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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
repairing the idols.
Mrs. Humphrey Ward’s Robert Elsmere is no less
eagerly read in America than in England.
The press
teems with criticisms, and the pulpits are discussing
the novel as though it were a theological treatise by
an eminent divine.
In view of this widespread interest,
the New York World sent a reporter to wait on
Colonel Ingersoll, whose views on religion are con
sidered of the highest importance. He commands an
immense audience in America. His lectures are listened
to by thousands wherever he goes, his pamphlets are
circulated wholesale, and his brilliant defence of Freethought against Mr. Gladstone and Cardinal Manning
has, if possible, placed him still higher m the public
esteem. Colonel Ingersoll received the World reporter
with his usual affability, and launched forth as follows
in answer to leading questions.
“ Why do people read a book like Robert Elsmere,
and why do they take any interest in if!” Simply
because they are not satisfied with the rehgion of our
day. The civilised world has outgrown the greater
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Repairing the Idols.
part of the Christian creed. Civilised people have lost
their belief in the reforming power of punishment.
They find that whips and imprisonment have but little
influence for good. The truth has dawned upon their
minds that eternal punishment is infinite cruelty—that
it can serve no good purpose, and that the eternity of
hell makes heaven impossible. That there can be in
this universe no perfectly happy place while there is a •
perfectly miserable place—that no infinite being can
be good who knowingly and, as one may say, wilfully
created myriads of human beings, knowing that they
would be eternally miserable. In other words, the
civilised man is greater, tenderer, nobler, nearer just
than the old idea of God. The ideal of a few thou
sand years ago is far below the real of to-day. No
good man now would do what Jehovah is said to have
done four thousand years ago, and no civilised human
being would now do what, according to the Christian
religion, Christ threatens to do at the day of judgment.
Has the Christian religion changed in theory of late
years, Colonel Ingersoll ?
A few years ago the Deists denied the inspiration of
the Bible on account of its cruelty. At the same time
they worshipped what they were pleased to call the God
of Nature. Now we are convinced that nature is as
cruel as the Bible, so that, if the’ God of Nature did
not write the Bible, this god at least has caused earth
quakes and pestilence and famine, and this god has
allowed millions of his children to destroy one another.
So that now we have arrived at the question—not as to
whether the Bible is inspired, and not as to whether
Jehovah is the real God, but whether there is a God or
�Hep airing the Idols.
5
not. The intelligence of Christendom to-day does not
believe in an inspired religion any more than it
believes in an inspired art or an inspired literature. If
there be an infinite God, inspiration in some particular
regard would be a patch—it would be the puttying of
a crack, the hiding of a defect—in other words, it
would show that the general plan was defective.
Do you consider any religion adequate ?
A good man, living in England, drawing a certain
salary for reading certain prayers on stated occasions,
for making a few remarks on the subject of religion,
putting on clothes of a certain cut, wearing a gown
with certain frills and flounces starched in an orthodox
manner, and then looking about him at the suffering
and agony of the world, would not feel satisfied that
he was doing anything of value to the human race.
In the first place, he would deplore his own weakness,
his own poverty, his inability to help his fellow men.
He would long every moment for wealth, that he
might feed the hungry and clothe the naked—for
knowledge, for miraculous power, that he might heal
the sick and the lame, and that he might give to the
deformed the beauty of proportion. He would begin
to wonder how a being of infinite goodness and infinite
power could allow his children to die, to suffer, to be
deformed by necessity, by poverty, to be tempted
beyond resistance ; how he could allow the few to live
in luxury and the many in poverty and want, and the
more he wondered the more useless and ironical would
seem to himself his sermons and his prayers.
Such a
man is driven to the conclusion that religion accom
plishes but little; that it creates as much want as it
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Repairing the Idols.
alleviates, and that it burdens the world with parasites.
Such a man would be forced to think of the millions
wasted in superstition. In other words, the inadequacy,
the uselessness, of religion would be forced upon his
mind. He would ask himself the question : “ Is it
possible that this is a divine institution ? Is this all
that man can do with the assistance of God ? Is this
the best ?”
