the moral world. Gentlemen, have you ever thought of it—a good man is to-day a good man as he approaches the standard of Bible:taught morality. Grant that an infidel may be^ a good man too, and many of them are exemplary citizens.yet it can come about,k it does come abour,only by his approach-! ing in action a standard which he repudiates in words. Ingersoil personally and Ingersoll theoretically are two beings as wide apart as civili zation and barbarism. The world may well belteve the one to be a good citizen, but it knows the other to be a bad citizen. The most notorious outlaw known' in the criminal annals of the West,., Frank Rande, stood a few months ago^v. at the bars o& his cell in St. Louis, the very impersonation of every crime, and and with the air of a braggart, said to*.W preachers, priest and policemen, to throngs of men and wdmen, I am a Bob Ingersoll man," and every man and woman in the land believed him. Had this or any other such criminal declared himself a religious man, every infidel in the land would have declared the*"* man a hypocrite and his assertion false, v. It is no answer to tell us that, perhaps in' the cell adjoining his lay a man who for five and twenty years was prominent in,.^ the church, and was at last detected in a series of gigantic thefts and forgeries, for let him but step to his prison door and say, "lama Christian*man,** and all the civilized world cries out, "^bea man is a liar." V"1

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Benedict Arnold. As citizens loving the 'w ^. country bequeathed to us by the men and spirit of'76, as business men striving for success by honorable endeavor, as men who love home and household, no matter

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