ly eight days old when
I came here. I'm inclined to think he has over stated his age. I
account for his argument precisely as he did for the sin of Solomon,
softening of the brain, or fatty degeneration of the heart. It does
seem to me that if I were a good Christian and knew that another man
was going down to the bottomless pit to be miserable and in agony
forever, I would try to stop him, and instead of filling my mouth with
epithet and invective, and drawing the lips of malice back from the
teeth of hatred, my eyes would be filled with tears, and I would do
what I could to reclaim him and take him up in the arms of my affection.

The next gentleman is the Rev. Mr. Robinson, who delivered a sermon
entitled 'Ghost against God, or Ingersoll against Honesty.' Of course
he was honest. He apologized for attending an infidel lecture upon the
ground that he hated to contribute to the support of a materialistic
showman. I am willing to trade fagots for epithets, and the rack for
anything that may be said in his sermon. I am willing to trade the
instrument of torture with which they could pull the nails from my
fingers for anything which the ingenuity of orthodoxy can invent.
When I saw that report--although I do not know that I ought to tell
it--I felt bad. I knew that man's conscience must be rankling like a
snake in his bosom, that he had contributed a dollar to the support of
a man as bad as I. I wrote him a letter, in which I said: "The Rev.
Samuel Robinson, My Dear Sir. In order to relieve your conscience of
the stigma of having contributed to the support of an unbeliever in
Ghosts, I herewith enclose the dollar you paid to attend my lecture."
I then gave him a little good advice to be charitable, and regretted
exceedingly that any man could listen to me for an hour and a half and
not go away satisfied that other men had the same right to think that
he had.

The speaker went on to answer the argument of Mr. Robinson with regard
to persecution, contending that protestants had been guilty of it no
less than catholics; and showing that the first people to pass an act
of toleration in the new world were the catholics in Maryland. The
reverend gentleman has stated also that infidelity has done nothing for
the world in the development of art and science. Has he ever heard of
Darwin, of Tyndall, of Huxley, of John W. Draper, of Auguste Comte, of
Descartes, Laplace, Spinoza, or any man who has taken a step in advan