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"For what," he ask'd, "would this life be without immortality? It would be as a locomotive, the greatest triumph of modern science, with no train to draw after it. If the spiritual is not behind the material, to what purpose is the material? What is this world without a further Divine purpose in it all?" Colonel Ingersoll repeated his former argument in reply. Friday, July 27, 1890.
Ingersoll has treated God with the greatest contempt, called Him all the names he could think of, called Him a liar, a heartless wretch, and stood on a stump and dared God to knock a chip off his shoulder, and instead of God's letting him have one below the belt and knocking seven kinds of cold victuals out of him, God gives him a pointer on a silver mine, and the infidel rakes in a cool million, and laughs in his sleeve, while thousands of poor workers in the vineyard are depending for a livelihood on collections that pan out more gun wads and brass pants buttons to the ton of ore than they do silver.
Gilbert Vale" A few weeks ago I received the following letter, which confirms the statement of Mr. Vale: "Near Stockton, Cal., Greenwood Cottage, July 9. 1877. Col. Ingersoll: In 1812 I talked with a gentleman in Boston. I have forgotten his name; but he was then an engineer of the Charleston navy yard. I am thus particular so that you can find his name on the books.
In many respects, I regard him as one of the greatest men of his day; certainly he was the greatest agnostic of his time, if not of all time. No one has taken his place. The very name, Agnostic, is now rarely heard. And why? Because Robert G. Ingersoll mercilessly tore down.
In this case, argued before Judge Ingersoll in the United States Circuit Court, at New York City, on May 16, 1856, many interesting and characteristic facts came out both in the argument and in the Court decision. Sloo assigned his contract to them. Law was the first president, and was succeeded by Roberts. A trust fund was formed.
Success is a question of temperament it is all a matter of the red corpuscle. Ingersoll was a success; happy, exuberant, joying in life, reveling in existence, he marched to the front in every fray. As a boy he was so full of life that he very often did the wrong thing. And I have no doubt that wherever he went he helped hold good the precedent that preachers' boys are not especially angelic.
We need not give much time to the agnostic. If he is sincere he does not know and therefore cannot affirm, deny or advise. When I was a young man I wrote to Colonel Ingersoll, the leading infidel of his day, and asked his views on God and immortality. His secretary sent me a speech which quoted Colonel Ingersoll as follows: "I do not say that there is no God: I simply say I do not know.
Beecher's task was to rationalize orthodoxy so as to make it palatable to thinking minds. "I can't ride two horses at one time," once said Robert Ingersoll to Beecher, "but possibly I'll be able to yet, for tomorrow I am going to hear you preach."
Without a belief in his own semi-divinity to lead the race onward and upward, the conditions which produce a Voltaire or Ingersoll were impossible.
For a decade or more its walls gave shelter to Judge Treat, Judge Davis, Mr. Lincoln, General Gridley, Judge Purple, and more than once to General Shields and Stephen A. Douglas. At a later date it was upon like occasion the stopping place of Colonel Ingersoll, John Burns, Judge Shaw, James S. Ewing, Robert E. Williams, Judge Richmond, and other well-known members of the bar.
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