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nationalsecularsociety
WHAT IS RELIGION?
X
BY
Col. ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
PRICE
TWOPENCE
THE PIONEER PRESS,
2 & 3, Furnival Street,
London, E.C. 4. England.
�WHAT IS RELIGION?
(Colonel Ingersoll’s last public address, delivered before
the American Religious Association, in the Hollis Street
Theatre, Boston, June 2, 1899.)
I
*
It is asserted that an infinite God created all things,
governs all things, and that the creature should be obe
dient and thankful to the creator ; that the creator de
mands certain things, and that the person who complies
with these demands is religious. This kind of religion has
been substantially universal.
For many centuries and by many peoples it was be
lieved that this God demanded sacrifices; that he was
pleased when parents shed the blood of their babes. After
wards it was supposed that he was satisfied with the blood
of oxen, lambs and doves, and that in exchange for or on
account of these sacrifices, this God gave rain, sunshine
and harvest.
It was also believed that if the sacrifices
were not made, this God sent pestilence, famine, flood and
earthquake.
The last phase of this belief in sacrifice was, according
to the Christian doctrine, that God accepted the blood of
his son, and that after his son had been murdered, he,
God, was satisfied, and wanted no more blood.
During all these years and by all these peoples it was
believed that this God heard and answered prayer, that
he forgave sins and saved the souls of true believers. This,
in a general way, is the definition of religion.
Now the questions are, Whether religion was founded
on any known facts? Whether such a being as God
exists ?. Whether he was the creator of yourself and my-
�B 1672What Is Religion ?
*
3
self? Whether any prayer was ever answered? Whether
any sacrifice of babe or ox secured the favour of this un
seen God?
First.—Did an infinite God create the children of men?
Why did he create the intellectually inferior?
Why did he create the deformed and helpless?
Why did he create the criminal, the idiotic, the insane?
Can infinite wisdom and power make any excuse for the
creation of failures?
Are the failures under obligation to their creator?
Second.—Is an infinite God the governor of this world?
Is he responsible for all the chiefs, kings, emperors, and
queens ?
Is he responsible for all the wars that have been waged,
for all the innocent blood that has been shed?
Is he responsible for the centuries of slavery, for the
backs that have been scarred with the lash, for the babes
that have been sold from the breasts of mothers, for the
families that have been separated and destroyed?
Is this God responsible for religious persecution, for the
Inquisition, for the thumb-screw and rack, and for all the
instruments of torture?
Did this God allow the cruel and vile to destroy the
brave and virtuous?
Did he allow tyrants to shed the
blood of patriots?
Did he allow his enemies to torture and burn his
friends?
What is such a God worth?
Would a decent man, having the power to prevent it,
allow his enemies to torture and burn his friends ?
Can we conceive of a devil base enough to prefer his
enemies to his friends?
If a good and infinitely powerful God governs this
world, how can we account for cyclones, earthquakes,
pestilence and famine?
How can we account for cancers, for microbes, fqr
diphtheria and the thousand diseases that prey on infancy?
How can we account for the wild beasts that devour
human beings, for the fanged serpents whose bite is
death ?
How can we account for a world where life feeds on
life?
�4
What Is Religion ?
Were beak and claw, tooth and fang, invented and pro
duced by infinite mercy?
Did infinite goodness fashion the wings of the eagles
so that their fleeing prey could be overtaken ?
Did infinite goodness create the beasts of prey with the
intention that they should devour the weak and helpless?
Did infinite goodness create the countless worthless liv
ing things that breed within and feed upon the flesh of
higher forms?
Did infinite wisdom intentionally produce the micro
scopic beasts that feed upon the optic nerve?
Think of blinding a man to satisfy the appetite of a
microbe!
Think of life feeding on life! Think of the victims!
Think of the Niagara of blood pouring over the precipice
of cruelty!
In view of these facts, what, after all, is religion?
It is fear.
Fear builds the altar and offers the sacrifice.
Fear erects the cathedral and bows the head of man in
worship.
