INFIDELITY V. CHRISTIANITY.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3951, 27 August 1881, Page 4

INFIDELITY V. CHRISTIANITY.

Col. Ingersoll, the infidel by profession, seems to be the only public person who can make,money or draw crowds in this country as an assailant of Christianity. It is doubtful if he could do either as a steady business in one place, or even as a steady business throughout the country at large. He breaks out into denunciation and diatribe, at intervals of uneven length, in great cities, whose populations are likely to furnish a sufficient number of curious, reckless, and ribald people to prpyide him an audience, at the price of an admittance - fee. . . Judged by comparison with the efforts of any stated preacher of Christianity, Col. Ingersoll's method's would scarcely stand examination. If Col. Ingersoll would settle as a minister to a chuch of infidelity, serve a long term'of-years, get up a number of addresses for each week, and present himself in the personal and social aspect of helper and adviser to a picked lot of families, in all the moral and home relations of life, his success or failure would be a matter to measure against the experience of a clergyman. It nped not be queried what the result would be. Infidelity, has no organising power at all. It has no capability of uniting men and women for any work of help or culture whatever. There* is no moral or social movement with which it can articulate. The moment it undertook to do so, it would fall to pieces. It can assail, decry, distract, divide, destroy, and break down. It can do nothing at building; it cannot even consider coherence as a quality, for of coherence a common belief of something is a necessity, and a common disbelief only disperses men into units; it has no property to combine them into a body. We do not iv this connection propose tv

examine the evidences of Christianity or to vindicate it all. It suffices to show that in the rery nature of things, it has no reason to fear disturbance from infidelity. The latter cannot supply what men will not, in the mass, do without —a creed, a purpose, and areason for combining them into union of effort on behalf of some common faith and hope. " Nothing never did demolish something." never did, and never can, demolish Christianity.—lN. Y. Argns. '