der story? The book containing
this story is full of good things; and yet Christians style as heathens
those who have adopted this book as their guide, and spend thousands of
dollars annually in sending missionaries to convert them!

It has been too often conceded that because the new testament contains,
in many passages, a lofty and terse expression of love as the highest
duty of man, Christianity must have a tendency to ennoble his nature.
But Christianity is like sweetened whisky and water--it perverts and
destroys that which it should nourish and strengthen.

Christianity makes an often fatal attack on a man's morality--if he
happens to be blessed with any--by substituting for the sentiments of
love and duty to our neighbors, a sense of obligation of blind
obedience to an infinite, mysterious, revengeful, tyrannical God! The
real principle of Christian morality, is servile obedience to a
dangerous Power! Dispute the assertions of even your priest as to the
requirements, dislikes, desires and wishes of the Almighty, and you
might as well count yourself as lost, sulphurically lost! If you are
one of God's chosen, or in other words, have been saved, and are even
so fortunate as to attain to the glories and joys of the gold-paved
streets of heaven, you are expected, in looking over the banisters of
heaven down into the abyss of eternal torture, to view with complacency
the agonized features of your mother, sister, brother, or infant
child--who are writhing in hell--and laugh at their calamity! You are
not allowed to carry them a drop of water to cool their parched tongue!
And if you are a Christian, you at this moment believe you will enjoy
the situation!

If a man in a quarrel cuts down his neighbor in his sins, the poor,
miserable victim goes directly to hell! The murderer may reasonably
count on a lease of a few weeks of life, interviews his pastor,
confesses the crime, repents, accepts the grace of God, is forgiven,
and then smoothly and gently slides from the rudely-constructed
scaffold into a haven of joy and bliss, there to sing the praises of
the Lamb of God forever and forever! Poor, unfortunate victim! Happy
murderer!

Ah, what a beautiful religion humanitarianism and charity* might become!

[* The following incident, showing Col. Ingersoll's disposition to
practice what he preaches whenever the opportunity presents itself, we
have never before seen in print. One day, during the winter of 1863-4,