Fear bends the knees and utters the prayer.
Fear pretends to love.
Religion teaches the slave-virtues—obedience, humility,
self-denial, forgiveness, non-resistance.
Lips, religious and fearful, tremblingly repeat this
passage: “ Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.”
This is the abyss of degradation.
Religion does not teach self-reliance, independence, man
liness, courage, self-defence. Religion makes God a master
and man his serf. The master cannot be great enough to
make slavery sweet.
II
If this God exists, how do we know that he is good?
How can we prove that he is merciful, that hd cares for
the children of men?
If this God exists, he has on many
occasions seen millions of his poor children ploughing
the fields, sowing and planting the grain, and when he
�IVhat Is Religion ?
5
saw them he knew that they depended on the expected
crop for life, and yet this good God, this merciful being,
withheld the rain.
He caused the sun to rise, to steal all
moisture from the land, but gave no rain.
He saw theK
seeds that man had planted wither and perish, but he
sent no rain.
He saw the people look with sad eyes upon
the barren earth, and he sent no rain. He saw them slowly
devour the little that they had, and saw them when the
days of hunger came—saw them slowly waste away, saw
their hungry, sunken eyes, heard their prayers, saw them
devour the miserable animals that they had, saw fathers
and mothers, insane with hunger, kill and >eat their
shrivelled babies, and yet the heaven above them was as
brass and the earth beneath as iron, and he sent no rain.
Can we say that in the heart of this God there blossomed
the flower of'pity? Can we say that he cared for the
children of men?
Can we say that his mercy endureth
forever ?
Do we prove that this God is good because he sends
the cyclone that wrecks villages and covers the fields
with the mangled bodies of fathers, mothers and babes?
Do we prove his goodness by showing that he has
opened the earth and swallowed thousands of his help
less children, or that with the volcanoes he has over
whelmed them with rivers of fire?
Can we infer the
goodness of God from the facts we know?
If these calamities did not happen, would we suspect
that God cared nothing for human beings? If there were
no famine, no pestilence, no cyclone, no earthquake,
would we think that God is not good?
According to the theologians, God did not make all men
alike.
He made races differing in intelligence, stature
and colour.
Was there goodness, was there wisdom in
this ?
Ought the superior races to thank God that they are
not the inferior?
If we say yes, then I ask another
question: Should the inferior races thank God that they
are not superior, or should they thank God that they are
not beasts?
When God made these different races he knew that the
superior would enslave the inferior, knew that the inferior
would be conquered, and finally destroyed.
�6
What Is Religion?
If God did this, and knew the blood that would be shed,
the agonies that would be endured, saw the countless
fields covered with the corpses of the slain, saw all the
bleeding backs of slaves, all the broken hearts of mothers
bereft of babes, if he saw and knew all this, can we
conceive of a more malicious fiend?
Why, then, should we say that God is good ?
The dungeons against whose dripping walls the brave
and generous have sighed their souls away, the scaffolds
stained and glorified with noble blood, the hopeless
slaves with scarred and bleeding backs, the writhing
martyrs clothed in flame, the virtuous stretched on racks,
their joints and muscles torn apart, the flayed and bleed
ing bodies of the just, the extinguished eyes of those
who sought for truth, the countless patriots who fought
and died in vain, the burdened, beaten, weeping wives,
the shrivelled faces of neglected babes, the murdered
millions of the vanished years, the victims of the winds
and waves, of flood and flame, of imprisoned forces in the
earth, of lightning’s stroke, of lava’s molten stream, of
famine, plague and lingering pain, the mouths that drip
with blood, the fangs that poison, the beaks that wound
and tear, the triumphs of the base, the rule and sway of
wrong, the crowns that cruelty has worn and the robed
hypocrites, with clasped and bloody hands, who thanked
their God—a phantom fiend—that liberty had been
banished from the world, these souvenirs of the dreadful
past, these horrors that still exist, these frightful facts
deny that any God exists who has the will and power to
guard and bless the human race.
Ill
Most people cling to the supernatural.
If they give up
one God, they imagine another.