That is a perfectly reasonable question, is it not,
Colonel Ingersoll?
The moment a man reaches the point where he asks
himself this question he has ceased to be an orthodox
Christian.
It will not do to say that in some other
world justice will be done. If God allows injustice to
triumph here, why not there ?
Robert Elsmere stands in the dawn of philosophy.
There is hardly light enough for him to see clearly; but
there is so much light that the stars in the night of
superstition are obscured.
You do not deny that a religious belief is a great
comfort ?
There is one thing that it is impossible for me to
comprehend. Why should anyone, when convinced
that Christianity is a superstition, have or feel a sense
of loss ? Certainly a man acquainted with England,
with London, having at the same time something like
a heart, must feel overwhelmed by the failure of what
is knjown as- Christianity. Hundreds of thousands
exist there without decent food, dwelling in tenements,
clothed with rags, familiar with every form of vulgar
vice, where the honest poor eat the crust that the
�Repairing the Idols.
i
7
vicious throw away. When, this man of intelligence,
of heart, visits the courts ; when he finds human liberty
a thing treated as of no value, and when he hears the
judge sentencing girls and boys to the penitentiary—
knowing that a stain is being put upon them that all
the tears of all the coming years can never wash away
—knowing, too, and feeling that this is done without
the slightest regret, without the slightest sympathy, as
a mere matter of form, and that the jndge puts this
brand of infamy upon the forehead of the convict just
as cheerfully as a Mexican brands his cattle ; and when
this man of intelligence and heart knows that these
poor people are simply the victims of society, the
unfortunates who stumble and over whose body rolls
the Juggernaut—he knows that there is, or at least
appears to be, no power above or below working for
righteousness—that from the heavens is stretched no
protecting hand. And when a man of intelligence and
heart in England visits the workhouse, the last resting
place of honest labor ; when he thinks that the young
man, without any great intelligence but with a good
constitution, starts in the morning of, his life for the
workhouse, and that it is impossible for the laboring
man, one who simply has his muscle, to save anything ;
that health is not able to lay anything by for the days
of disease—when the man of intelligence and heart
sees all this, he is compelled to say that the civilisation
of to-day, the religion of to-day, the charity of to-day
—no matter how much of good there may be behind
them or in them—are failures.
A few years ago people were satisfied when the
minister said : “ All this will be made even in another
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Tiepairing the Idols.
world; a crust-eater here will sit at the head of the
banquet there, and the king here will beg for the
crumbs that fall from the table there.” When this
was said the poor man hoped and the king laughed.
A few years ago the Church said to the slave : “ You
will be free in another world and your freedom will be
made glorious by the perpetual spectacle of your master
in hell.” But the people—that is, many of the people
—are no longer deceived by what once were considered
fine phrases. They have suffered so much that they no
longer wish to see others suffer, and no longer think of
the suffering of others as a source of joy to themselves.
The poor see that the eternal starvation of kings and
queens in another world will be no compensation for
what they have suffered here. The old religions appear
vulgar, and the ideas of rewards and punishments are
only such as would satisfy a cannibal chief or one of
his favorites.
Do you think the Christian religion has
xvorld better1
?
made the
For many centuries there has been preached and
taught in an almost infinite number of ways a super
natural religion. During all this time the world has
been in the care of the infinite, and yet every
imaginable vice has flourished, every imaginable pang
has been suffered, and every injustice has been done.
During all these years the priests have enslaved the
minds and the kings the bodies of men. The priests
did what they did in the name of God, and the kings
appealed to the same source of authority. Man suffered
as long as he could.
Revolution, reformation, was
simply a reaction, a cry from the poor wretch that was
�Repairing the Idols.
9
between the upper and the nether millstone. The liberty
of man has increased just in the proportion that the
authority of the gods has decreased. In other words
the wants of man, instead of the wishes of God, have,
inaugurated what we call progress, and there is this
difference : Theology is based upon the narrowest and
intensest form of selfishness. Of course, the theologian
knows, the Christian knows, that he can do nothing for
God; consequently all that he does must be and is for
himself, his object being to win the approbation of this
God, to the end that he may become a favorite. On the
other side, men touched not only by theii’ owfl misf ortunes
but by the misfortunes of others are moved not simply
by selfishness but by a splendid sympathy with their
fellow men.
