Lectures of Col. R.G. Ingersoll | Page 6

denied. He was shunned as though he had
been a pestilence. Most of his old friends forsook him. He was regarded
as a moral plague, and at the bare mention of his name the bloody
hands of the church were raised in horror. He was denounced as the
most despicable of men.
Not content with following him to his grave, they pursued him after
death with redoubled fury, and recounted with infinite gusto and
satisfaction the supposed horrors of his death-bed: gloried in the fact
that he was forlorn and friendless, and gloated like fiends over what
they supposed to be the agonizing remorse of his lonely death.
It is wonderful that all his services are thus forgotten. It is amazing that
one kind word did not fall from some pulpit; that some one did not
accord to him, at least--honesty. Strange that in the general
denunciation some one did not remember his labor for liberty, his
devotion to principle, his zeal for the rights of his fellow-men. He had,
by brave and splendid effort, associated his name with the cause of
progress. He had made it impossible to write the history of political
freedom with his name left out. He was one of the creators of light, one
of the heralds of the dawn. He hated tyranny in the name of kings, and
in the name of God, with every drop of his noble blood. He believed in
liberty and justice, and in the sacred doctrine of human equality. Under
these divine banners he fought the battle of his life. In both worlds he

offered his blood for the good of man. In the wilderness of America, in
the French assembly, in the sombre cell waiting for death, he was the
same unflinching, unwavering friend of his race; the same undaunted
champion of universal freedom. And for this he has been hated; for this
the church has violated even his grave.
This is enough to make one believe that nothing is more natural than
for men to devour their benefactors. The people in all ages have
crucified and glorified. Whoever lifts his voice against abuses, whoever
arraigns the past at the bar of the present, whoever asks the king to
show his commission, or question the authority of the priest, will be
denounced as the enemy of man and God. In all ages reason has been
regarded as the enemy of religion. Nothing has been considered so
pleasing to the Deity as a total denial of the authority of your own mind.
Self-reliance has been thought deadly sin; and the idea of living and
dying without the aid and consolation of superstition has always
horrified the church. By some unaccountable infatuation, belief has
been and still is considered of immense importance. All religions have
been based upon the idea that God will forever reward the true believer,
and eternally damn the man who doubts or denies. Belief is regarded as
the one essential thing. To practice justice, to love mercy, is not enough;
you must believe in some incomprehensible creed. You must say:
"Once one is three, and three times one is one." The man who practiced
every virtue, but failed to believe, was execrated. Nothing so outrages
the feelings of the church as a moral unbeliever, nothing so horrible as
a charitable atheist.
When Paine was born the world was religious, the pulpit was the real
throne, and the churches were making every effort to crush out of the
brain the idea that it had the right to think. He again made up his mind
to sacrifice himself. He commenced with the assertion "That any
system of religion that had anything in it that shocks the mind of a child
can not be a true system." What a beautiful, what a tender sentiment!
No wonder the church began to hate him. He believed in one God, and
no more. After his life he hoped for happiness. He believed that true
religion consisted in doing justice, loving mercy; in endeavoring to
make our fellow-creatures happy, and in offering to God the fruit of the
heart. He denied the inspiration of the scriptures. This was his crime.
He contended that it is a contradiction in terms to call anything a

revelation that comes to us at secondhand, either verbally or in writing.
He asserted that revelation is necessarily limited to the first
communication, and that after that it is only an account of something
which another person says was a revelation to him. We have only his
word for it, as it was never made to us. This argument never had been,
and probably never will be answered. He denied the divine origin of
Christ and showed conclusively that the pretended prophecies of the
Old Testament lead no reference to Him whatever.