Having outgrown
Jehovah, they talk about the power that works for
righteousness.
What is this power?
Man advances, and necessarily advances through expe
rience.
A man wishing to go to a certain place comes
to where the road divides.
He takes the left hand,
�What Is Religion?
7
believing it to be the right road, and travels until he
finds that it is the wrong one.
He retraces his steps and
takes the right-hand road and reaches the place desired.
The next time he goes to the same place, he does not take
the left-hand road.
He has tried that road, and knows
that it is the wrong road.
He takes the right road, and
thereupon these theologians say, “ There is a power that
works for righteousness.”
A child, charmed by the beauty of the flame, grasps it
with its dimpled hand. The hand is burned, and after that
the child keeps its hand out of the fire. The power that
works for righteousness has taught the child a lesson.
The accumulated experience of the world is a power
and force that works for righteousness. This force is not
conscious, not intelligent.
It has no will, no purpose. It
is a result.
So thousands have endeavoured to establish the exist
ence of God by the fact that we have what is called the
moral sense; that is to say, a conscience.
It is insisted by these theologians, and by many of the
so-called philosophers, that this moral sense, this sense of
duty, of obligation, was imported, and that conscience is
an exotic. Taking the ground that it was not produced
here, was not produced by man, they then imagine a God
from whom it came.
Man is a social being.
We live together in families,
tribes and nations.
The members of a family, of a tribe, of a nation, who
increase the happiness of the family, of the tribe or of the
nation, are considered good members. They are praised,
admired and respected. They are regarded as good; that
is to say, as moral.
The members who add to the misery of the family, the
tribe or the nation, are considered bad members. They
are blamed, despised, punished. They are regarded as
immoral.
The family, the tribe, the nation, creates a standard of
conduct, of morality. There is nothing supernatural in
this.
The greatest of human beings has said, “ Conscience is
born of love.”
�8
What Is Religion ?
The sense of obligation, of duty, was naturally pro
duced.
Among savages, the immediate consequences of actions
are. taken into consideration.
As people advance, the
remote consequences are perceived.
The standard of
conduct becomes higher. The imagination is cultivated.
A man puts himself in the place of another. The sense of
duty becomes stronger, more imperative. Man judges him
self.
He loves, and love is the commencement, the foundation
of the highest virtues.
He injures one that he loves.
Then comes regret, repentance, sorrow, conscience.
In
-all this there is nothing supernatural.
Man has deceived himself. Nature is a mirror in which
man sees his own image, and all supernatural religions
rest on the pretence that the image, which appears to be
behind this inirror, has been caught.
All the metaphysicians of the spiritual type; from Plato
to Swedenborg, have manufattured their facts, and all
founders of religion have done the same.
Suppose that an infinite God exists, what can we do
for him?
Being infinite, he is conditionless; being con
ditionless, he cannot be benefited or injured. He cannot
want. He has.
Think of the egotism of a man who believes that an
infinite being wants his praise!
IV
What has our religion done?
Of course, it is admitted
by Christians that all other religions are false, and conse
quently we need examine only our own. Has Christianity
•done good?
Has it made men nobler, more merciful,
nearer honest? When the Church had control, were men
made better and happier?
What has been the effect of Christianity in Italy, in
Spain, in Portugal, in Ireland? What has religion done
for Hungary or Austria?
What was the effect of Chris
tianity in Switzerland, in Holland, in Scotland, in England,
in America?
Let us be honest.
Could these coufitries have been worse without religion?
Could they
�What Is Religion?
9
have been worse had they had any other religion than
Christianity ?
Would Torquemada have been worse had he been a
follower of Zoroaster?
Would Calvin have been more
bloodthirsty if he had believed in the religion of the South
Sea Islanders?
Would the Dutch have been more idiotic
if they had denied the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and
worshipped the blessed trinity of sausage, beer and cheese?
Would John Knox have been any worse had he deserted
Christ and become a follower of Confucius?