“ Christianity certainly fosters charity’’ the reporter
suggested.
Nothing is more cruel than orthodox theology, nothing
more heartless than a charitable institution. For
instance, in England, think for a moment of the manner
in which charities are distributed, the way in which the
crust is flung at Lazarus. If that parable could be now
retold, the dogs would bite him. The same is true in
this country. The institution has nothing but contempt
for the one it relieves. The people in charge regard
the pauper as one who has wrecked himself. They feel
very much as a man would feel rescuing from the water
some hare-brained wretch who had endeavored to s wim
the rapids of Niagara—the moment they reach him
they begin to upbraid him for being such a fool. This
course makes charity a hypocrite, with every pauper for
its enemy.
�10
Repairing the Idols.
Mrs. Ward compelled Robert Elsmere to perceive,
in some slight degree, the failure of Christianity to do
away with vice and suffering, with poverty and crime.
We know that the rich care but little for the poor.
No matter how religious the rich may be, the sufferings
of their fellows have but little effect upon them. We
are also beginning to see that what is called charity
will never redeem this world. The poor man willing
to work, eager to maintain his independence, knows
that there is something higher than charity—that is to
say, justice.
He finds that many years before he was
born his coufltry was divided out between certain suc
cessful robbers, flatterers, cringers, and crawlers, and
that in consequence of such division not only himself
but a large majority of his fellow men are tenants,
renters, occupying the surface of the earth only at the
pleasure of others. He finds, too, that these people
who have done nothing and who do nothing have every
thing, and that those who do everything have but little.
He finds that idleness has the money and that the
toilers are compelled to bow to the idlers. He finds
also that the young men of genius are bribed by social
distinctions—unconsciously it may be, but still bribed
in a thousand ways. He finds that the church is a
kind of waste-basket into which are thrown the younger
sons of titled idleness.
Do you consider that society in general has been
made better by religious influence ?
Society is corrupted because the laurels, the titles,
are in the keeping and within the gift of the corrupters.
Christianity is not an enemy of this system it is in
�Repairing the Idols.
11
harmony with it. Christianity reveals to us a universe
presided over by an infinite autocrat—a universe with
out republicanism, without democracy—a universe
where all power comes from one and the same
source, and where everyone using authority is account
able, not to the people, but to this supposed source of
authority. Kings reign by divine right. Priests are
ordained in a divinely-appointed way—they do not get
their office from man. Man is their servant, not their
master.
'
In the story of Robert Elsmere all there is of Chris
tianity is left after an excision of the miraculous«
Theism remains, and the idea of a protecting provi
dence is left, together with a belief in the immeasurable
superiority of Jesus Christ.
That is to say, the
miracles are discarded for lack of evidence; not on the
ground that they are impossible, not on the ground
that they impeach and deny the integrity of cause and
effect, not on the ground that they contradict the selfevident proposition that an effect must have an efficient
cause, but like the Scotch verdict: 44 Not proven.’
It is an effort to save and keep in repair the dungeons
of the Inquisition for the sake of the beauty of the
vines that have overrun them. Many people imagine
that falsehoods may become respectable on account of
age, that a certain reverence goes with antiquity, and
that if a mistake is covered with the moss of senti
ment, it is altogether more credible than a parvenu
fact. They endeavor to introduce the idea of aris
tocracy into the world of thought, believing, and
honestly believing that a falsehood long believed is far
superior to a truth that is generally denied.
�12
Repairing the Idols.
If Robert Elsmere's views were commonly adopted,
what would be the effect ?
The new religion of Elsmere is, after all, only a
system of outdoor relief, an effort to get successful
piracy to give up^larger percentage for the relief of its
victims. The aoolition of the system is not dreamed
of. A civilised minority could not by any possibility
be happy while a majority of the world were miserable;
a civilised majority could not be happy while a minority
were miserable. As a matter of fact, a civilised world
could not be happy while one man was really miserable.
