To Infidelity and Back | Page 8

a skeleton and is slowly dying because he is not getting enough nourishment out of the food he eats, and should begin to lecture well-nourished and healthy people for eating the food they are eating. Would we not put him down as a fool? Well, if he would add the claim that we are well fed because we are ignorant and deluded, while he is suffering and dying because he knows too much on the food question, he would be on a par with many of our infidelic friends.
It is said that Beecher and Ingersoll were both present at a banquet in New York City. Ingersoll brought a railing accusation against Christianity. Everybody expected Beecher to reply, but he held his peace until later in the evening, when it became his turn to speak. When Beecher arose he said: "When I came to this hall to-night I saw an old, crippled woman wending her way across the crowded street on crutches. When she had reached about midway, a burly ruffian came along and knocked the crutches out from under her, and she fell splash into the mud." Turning to Ingersoll, he said, "What do you think of that, Colonel?" "The villain!" replied Ingersoll. Beecher, pointing to Ingersoll, said: "Thou art the man! Suffering, heart- broken, dying humanity is wending its way through this world of sorrow and turmoil on the crutches of Christianity. You, sir, come along and knock them out from under them, but offer nothing in their place." It was a crushing blow to Ingersoll and his gospel of despair.
We do not understand how spirit and matter can be inter-related, and we can not conceive that our willing it can move our arm; but this does not deter us from moving, because we know through experience that we can move. We do not understand the philosophy of digestion, and we cannot conceive how bread and butter can have any relation to thought and life; but we know by experience that they do, and we go on eating and living. We cannot conceive how the same grass produces lamb, pork and beef; but we keep on raising stock just the same, because we are guided by facts learned by experience and observation rather than by conceivability. We do reach our mouth, the minute-hand does overtake the hour-hand, objects do move in space, etc., rationalism and inconceivability to the contrary notwithstanding.
Man is a religious being, and we know by experience that religion gives him joy and brings him good. If we had no revealed religion, science and duty would compel us to develop a religious system out of our religious experiences. This is what has actually been done by the different peoples of the earth who know not the revelation of God in the Bible. The secret of the hold that even a false religion has upon people is the fact that it does them good and gives them happiness by exercising the pious emotions of their being, even though it may bring them harm in other ways. Even a religion based on human experience is better than none; for it is better to feed the religious nature on husks than to starve it out altogether. To this agree the words of Paul when he says that God "made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth... that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him." But while man, unaided by direct revelation, can grope in the dark and feel after God, and can invent systems of religion based on experience that are better than none, any man that accepts facts and testimony will soon discover that God has not thus left us in the dark oil religious matters, but has "appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he has ordained, whereof he has given assurance unto all men, in that he has raised him from the dead."
It is said that a lawyer and a noted preacher, who was a lecturer, happened to meet at a hotel breakfast-table. The lawyer suspected that his companion was a preacher, and, as he was an infidel, he thought he had a good opportunity to give a thrust at the Bible.
"Excuse me," said the lawyer, "I take it from your appearance that you are a preacher."
"Yes, sir," said the preacher.
"Well, now," said the lawyer, "don't you find a great many contradictions and difficulties you cannot understand in the Bible?"
"Yes, sir," replied the preacher.
"How, then," said the lawyer, "can you continue to believe in it?"
"Why," said the preacher, "do you see what I am doing with the bones of this fish? I lay them aside and enjoy the good of