gersoll began the delivery of his lecture
called _The Great Infidels_, the ministers of the country have
made him the subject of special attack. One week ago last Sunday
the majority of the leading ministers in New York made replies to
Ingersoll's latest lecture. What he has to say to these replies
will be found in a report of an interview with Colonel Ingersoll.

No man is harder to pin down for a long talk than the Colonel. He is
so beset with visitors and eager office seekers anxious for help,
that he can hardly find five minutes unoccupied during an entire day.
Through the shelter of a private room and the guardianship of a stout
colored servant, the Colonel was able to escape the crowd of seekers
after his personal charity long enough to give some time to answer
some of the ministerial arguments advanced against him in New York.]

_Question_. Have you seen the attacks made upon you by certain
ministers of New York, published in the _Herald_ last Sunday?

_Answer_. Yes, I read, or heard read, what was in Monday's _Herald_.
I do not know that you could hardly call them attacks. They are
substantially a repetition of what the pulpit has been saying for
a great many hundred years, and what the pulpit will say just so
long as men are paid for suppressing truth and for defending
superstition. One of these gentlemen tells the lambs of his flock
that three thousand men and a few women--probably with quite an
emphasis on the word "Few"--gave one dollar each to hear their
Maker cursed and their Savior ridiculed. Probably nothing is so
hard for the average preacher to bear as the fact that people are
not only willing to hear the other side, but absolutely anxious to
pay for it. The dollar that these people paid hurt their feelings
vastly more than what was said after they were in. Of course, it
is a frightful commentary on the average intellect of the pulpit
that a minister cannot get so large an audience when he preaches
for nothing, as an Infidel can draw at a dollar a head. If I
depended upon a contribution box, or upon passing a saucer that
would come back to the stage enriched with a few five cent pieces,
eight or ten dimes, and a lonesome quarter, these gentlemen would,
in all probability, imagine Infidelity was not to be feared.

The churches were all open on that Sunday, and all could go who
desired. Yet they were not full, and the pews were nearly as empty
of people as the pulpit of ideas. The truth