INGERSOLL

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6593, 18 September 1899, Page 2

INGERSOLL

DEATH -OF THE PROFANE PREACHER AND PHILANTHROPIST,

[Fbou Our London Correspondent.] Whatever we may flunk of the opinions of America's famous Freethought lecturer, who died suddenly of apoplexy the other day, there can be no -doubt Robert Ingersoll was a strong man of sweet and unblemished character and profound unselfishness. Like Mr Charles Booth, Mr Crompton, and other ii/iiglish Positi vists, I know he did his utmost to lead the Christ life practically, whilst scornfully rejecting the "Christ legend" (as he called it) theoretically. Saeredotalism was, of course, his particular bete • noire. " The Church, "he used to say, " has reduced Spain to a guitar, Italy to a. hand-organ, and Ireland to exile." The nonsensical hymns used in many churches excited his intense derision, and he always attributed his first boyish doubts as to the popular notion of heaven to the verse describing ib as : V " Where congregations ne'er break up And Sabbaths have no end." ■»- » . Ingersoll's own ideas of the future were quite fluid and indefinite. Said he: "We cannot tell ; we do not know which is the greater blessing — life or death. Vve cannot say that death is not a good. We do not know whether the grave is tlie end of this liic or the door of another, or whether the night here is not somewhere- else a dawn." Intensely robust himself, a favourite theory of Ingersoll's was that morbid religion and dyspepsia were synonymous. Quoth he: "Many people think they have got. religion when they ar_ troubled with dyspepsia. .If there ,, could be found an absolute specific for that disease, it would be the hardest blow the Church has received." Ingersoll was the son of a Congregationalism minister, and studied successfully for the law. In the Civil War he was colonel of the Uth Illinois Cavalry in his twenty-ninth year, and in 1866 he was appointed Attor-ney-General for that State. At the National Republican Convention of 1876 he proposed Mr Bl'ains as President. He called him " the white-plumed knight," a title that Blame • never lost. Colonel Ingersoll made a fortune as a lawyer, and retired two years ago. jj.e had political tastes, and might have risen to high ofiice but ifor his Freethought views. A gentleman, finding a fine copy of Voltaire in his library, said, "Pray, sir, what did this cost you?" "I believe it cost me' the Governorship cf the State of Illinois," was the answer. In his home life Colonel Ingersoll was an ideal husband and father. He had no son, but his daughter idolised liim. He was fond of company, and the interviewers found him an easy prey. His collection, of good stories made ham much sougi-i- after as an after-dinner speaker. He had never lectured in Bnglajid, but had promised to do so next May, and would have drawn a" tremendous "house." xi.c spent a few days here in 1881, when he met Mr Bradlaugh. Though curiously alike in appearance, tha two F.reethougiit. leaders did not get on particularly well. Bradjaugh disapproved of Ingersoll's brilliant, florid; and fluent style, and the American pronounced "our dear brother's " discourses " dry hash."