Lectures of Col. R.G. Ingersoll, vol 1 | Page 2

been partial to the people who created them, and they
have generally shown their partiality by assisting those people to rob
and destroy others, and to ravish their wives and daughters. Nothing is
so pleasing to these gods as the butchery of unbelievers. Nothing so
enrages them, even now as to have some one deny their existence.
Few nations have been so poor as to have but one god. Gods were made

so easily, and the raw material cost so little, that generally the god
market was fairly glutted, and heaven crammed with these phantoms.
These gods not only attended to the skies, but were supposed to
interfere in all the affairs of men. They presided over everybody and
everything. They attended to every department. All was supposed to be
under their immediate control. Nothing was too small--nothing too
large; the falling of sparrows and the motions of planets were alike
attended to by these industrious and observing deities. From their starry
thrones they frequently came to the earth for the purpose of imparting
information to man. It is related of one that he came amid thunderings
and lightnings in order to tell the people they should not cook a kid in
its mother's milk. Some left their shining abode to tell women that they
should, or should not, have children, to inform a priest how to cut and
wear his apron, and to give directions as to the proper manner for
cleaning the intestines of a bird.
When the people failed to worship one of these gods, or failed to feed
and clothe his priests, (which was much the same thing,) he generally
visited them with pestilence and famine. Sometimes he allowed some
other nation to drag them into slavery--to sell their wives and children;
but generally he glutted his vengeance by murdering their first born.
The priests always did their whole duty, not only in predicting these
calamities, but in proving, when they did happen, that they were
brought upon the people because they had not given quite enough to
them.
These gods differed just as the nations differed; the greatest and most
powerful had the most powerful gods, while the weaker ones were
obliged to content themselves with the very off-scourings of the
heavens. Each of these gods promised happiness here and hereafter to
all his slaves, and threatened to eternally punish all who either
disbelieved in his existence or suspected that some other God might be
his superior; but to deny the existence of all gods was, and is, the crime
of crimes. Redden your hands with human blood; blast by slander the
fair fame of the innocent; strangle the smiling child upon its mother's
knees; deceive, ruin and desert the beautiful girl who loves and trusts
you, and your case is not hopeless. For all this, and for all these, you
may be forgiven. For all this, and for all these, that bankrupt court
established by the gospel, will give you a discharge; but deny the

existence of these divine ghosts, of these gods, and the sweet and
tearful face of Mercy becomes livid with eternal hate. Heaven's golden
gates are shut, and you, with an infinite curse ringing in your ears, with
the brand of infamy upon your brow, commence your endless
wanderings in the lurid gloom of hell--an immortal vagrant--an eternal
outcast--a deathless convict.
One of these gods, and one who demands our love, our admiration and
our worship, and one who is worshiped, if mere heartless ceremony is
worship, gave to his chosen people for their guidance the following
laws of war: "When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it,
then proclaim peace unto it. And it shall be if it make thee answer of
peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be that all the people that is
found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee.
And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee,
then thou shalt besiege it. And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it
into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of
the sword. But the women and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that
is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself, and
thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies which the Lord thy God hath
given thee. Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off
from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations. But of the cities
of these people which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an
inheritance, thou shall save alive nothing that breatheth."
Is it possible for man to conceive of anything more perfectly infamous?