At the foundation of civilisation is justice—that is to
say, the giving of an equal opportunity to all the chil
dren of men.
Secondly, there can be no civilisation in the highest
sense until sympathy becomes universal. We must
have a new definition for success. We must have
new ideals.
The man who succeeds in amassing
wealth, who gathers money for himself, is not a success.
It is an exceedingly low ambition to be rich, to excite
the envy of others, or for the sake of the vulgar power
it gives to triumph over others. Such men are failures.
So the man who wins fame, position, power, and wins
these for the sake of himself, and wields this power not
for the elevation of his fellow men, but simply to con
trol, is a miserable failure: He may dispense thousands
or millions in charity, and his charity may he prompted
by the meanest part of his nature—using it simply as
a bait to catch more fish, and to prevent the rising tide
of indignation that might overwhelm him. Men who
steal millions and then give a small percentage to the
Lord to gain the praise of the clergy, and to bring the
�Repairing the Idols.
13
salvation of their souls within the possibilities of im
agination, are all failures.
Robert Elsemere gains our affection and our applause
to the extent that he gives up what are known as
orthodox views, and his wife Catharine retains our
respect in the proportion that she lives the doctrine
that Elsmere preaches. By doing what she believes to
be right, she gains our forgiveness for her creed. One
is astonished that she can be as good as she is, believing
as she does. The utmost stretch of her intellectual
charity is to allow the old wine to be put in a new
bottle, and yet she regrets the absence of the old bottle
—she really believes that the bottle is the important
thing -that the wine is but a secondary consideration.
She misses the label, and not having perfect confidence
in her own taste, she does not feel quite sure that the
wine is genuine.
What, on the whole, is your judgment of the hook ?
I think the book conservative. It is an effort to save
something—a few shreds and patches and raveilings—
from the wreck. Theism is difficult to maintain. Why
should we expect an infinite being to do better in an
other world than he has done and is doing in this ? If
he allows the innocent to suffer here, why not there ?
If he allows rascality to succeed in this world, why not
in the next?
To believe in God and to deny his
personality is an exceedingly vague foundation for a
consolation. If you insist on his personality and power,
then it is impossible to account for what happens.
Why should an infinite God allow some of his children
to enslave others ? Why should he allow a child of
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Repairing the Idols.
his to burn another child of his, under the impression
that such a sacrifice was pleasing to him ?
Unitarianism lacks, the motive power.
Orthodox
people who insist that nearly everybody is going, ty .hell,
and that it is their duty to do what little, they, can-to
save their souls, have what you might call a spur to
action. We can imagine a philanthropic man engaged
in the business of throwing ropes to persons about to
go over the falls of Niagara, but we can hardly think
of his carrying on the business after becoming con
vinced that there are no falls, or that people go oyer
them in perfect safety. In this country the question
has come up whether all the heathen are bound to be
damned unless they believe in the Gospel. Many
admit that the heathen will be saved if they are good
people, and that they will not be damned for not
believing something that they never heard. The really
orthodox people—that is to say, the missionaries—
instantly see that this doctrine destroys their business.
They take the ground that there is but one way to be
saved—you must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ—
and they are willing to admit—and to cheerfully admit,
that the heathen for many generations have gone in an
unbroken column down to eternal wrath.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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Repairing the idols
Creator
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Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: [3]-14 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Date of publication and imprint from Stein (Item 61a). New York World interview with Ingersoll, reprinted. Mrs Humphrey Ward's (Mary Augusta Ward) novel 'Robert Elsmere' which inspired Ingersoll's lecture, tells of an Oxford clergyman who begins to doubt the doctrines of the Anglican Church after encountering the writings of the German rationalists including Schelling and David Strauss. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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[Progressive Publishing Company]
Date
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[1888]
Identifier
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N388
Subject
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Literature
Rationalism
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Repairing the idols), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Literature
Mrs Humphry Ward
NSS
Robert Elsmere