Take our own dear, merciful Puritan Fathers? What
did Christianity do for them? They hated pleasure. On
the door of life they hung the crape of death. They
muffled all the bells of gladness. They made cradles by
putting rockers on coffins.
In the Puritan year there
were twelve Decembers. They tried to do away with
infancy and youth, with prattle of babes and the song of
the morning.
The religion of the Puritan was an unadulterated curse.
The Puritan believed the Bible to be the word of God,
and this belief has always made those who held it cruel
and wretched. Would the Puritan have been worse if he
had adopted the religion of the North American
Indians ?
Let me refer to just one fact showing the influence of
a belief in the Bible on human beings.
“ On the day of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth she
was presented with a Geneva Bible by an old man
representing Time, with Truth standing by his side as a child. The Queen received the Bible, kissed it, and
pledged herself to diligently read therein. In the dedica
tion of this blessed Bible the Queen was piously exhorted
to put all Papists to the sword.”
In this incident we see the real spirit of Protestant
lovers of the Bible.
In other words, it was just as
fiendish, just as infamous as the Catholic spirit.
Has the Bible made the people of Georgia kind and
merciful? Would the lynchers be more ferocious if they
worshipped gods of wood and stone?
�10
IF hat Is Religion ?
V
Religion has been tried, and in all countries, in all times,
has failed. Religion has never made man merciful. Re
member the Inquisition.
What effect did religion have
on slavery?
What effect upon Libby, Saulsbury and
Andersonville?
Religion has always been the enemy of
science, of investigation and thought. Religion has never
made man free. It has never made man mortal, temperate,
industrious and honest.
Are Christians more temperate, nearer virtue, nearer
honesty than savages?
Among savages do we not find
that their vices and cruelties are the fruits of their super
stitions ?
To those who believe in the Uniformity of Nature,
religion is impossible.
Can we affect the nature and qualities of substance by
prayer?
Can we hasten or delay the tides by worship?
Can we change winds by sacrifice? Will kneeling give
us wealth? Can we cure disease by supplication?
Can
we add to our knowledge by ceremony?
Can we receive
virtue or honour as alms?
Are not the facts in the
mental world just as stubborn—just as necessarily pro
duced—as the facts in the material world?
Is not what
we call mind just as natural as what we call body?
Religion rests on the idea that Nature has a master, and
that this master will listen to prayer; that this master
punishes and rewards; that he loves praise and flattery and
hates the brave and free.
Has man obtained any help from heaven?
VI
If we have a theory, we must have facts for the founda
tion. We must have corner-stones. We must not build
on guesses, fancies, analogies or inferences. The struc
ture must have a basement.
If we build, we must
begin at the bottom.
I have a theory and I have four corner-stones. The
first stone is that matter—substance—cannot be de
stroyed, cannot be annihilated. The second stone is that
�IVhat Is Religion?
11
force cannot be destroyed, cannot be annihilated. The
third stone is that matter and force cannot exist apart—no
matter without force—no force without matter.
The
fourth stone is that that which cannot be destroyed could
not have been created; that the indestructible is the un
beatable.
If these corner-stones are facts, it follows as a neces
sity that matter and force are from and to eternity; that
they can neither be increased nor diminished.
It follows that nothing has been or can be created; that
there never has been or can be a creator.
It follows that
there could not have been any intelligence, any design
back of matter and force. There is no intelligence with
out force. There is no force without matter.
Conse
quently there could not by any possibility have been any
intelligence, any force, back of matter.
It therefore follows that the supernatural does not and
cannot exist.
If these four corner-stones are facts,
Nature has no master.
If matter and force are from and
to eternity, it follows as a necessity that no1 God exists;
that no God created or governs the universe; that no God
exists who answers prayer; no God who succours the
oppressed; no God who pities the sufferings of
innocence; no God who cares for the slaves with scarred
flesh, the mothers robbed of their babes; no God who
rescues the tortured, and no God that saves a martyr from
the flames.
In other words, it proves that man has never
received any help from heaven; that all sacrifices have
been in vain, and that all prayers have died unanswered
in the heedless air. I do not pretend to know. I say
what I think.
