teen hundred years ago is so low, and the sound of the clods
upon the coffin so loud, the promises are so far away, and the dead are
so near. That is the reason. And they find no consolation there. I
say honestly we do not know; we cannot say. We cannot say whether
death is a wall or a door; the beginning or end of a day; the spreading
of pinions too soar or the folding forever of wings; whether it is the
rising or the setting of sun, or an endless life that brings rapture
and love to every one--we do not know; we can not say.

There is an old fable of Orpheus and Eurydice: Eurydice had been
captured and taken to the infernal regions, and Orpheus went after her,
taking with him his harp and playing as he went; and when he came to
the infernal regions he began to play, and Sysiphus sat down upon the
stone that he had been heaving up the side of the mountain so many
years, and which continually rolled back upon him. Ixion paused upon
his wheel of fire; Tantalus ceased in his vain efforts for water; the
daughters of the Danaidae left off trying to fill their sieves with
water; Pluto smiled, and for the first time in the history of hell the
cheeks of the Furies were wet with tears; monsters relented and they
said, "Eurydice may go with you, but you must not look back." So he
again threaded the caverns, playing as he went, and as he again reached
the light he failed to hear the footsteps of Eurydice, and he looked
back and in a moment she was gone. This old fable gives to us the idea
of the perpetual effort to rescue truth from the churches of monsters.
Some time Orpheus will not look back. Some day Eurydice will reach
the blessed light, and at some time there will fade from the memory of
men the superstition of religion.

Ingersoll's Lecture on "Blasphemy"

Ladies and Gentlemen: There is an old story of a missionary trying to
convert an Indian. The Indian made a little circle in the sand and
said, "That is what the Indian knows." Then he made another circle a
little larger and said, "that is what missionary knows; but outside
there the Indian knows just as much as missionary."

I am going to talk mostly outside that circle tonight.

First, what is the origin of the crime known as blasphemy? It is the
belief in a God who is cruel, revengeful, quick tempered and
capricious; a God who punishes the innocent for the guilty; a God who
listens with delight to the shrieks of the tortured and gazes
enr