requires a very different course. All the evidence must be
brought into the court and presented in such a manner as to be
understood, just as it was given, otherwise the court is not qualified
to decide righteously in the case. That all such men as Col. Ingersoll
have failed to thus investigate the Bible is evident from the fact that
they, to be like him, must be infidels in all their history. It is
published to the world that the Colonel was born an infidel. He has been
hacking away at religion and the Bible ever since he was a small boy. So
his infidelity is not the result of an intelligent investigation of
either science or religion. I will not undertake to say what the
Colonel's trouble is, but if he was born an infidel it is possible,
according to our law, that he will die an unbeliever.

Many infidels, governed by a spirit of fanaticism, undoubtedly, have
labored with as much earnestness as if the world's salvation depended
upon their efforts, without the least hope of bettering its condition,
for the false philosophy of materialism which they advocate gives to a
man nothing to live for except his own animal nature. This philosophy
says all is well as long as you dodge the sharp corners of the laws of
your country. If the materialist can avoid paying fines, along with all
other penalties of the laws of his country, what need he care for one
course of life in preference to another? Do you say he has a conscience?
Well, it may be that it is not seared so that he is past feeling. Very
few men, I know, ever reach such a depraved condition. And this is
doubtless the greatest reason why all infidels, as a general rule, get
into mental distress during great bodily afflictions. Many of them are
converted by disease of the body, for two reasons: first, they were
unbelievers at will, just because it suited their desires, and, second,
because they are in possession of a religious nature or conscience. But
men who are converted by disease of the body are liable to go back to
the old wallow as soon as prosperity and health crown them again.

Many men are driven to irreligion through its abuses. I have often
thought it a misfortune that we Americans are under the necessity of
meeting the infidel literature of the old world, for the simple reason
that it is evolved out of the circumstances peculiar to state churches.
In America our religion is heroic; that is, it rests upon the merits of
its own evidence, and is supported by the