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The speech given in Cooper Union by Robert G. Ingersoll lifted him from the rank of a Western lawyer to national prominence in a single day. Other men had criticized the Christian religion, but no man of power on a public platform had up to that time in America expressed his abhorrence and contempt for it. The reputation of Ingersoll had preceded him.
Gladstone crossed swords with Huxley, Spencer and Robert Ingersoll, and in each case his blundering intellect looked like a raft of logs compared with a steamboat that responds to the helm. Gladstone was a man of action, and silence to such is most becoming. He had a belief, that was enough; he should have hugged it close, and never stood up to explain it.
The latter character was play'd by a stalwart young fellow named Ingersoll. Indeed, all the renderings were wonderfully good. But the great spell cast upon the mass of hearers came from Booth. Especially was the dream scene very impressive. A shudder went through every nervous system in the audience; it certainly did through mine.
"Christ's teaching is no use, because it is inconsistent with our industrial age," says Ingersoll naively, expressing in this utterance, with perfect directness and simplicity, the exact notion of Christ's teaching held by persons of refinement and culture of our times.
His mission was to liberalize and to Christianize every church in Christendom; and no denomination, be its creed never so ossified, stands now where it stood before Ingersoll began his crusade. He shamed men into sanity. Ingersoll uttered in clarion tones what thousands of men and women believed, but dared not voice. He was the spokesman for many of the best thinkers of his time.
I am only sorry that I must say good-bye so soon." The driver having carried in her trunk, Ruth shook hands warmly with Mr. Ingersoll and watched him with a little homesick pang as he stepped into the carriage and was driven away. Then she walked into the house with the curious idea that she was either just waking from a dream or was just going to begin one.
Ingersoll did not destroy the good all that is vital and excellent and worthy in religion we have yet, and in such measure as it never existed before.
Then it was that Beecher offered to write Ingersoll's epitaph, which he proceeded to do by scribbling two words on the back of an envelope, thus: "Robert Burns." But these men understood and had a thorough respect for each other. Once at a mass-meeting at Cooper Union, Beecher introduced Ingersoll as the "first, foremost and most gifted of all living orators."
"'I believe in love, absolutely. That is my strongest point. As soon as I find a champion, I am going to concentrate all my energy and all my talent on falling dead in love with him. "'Have you found any eligibles yet? "'Yes, Harvey Grath, and Robert Ingersoll, and Cal Keith, and Doctor Meredith. "'Where do I come in? "'Oh, we know each other too well, I said with discouraging promptness.
The Federal candidate for the executive was Governor John Cotton Smith, up for reelection. The Tolerationists failed by a few hundred votes to seat their candidate for the executive, with the result that the election of 1816 raised to office Governor Smith and Lieutenant-Governor Ingersoll. Governor Smith received 11,589 votes, Mr.
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