If matter and force have existed from eternity, it then
follows that all that has been possible has happened, all
that is possible is happening, and all that will be possible
will happen. In the universe there is no chance, no caprice.
Every event has parents. That which has not happened,
could not. The present is the necessary product of all the
past, the necessary cause of all the future.
In the infinite chain there is, and there can be, no
broken, no missing link. The form and motion of every
star, the climate of every world, all forms of vegetable
and animal life, all instinct, intelligence and conscience, all
�12
IVhat Is Religion ?
assertions and denials, all vices and virtues, all thoughts
and dreams, all hopes and fears, are necessities. Not one
of the countless things and relations in the universe could
have been different.
VII
If matter and force are from eternity, then we can say
that man had no intelligent creator, that man was not a
special creation. We now know, if we know anything, that
Jehovah, the divine potter, did not mix and mould clay
into the forms of men and women, and then breathe the
breath of life into these forms.
We now know that our first parents were not foreigners.
We know that they were natives of this world, produced
here, and that their life did not come from the breath of
any god. . 'We now know, if we know anything, that the
universe is natural, and that men and women have been
naturally produced.
We now know our ancestors, our
pedigree. We have the family tree.
We have all the links of the chain, twenty-six links
inclusive from monad to man. We did not get our in
formation from inspired books.
We have fossil facts
and living forms.
\
From the simplest creatures, from blind sensation,
from organism, from one vague want, to a single cell with
a nucleus, to a hollow ball filled with fluid, to a cup
with double walls, to a flat worm, to a something that
begins to breathe, to an organism that has a spinal cord,
to a link between the invertebrate and the vertebrate, to
one that has a cranium—a house for a brain—to one with
fins, still onward to one with fore and hinder fins, to the
reptile mammalia, ’to the marsupials, to the lemures,
dwellers in trees, to the simiidae, to the pithecanthropi,
and lastly, to man.
We know the paths that life has travelled. We know
the footsteps of advance. They have been traced. The
last link has been found. For this we are indebted, more
than to all others, to the greatest of biologists, Ernst
Haeckel.
We now believe that the universe is natural and we deny
the existence of the supernatural.
�What Is Religion ?
13
VIII
For thousands of years men and women have been trying
to reform the world. They have created gods and devils,
heavens and hells; they have written sacred books,
performed miracles, built cathedrals and dungeons; they
have crowned and uncrowned kings and queens; they
have tortured and imprisoned, flayed alive and burned;
they have preached and prayed; they have tried promises
and threats; they have coaxed and persuaded; they have
preached and taught, and in countless ways have
endeavoured to make people honest, temperate, in
dustrious and virtuous; they have built hospitals and
asylums, universities and schools, and seem to have done
their very best to make mankind better and happier, and
*yet they have not succeeded.
Why have the reformers failed?
I will tell them why.
Ignorance, poverty and vice are populating the world.
The gutter is a nursery. People unable even to support
themselves fill the tenements, the huts and hovels with
children. They depend on the Lord,'on luck and charity.
They are not intelligent enough to think about con
sequences or to feel responsibility.
At the same time
they do not want children, because a child is a curse, a
curse to them and to itself. The babe is not welcome,
because it is a burden. These unwelcome children fill
the jails and prisons, the asylums and hospitals, and
they crowd the scaffolds. A few are rescued by chance
or charity, but the great majority are failures. They
become vicious, ferocious.
They live by fraud and
violence, and bequeath their vices to their children.
Against this inundation of vice the forces of reform are
helpless, and charity itself becomes an unconscious
promoter of crime.
Failure seems to be the trade-mark of Nature. Why?
Nature has no design, no intelligence. Nature produces
without purpose, sustains without intention and destroys
without thought.
Man has a little intelligence, and he
should use it.
Intelligence is the only lever capable of
raising mankind.
�14
What Is Religion?
The real question is, can we prevent the ignorant, the
poor, the 'vicious, from filling the world with their
children ?
