[* At the usual weekly meeting of the Baptist ministers at the
Publication Rooms yesterday, the Rev. Dr. B. F. Morse read an essay
on "Christianity vs. Materialism." His contention was that all
nature showed that design, not evolution, was its origin.

In his concluding remarks Dr. Morse said that he knew from
unquestionable authority, that Robert G. Ingersoll did not believe
what he uttered in his lectures, and that to get out of a financial
embarrassment he looked around for a money making scheme that could
be put into immediate execution. To lecture against Christianity
was the most rapid way of giving him the needed cash and, what was
quite as acceptable to him, at the same time, notoriety.]

This aquatic or web-footed theologian who expects to go to heaven
by diving is not worth answering. Nothing can be more idiotic than
to answer an argument by saying he who makes it does not believe
it. Belief has nothing to do with the cogency or worth of an
argument. There is another thing. This man, or rather this
minister, says that I attacked Christianity simply to make money.
Is it possible that, after preachers have had the field for eighteen
hundred years, the way to make money is to attack the clergy? Is
this intended as a slander against me or the ministers?

The trouble is that my arguments cannot be answered. All the
preachers in the world cannot prove that slavery is better than
liberty. They cannot show that all have not an equal right to
think. They cannot show that all have not an equal right to express
their thoughts. They cannot show that a decent God will punish a
decent man for making the best guess he can. This is all there is
about it.

--_The Herald_, New York, December 14, 1886.

INGERSOLL ON McGLYNN.

The attitude of the Roman Catholic Church in Dr. McGlynn's case is
consistent with the history and constitution of the Catholic Church
--perfectly consistent with its ends, its objects, and its means--
and just as perfectly inconsistent with intellectual liberty and
the real civilization of the human race.

When a man becomes a Catholic priest, he has been convinced that
he ought not to think for himself upon religious questions. He
has become convinced that the church is the only teacher--that he
has a right to think only to enforce its teachings. From that
moment he is a moral machine. The chief engineer resides at Rome,
and he gives his orders through certain assistant engin