AN INFIDEL'S PRAYER.

Freethought Review, Volume I, Issue 12, 1 September 1884, Page 8

AN INFIDEL'S PRAYER.

A paper called c The Truth' has concocted the following sensational story : —"The following incident has just been related by a minister, whose veracity will not be questioned by any one who knows him. It occurred under his personal observation, and hence it is not a story manufactured to illustrate a point. He has no objection to the use of his name, nor would he hesitate to give the name of the person who was most concerned. He is ready also to furnish the precise date and locality of an event in the history of a young man, that speaks in thunder tones to those who deliberately make light of God and of his Work. This young man, just entering upon the practice of medicine, had become a scoffing infidel through the reading of Ingersoll's wretched books, and other vile productions of hell. He seized every opportunity to pour forth a tide of shocking blasphemy against Christ, and held up the Bible among his companions to coarse and obscene ridicule. At length he went so far in his desperate wickedness that he uttered a wilful lie, and perpetrated a monstrous fraud, in order to express his contempt for Christianity. He pretended to be converted, and asked permission at a meeting of the Young Men's Christian Association to confess the Lord Jesus publicly by leading in prayer. Of course his request was gladly granted, but meanwhile he had prepared a prayer addressed to the unknown God. It was filled with horrible irreverence and thoughtfully-planned insult of the Saviour. Spreading the manuscript before him on a seat, he kneeled down, and commenced to read his ribaldry, when his voice was suddenly hushed, and his body was heard to fall upon the floor. The young men who were present hastened to him, but found that he was dead, and in unspeakable awe they carried forth the corpse, the ghastly pallor of the face and stony stare of the eyes haunting them, as the}' bore all that was left of the scoffer to his home."

[This silly production is of course going the rounds of the press, and finding believers, just as such stories of remarkable cures performed by swallowing a quack medicine find people ready to accept them. The Minister, though quite ready with Paul to fabricate a lie for the Glory of God, took care to conceal his name. That was prudent we cannot press him for the name of the student, of the Young Men's Christian Association, or of the time and place. He was wiser in his day and generation than the Rev. Mr. Garlick. For though he has " no objection," and is " quite redely " &c., we do not know where to find him. We presume there was an inquest, and that the jury returned a verdict of ' died by the visitation of God.' Why therefore was not the official account given 1 And supposing the story true, the cruelty of God in inflicting death for an act of larrikinism ought to make a humanitarian Christian ashamed of his deity. Human justice would have probably inflicted social ostracism for a year and a day. These Christians will persist in turning their God into a Devil.]