ion.

We are beginning to learn that to swap off a superstition for a fact,
to ascertain the real, is to progress. All that gives us better bodies
and minds and clothes and food and pictures, grander music, better
heads, better hearts, and that makes us better husbands and wives and
better citizens, all these things combined produce what we call the
progress of the human race. Man advances only as he overcomes the
obstacles of nature. It is done by labor and thought. Labor is the
foundation. Without great labor it is impossible to progress. Without
labor on the part of those who conduct all great industries of life, of
those who battle with the obstacles of the sea, on the part of the
inventors, the discoverers, and the brave, heroic thinkers, no surplus
is produced; and from the surplus produced by labor, spring the schools
and universities, the painters, the sculptors, the poets, the hopes,
the loves and the aspirations of the world.

The surplus has given us the books. It has given us all there is of
beauty and eloquence. I am aware there is a vast difference of opinion
as to what progress is, and that many denounce my ideas. I know there
are many worshipers of the past. They see no beauty in anything from
which they do not blow the dust of ages with the breath of praise.
They see nothing like the ancients; no orators, poets or statesmen like
those who have been dust for thousands of years.

In a sermon on a certain evening, some time ago, the Rev. Dr. Magee of
Albany, N. Y., stated that Colonel Ingersoll, referring to Jesus
Christ, called him a "dirty little Jew." I denounce that as a dirty
little lie.

I have as much reverence for any man who ever did what he believed was
right, and died in order to benefit mankind, as any man in this world.
Do they treat an opponent with fairness? Are they investigating? Do
they pull forward or do they hold back? Is science indebted to the
Church for a single fact? Let us know what it is. What church has
been the asylum for a persecuted truth? What reform has been
inaugurated by the Church? Did the Church abolish slavery? No. Who
commenced it? Such men as Garrison and Pillsbury and Wendel Phillips.
They were the titans that attacked the monster, and not a solitary one
of them ever belonged to a church. Has the Church raised its voice
against war? No. Are men restrained by superstition? Are men
restrained by what you call religion? I used to think they were