COL. INGERSOLL ON SUBSTITUTES FOR CHURCHES.

Freethought Review, Volume I, Issue 8, 1 May 1884, Page 14

COL. INGERSOLL ON SUBSTITUTES FOR CHURCHES.

Reporter—You have stated your objections to the churches—what would you have to take their place ? Col. Ingersoll—There was a time when men had to meet together for the purpose of being told the law. This was before printing, and for hundreds and hundreds of years most people depended for their information on what they had heard. _ The ear was the avenue to the brain. There was a time, of course, when Freemasonry was necessary, so that a man could carry, not only all over his own country, but to another, a certificate that he was a gentleman, that he was an honest man. There was a time, and it was necessary, for people to assemble. They had no books, no papers, no way of reaching each other. But now all that is changed.— daily press gives you the happenings of the world. Libraries give you the thoughts of the greatest and best. ° Every family of moderate means can command the principal sources of information. There is no necessity for goin«- to the church and hearing the same story forever. 'Let o the minister write what he wishes to say.—Let him publish it. If it is worth buying, people will read it. It is hardly fair to get them in a church in the name of duty and then inflict on them a sermon that under no circumstances they would read. Of course, there will always be meetings, occasions when people come together to exchange ideas, to hear what a man has to say upon some question, but the idea of going fifty-two days in a year to hear anybody on the same subject is absurd. Reporter—Would you include a man like Henry Ward Beecher in that statement Col. Ingersollßeecher is interesting just in proportion that he is not Orthodox, and he is altogether more interesting when talking against the creeds. He delivered a sermon

the other day in Chicago, in which he takes the ground that Christianity is kindness, and that, consequently, no one could be an Infidel. Every one believes in kindness, at least theoretically. In that sermon he throws away all creed and conies to the conclusion that Christianity is a life, and not an aggregation of intellectual convictions upon certain subjects. The more sermons like that are preached, probably the better. What I intended was the eternal repetition of the old story : That God made the world and a man, and then allowed the Devil to tempt- him, and then thought of a, scheme of salvation, of vicarious atonement, fifteen hundred years afterwards; drowned everybody except Noah and his family, and, afterwards, when he failed to civilize the Jewish people, came in person and suffered death, and announced the doctrine that all who believed on him would be saved, and those who did not, eternally lost Now this story, with occasional references to the patriarchs and the New Jerusalem, and the exceeding heat of perdition, and the wonderful joys of Paradise, is the average sermon, and this story is told again, again, and yet again, by the same man, listened to by the same people, without any effect except to tire the speaker and the hearer. If all the ministers would take their texts from Shakespeare ; if they would read every Sunday a selection from some of the great plays, the result would be infinitely better. They would all learn something ; the mind would be enlarged, and the sermon would appear short.