Can we prevent this Missouri of ignorance and vice
from emptying into the Mississippi of civilization? Must
the world forever remain the victim of ignorant passion?
Can the world be civilized to that degree that con
sequences will be taken into consideration by all?
Why should men and women have children that they
cannot take care of, children that are burdens and curses?
Why?
Because they have more passion than intelli
gence, more passion than conscience, more passion than
reason.
You cannot reform these people with tracts and talk.
You cannot reform these people with preach and creed.
Passion is, and always has been, deaf. These weapons
of reform . are substantially useless.
Criminals, tramps,
beggars and failures are increasing every day. The ’
prisons, jails, poor-houses and asylums are crowded.
Religion is helpless. Law can punish, but it can neither
reform criminals nor prevent crime. The tide of vice
is rising. The war that is now being waged against the
forces of evil is as hopeless as the battle of the fireflies
against the darkness of night.
There is but1 one hope.
Ignorance, poverty and vice
must stop populating the world. This cannot be done
by moral suasion.
This cannot be done by talk or
example. This cannot be done by religion or by law, by
priest or by hangman. This cannot be done by force,
physical or moral.
To accomplish this there is but one way. Science must
make woman the owner, the mistress of herself. Science,
the only possible saviour of mankind, must put it in the
power of woman to decide for herself whether she will or
will not become a mother.
This is the solution of the whole question. This frees
woman. The babes that are then born will be welcome.
They will be clasped with glad hands to happy breasts.
They will fill homes with light and joy.
Men and women who believe that slaves are purer,
truer, than the free, who believe that fear is a safer guide
than knowledge, that only those are really good who
�What Is Religion ?
15
obey the commands of others, and that ignorance is the
soil in which the perfect, perfumed flower of virtue grows,
will with protesting hands hide their shocked faces.
Men and women who think that light is the enemy of
virtue, that purity dwells in darkness, that it is dangerous
for human beings to know themselves and the facts in
Nature that affect their well being, will be horrified at the
thought of making intelligence the master of passion.
But I look forward to the time when men and women
by' reason of their knowledge of consequences, of the
morality born of intelligence, will refuse to perpetuate
disease and pain, will refuse to fill the world with failures.
When that time comes the prison walls will fall, the
dungeons will be flooded with light, and the shadow of
the scaffold will cease to curse the earth. Poverty and
■crime will be childless. The withered hands of want will
not be stretched for alms. They will be dust. The whole
world will be intelligent, virtuous and free.
IX
Religion can never reform mankind because religion is
slavery.
It is far better to be free, to leave the forts and barri
cades of fear, to stand erect and face the future with a
smile.
It is far better to give yourself sometimes to negligence,
to drift with wave and tide, with the blind force of the
world, to think and dream, to forget the chains and
limitations of the breathing life, to forget purpose and
object, to lounge in the picture gallery of the brain, to
feel once more the clasps and kisses of the past, to bring
life’s morning back, to see again the forms and faces of
the dead, to paint fair pictures for' the coming years, to
forget all Gods, their promises and threats, to feel within
your veins life’s joyous stream and hear the martial
music, the rhythmic beating of your fearless heart.
And then to rouse yourself to do'all useful things, to
reach with thought and deed the ideal in your brain, to
give your fancies wing, that they, like chemist bees, may
find art’s nectar in the weeds of common things, to look
�16
What Is Religion?
with trained and steady eyes for facts, to find the subtle
threads that join the distant with the now, to increase
knowledge, to take burdens from the weak, ‘ to develop
the brain, to defend the right, to make a palace for the
soul.
This is real religion. This is real worship.
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Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
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>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
What is religion?
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ingersoll, Robert Green [1833-1899]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 16 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. "Colonel Ingersoll's last public address, delivered...1899." (p. 2). Issued for the Secular Society Limited. No. 89d in Stein checklist. Date of publication from KVK.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Pioneer Press
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1899]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G1067
N408
N409
Subject
The topic of the resource
Religion
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<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 (What is religion?), 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>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
NSS
Religion