and touched it with a wand of
his genius, and it became a palace--dome and pinnacle. I would rather
belong to a race that commenced then, and produced Shakespeare, with
the eternal hope of an infinite future for the children of progress
leading from the far horizon, beckoning men forward--forward and onward
forever. I had rather belong to this race, and commence there, with
that hope, than to have sprung from a perfect pair on which the Lord
has lost money every day since.

These are the excuses I have for my race.

Now, my friends, let me say another thing. I do not pretend to have
floated even with the heights of thought; I do not pretend to have
fathomed the abyss. All I pretend is to give simply my honest thought.
Every creed that we have today has upon it the mark of whip and chain
and fagot. I do not want it. Free labor will give us wealth, and has
given us wealth, and why? Because a free brain goes into partnership
with a free hand. That is why. And when a man works for his wife and
children, the problem of liberty is, how to do the most work in the
shortest space of time; but the problem of slavery is, how to do the
least work in the longest space of time. Slavery is poverty; liberty
is wealth.

It is the same in thought. Free thought will give us truth; and the
man who is not in favor of free thought occupies the same relation to
those he can govern that the slaveholder occupied to his slaves,
exactly. Free thought will give us wealth. There has not been a
generation of free thought yet.

It will be time to write a creed when there have been a few generations
of free-brained men and splendid women in this world. I don't know what
the future may bring forth; I don't know what inventions are in the
brain of the future; I don't know what garments may be woven, with the
years to come; but I do know, coming from the infinite sea of the
future, there will never touch this "bank and shoal of time" a greater
blessing, a grander glory, than liberty for man, woman and child.

Oh, liberty! Float not forever in the far horizon! Remain not forever
in the dream of the enthusiast and the poet and the philanthropist!
But come and take up thine abode with the children of men forever!

Ingersoll's Lecture on "Orthodoxy"

Ladies and Gentlemen: It is utterly inconceivable that any man
believing in the truth of the Christian religion could publicly deny
it, because he who believes in that religio