fifteen hundred
years truth-telling has not been a very lucrative business."--_Col.
Ingersoll._

The Colonel's business _has been very lucrative_, therefore his _has not
been a truth-telling business_.

THE THEORY OF THE ORIGINAL FREE-THINKERS.

_See how they have advanced!_ "Free-thinking Christians," a name lately
adopted by a society which arose in the year 1799, and has ever since
regularly assembled in London, calling itself _a church of God_ founded
on the principles of free inquiry. Their first members separated from a
congregation of Trinitarian dissenters in Parliament Court Chapel,
Bishopgate street; they rejected the doctrine of the trinity, the
atonement, and other points of Calvinism; then the sacraments and the
immateriality of the soul; and lastly, the inspiration of the scriptures
and public worship, for they have neither singing nor praying in their
assemblies, and regard the Bible only as an authentic history.

These free-thinking Christians readily admit that, since their first
assembling as a body, their sentiments have undergone considerable
alteration on points of primary importance, but they contend that this
is the natural consequence of free inquiry; that men who had heretofore
been the slaves of error could not but advance in the attainment of
truth after adopting a system which left thought _unrestrained and
conscience free_, and they are still ready to renounce any opinion
whenever it shall appear to them untenable. In consequence, their public
meetings, which are mostly on Sunday forenoons, resemble rather a
debating society than a Christian Church. The elder opens the meeting by
stating the subject for consideration, and, at his call, several
speakers successively address the meeting. It is not unusual to hear
among them difference of opinion, and they are all prompt to controvert
the current doctrines of the Christian world, to show their dissent from
all sects and parties, and their aversion to the clergy and to Christian
ministers of all denominations.

This society was little known till the year 1808, when they advertised
their intention of publicly inquiring into the existence of a being
called _the devil_. So singular a notice could not fail of drawing a
considerable number of persons to their assembly, especially on a
Sunday morning. The landlord of the house at which they met in the old
'Change, alarmed for his personal security, obliged them to remove, and
they engage