ite power
could allow his children to die, to suffer, to be deformed by
necessity, by poverty, to be tempted beyond resistance; how he
could allow the few to live in luxury, and the many in poverty and
want, and the more he wondered the more useless and ironical would
seem to himself his sermons and his prayers. Such a man is driven
to the conclusion that religion accomplishes but little--that it
creates as much want as it alleviates, and that it burdens the
world with parasites. Such a man would be forced to think of the
millions wasted in superstition. In other words, the inadequacy,
the uselessness of religion would be forced upon his mind. He
would ask himself the question: "Is it possible that this is a
divine institution? Is this all that man can do with the assistance
of God? Is this the best?"

_Question_. That is a perfectly reasonable question, is it not,
Colonel Ingersoll?

_Answer_. The moment a man reaches the point where he asks himself
this question he has ceased to be an orthodox Christian. It will
not do to say that in some other world justice will be done. If
God allows injustice to triumph here, why not there?

Robert Elsmere stands in the dawn of philosophy. There is hardly
light enough for him to see clearly; but there is so much light
that the stars in the night of superstition are obscured.

_Question_. You do not deny that a religious belief is a comfort?

_Answer_. There is one thing that it is impossible for me to
comprehend. Why should any one, when convinced that Christianity
is a superstition, have or feel a sense of loss? Certainly a man
acquainted with England, with London, having at the same time
something like a heart, must feel overwhelmed by the failure of
what is known as Christianity. Hundreds of thousands exist there
without decent food, dwelling in tenements, clothed with rags,
familiar with every form of vulgar vice, where the honest poor eat
the crust that the vicious throw away. When this man of intelligence,
of heart, visits the courts; when he finds human liberty a thing
treated as of no value, and when he hears the judge sentencing
girls and boys to the penitentiary--knowing that a stain is being
put upon them that all the tears of all the coming years can never
wash away--knowing, too, and feeling that this is done without the
slightest regret, without the slightest sympathy, as a mere matter
of form, and that the judge puts this brand of infamy upon