INGERSOLL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVI, Issue 15, 3 August 1888, Page 29

INGERSOLL.

(New York Freeman's Journal.) In his review of " Robert Elsmere," Mrs. Humphrey Ward's novel, Mr. Gladstone makes a point which ought to be thoroughly insisted on. It is that the unbeliever in Ohmta'iity is false to his own theories when he accepts the results of Christianity and admits they are good. If his theorieb are trui, Christianity has be«n a corse, not a blessing. But the very civilisation, he prai«e3. and in which he exul'B, ia tho consequence of the EUsurrection of Christ and the fidelity of His Church to His Word. Mr. Gladstone also marks another defect in the arguments of the Agnostics and the Positivists. They know — or, at least, they pretend to know— very little aboufc Christianity. In their imaginary dialogues, the Christian has almost nothing to say for himself. While in real life, he has a great deal to say. The Positivist and the Agnostic are even more bigoted than th« Calvinist, because they pretend to an. impar.i&lity with which the Oalvmisi nsver asked to be credited. They wipe Christianity off tha table* of the world. "Itis an effete thin?," they say ; "it has done nogooJ. Ithas crampsd all the best facuitiesof man. Let us return to nature." Tdus argues Mr. Ingers jll— the mxit superficial and flashy of the apostates. For no man, in thU age of the world, with the evidences ot Christianity and the work of Christianity before him, can go back to Paganism without being an apostate. It is unfortunate that the education of the American public should make it pos3ib'e for Mr. Ingersoll to obtain the hearing he dosi. If the present system of Christless schools cjntinues to numb the faculties and blight the b^st instincts of the msjority of th* popula'ion of this country, Mr. Ingersoll s brutal and thoughtles* jiboa will be quoted in a widening circle. Our self-centred friends, the Methodists, the Baptists, and the Presbyterians, hare too great a hatred of the i athohc Church to adopt her method! of saving their childreu from the horrors of the New Paganism. They find the publio schools good <n>ugh for them. They will regret it. Ingersollism means a return to Pagan license and Pagan lias. Why not kill the maimed or afflicted child if it be in the way 1 asks the Pa^an of our time. The world ought to be beautiful ; sickness «nd affliction are not beautiful ; let us away with tta«r». Put ip the Venus of Melos, says Imgersoll, pull down the crucifix ; let the tired w^rkingman gaze on this remaant of Grecian art ; the day of the crucifix is pait ; what human nature needs is not the sight of most noble suffering, mo»t noble sacrifice, but of sensuous beauty. Where does this lead us ? Waere did it lead the Greeks and the Romans? Juvenal and Huetonius^tell us. But some of these Positivis's say that Juvenal and Suetonius exaggerated then, as newspapers sometimes do now. Yet there are some things in Plato and many things in the Greek poets which sliow that Pagan morals, not only amon? the lower classes, but in the most cultivated circles, had become, as Mr. Gladstone says, worse than bestial. To Christianity, the world is indebted for the preservation of all that is best in it to-day, An I yet Mr. Ingersoll wants us to go back 1 H« is th« apostate apostle of darkness, of lust, of blood, and of craslty. A man may cry out : " I believe, O God, help my unbalief," aad we may respect him. He may even be dumb in his unbelief, and we «an pity and lote him. But for the apostate who, for money, raise* his hand against the crucifix, there should be no quarter. Such a man is a moral leper among men, the enemy of motherhood, of ohildhood, of chastity, of truth. He m*y deck himself with garlands, but he is a satyr, unclean, licentious. His smile is a jeer and his laugh a sneer. He lives to kill, wear what mask he may.