t said it, said
it because it was the best he could do under the circumstances. While
the church said, "love your enemies," in her sacred vestments gleamed
the daggers of assassination. With her cunning hand, she wore the
purple for hypocrisy, and placed the crown upon the brow of crime.

For more than one thousand years larceny held the scales of justice,
and hypocrisy wore the mitre, and the tiara of Christ was in fact God.
He knew of the future. He knew what crimes and horrors would be
committed in His name. He knew the fires of persecution would climb
around the limbs of countless martyrs; that brave men and women would
languish in dungeons and darkness; that the church would use
instruments of torture; that in His name His followers would trade in
human flesh; that cradles would be robbed and women's breasts unbabed
for gold, and yet He died with voiceless lips. If Christ was God, why
did He not tell His disciples, and through them, the world, "Man shall
not persecute his fellow-man?" Why didn't He say, "I am God?" Why
didn't He explain the doctrine of the Trinity? Why didn't He tell what
manner of baptism was pleasing to Him? Why didn't He say the old
testament is true? Why didn't He write His testament himself? Why did
He leave His words to accident, to ignorance, to malice, and to chance?
Why didn't He say something positive, definite, satisfactory, about
another world? Why did He not turn the tear-stained hope of
immortality to the glad knowledge of another life? Why did he go
dumbly to His death, leaving the world to misery and to doubt? Because
He was a man.

[Colonel Ingersoll read several extracts from the bible, which he said
originated with Zoroaster, Buddha, Cicero, Epictetus, Pythagoras and
other ancient writers, and he read extracts from various pagan writers,
which he claimed compared favorably with the best things in the bible.
He continued:]

No God has a right to create a man who is to be eternally damned.
Infinite wisdom has no right to make a failure, and a man who is to be
eternally damned is not a conspicuous success. Infinite Wisdom has no
right to make an instrument that will not finally pay a dividend. No
God has a right to add to the agony of this universe, and yet around
the angels of immortality Christianity has coiled this serpent of
eternal pain. Upon love's breast the church has placed that asp, and
yet people talk to me about the consolations of religion.

A few da