is, the story is
growing old, the ideas somewhat moss-covered, and everything has
a wrinkled and withered appearance. This gentleman says that these
people went to hear their Maker cursed and their Savior ridiculed.
Is it possible that in a city where so many steeples pierce the
air, and hundreds of sermons are preached every Sunday, there are
three thousand men, and a few women, so anxious to hear "their
Maker cursed and their Savior ridiculed" that they are willing to
pay a dollar each? The gentleman knew that nobody cursed anybody's
Maker. He knew that the statement was utterly false and without
the slightest foundation. He also knew that nobody had ridiculed
the Savior of anybody, but, on the contrary, that I had paid a
greater tribute to the character of Jesus Christ than any minister
in New York has the capacity to do. Certainly it is not cursing
the Maker of anybody to say that the God described in the Old
Testament is not the real God. Certainly it is not cursing God to
declare that the real God never sanctioned slavery or polygamy, or
commanded wars of extermination, or told a husband to separate from
his wife if she differed with him in religion. The people who say
these things of God--if there is any God at all--do what little
there is in their power, unwittingly of course, to destroy his
reputation. But I have done something to rescue the reputation of
the Deity from the slanders of the pulpit. If there is any God,
I expect to find myself credited on the heavenly books for my
defence of him. I did say that our civilization is due not to
piety, but to Infidelity. I did say that every great reformer had
been denounced as an Infidel in his day and generation. I did say
that Christ was an Infidel, and that he was treated in his day very
much as the orthodox preachers treat an honest man now. I did say
that he was tried for blasphemy and crucified by bigots. I did
say that he hated and despised the church of his time, and that he
denounced the most pious people of Jerusalem as thieves and vipers.
And I suggested that should he come again he might have occasion
to repeat the remarks that he then made. At the same time I admitted
that there are thousands and thousands of Christians who are
exceedingly good people. I never did pretend that the fact that
a man was a Christian even tended to show that he was a bad man.
Neither have I ever insisted that the fact that a man is an Infidel
even tends to s