views not held by themselves, and went on to
explain that God was never mentioned in the constitution of the United
States because each colony had a different religious belief, and each
sect preferred to have God not mentioned at all than to having another
religious belief than their own recognized.

"In 1876," said the speaker, "our forefathers retired God from
politics. They said all power comes from the people. They kept God out
of the constitution and allowed each state to settle the question for
itself."

The present laws of different states were neatly reviewed, so far as
they relate to the prevention of infidels giving testimony and to
religious intolerance in any way, and these features were all branded
and discussed as a gigantic evil.

The lecture was attentively listened to by the immense audience from
beginning to the end, and the speaker's most blasphemous fights were
the most loudly applauded.

Ingersoll's Lecture on Hereafter

My Friends: I tell you tonight, as I have probably told many of you
dozens of times, that the orthodox doctrine of eternal punishment in
the hereafter is an infamous one! I have no respect for the man who
preaches it, or pretends to you he believes it. Neither have I any
respect for the man who will pollute the imagination of innocent
childhood with that infamous lie! And I have no respect for the man
who will deliberately add to the sorrows of this world with this
terrible dogma; no respect for the man who endeavors to put that
infinite cloud and shadow over the heart of humanity. I will be frank
with you and say, I hate the doctrine; I despise it, I defy it; I
loathe it--and what man of sense does not. The idea of a hell was born
of revenge and brutality on the one side, and arrant cowardice on the
other. In my judgment the American people are too brave, too generous,
too magnanimous, too humane to believe in that outrageous doctrine of
eternal damnation.

For a great many years the learned intellects of Christendom have been
examining into the religions of other countries and other ages, in the
world--the religions of the myriads who have passed away. They
examined into the religions of Egypt, the religion of Greece, that of
Rome and the Scandinavian countries. In the presence of the ruins of
those religions, the learned men of Christendom insisted that those
religions were baseless, false and fraudulent. But they have all
passed away.

Now, wh