The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume IV Part 15

but by a sailor. Magellan left Seville, Spain, August 10th, 1519, sailed west and kept sailing west, and the ship reached Seville, the port it left, on Sept. 7th, 1522.

The world had been circ.u.mnavigated. The earth was known to be round.

There had been a dispute between the Scriptures and a sailor. The fact took the sailor's side.

In 1543 Copernicus published his book, "On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies."

He had some idea of the vastness of the stars--of the astronomical s.p.a.ces--of the insignificance of this world.

Toward the close of the sixteenth century, Bruno, one of the greatest men this world has produced, gave his thoughts to his fellow-men. He taught the plurality of worlds. He was a Pantheist, an Atheist, an honest man. He called the Catholic Church the "Triumphant Beast." He was imprisoned for many years, tried, convicted, and on the 16th day of February, 1600, burned in Rome by men filled with the Holy Ghost, burned on the spot where now his monument rises. Bruno, the n.o.blest, the greatest of all the martyrs. The only one who suffered death for what he believed to be the truth. The only martyr who had no heaven to gain, no h.e.l.l to shun, no G.o.d to please. He was n.o.bler than inspired men, grander than prophets, greater and purer than apostles. Above all the theologians of the world, above the makers of creeds, above the founders of religions rose this serene, unselfish and intrepid man.

Yet Christians, followers of Christ, murdered this incomparable man.

These Christians were true to their creed. They believed that faith would be rewarded with eternal joy, and doubt punished with eternal pain. They were logical. They were pious and pitiless--devout and devilish--meek and malicious--religious and revengeful--Christ-like and cruel--loving with their mouths and hating with their hearts. And yet, honest victims of ignorance and fear.

What have the wordly done?

In 1608, Lippersheim, a Hollander, so arranged lenses that objects were exaggerated.

He invented the telescope.

He gave countless worlds to our eyes, and made us citizens of the Universe.

In 1610, on the night of January 7th, Galileo demonstrated the truth of the Copernican system, and in 1632, published his work on "The System of the World."

What did the church do?

Galileo was arrested, imprisoned, forced to fall upon his knees, put his hand on the Bible, and recant. For ten years he was kept in prison--for ten years until released by the pity of death. Then the church--men filled with the Holy Ghost--denied his body burial in consecrated ground. It was feared that his dust might corrupt the bodies of those who had persecuted him.

In 1609, Kepler published his book "Motions of the Planet Mars."

He, too, knew of the attraction of gravitation and that it acted in proportion to ma.s.s and distance. Kepler announced his Three Laws. He found and mathematically expressed the relation of distance, ma.s.s, and motion. Nothing greater has been accomplished by the human mind.

Astronomy became a science and Christianity a superst.i.tion.

Then came Newton, Herscheland Laplace. The astronomy of Joshua and Elijah faded from the minds of intelligent men, and Jehovah became an ignorant tribal G.o.d.

Men began to see that the operations of Nature were not subject to interference. That eclipses were not caused by the wrath of G.o.d--that comets had nothing to do with the destruction of empires or the death of kings, that the stars wheeled in their orbits without regard to the actions of men. In the sacred East the dawn appeared.

What have the wordly done?

A few years ago a few men became wicked enough to use their senses. They began to look and listen. They began to really see and then they began to reason. They forgot heaven and h.e.l.l long enough to take some interest in this world. They began to examine soils and rocks. They noticed what had been done by rivers and seas. They found out something about the crust of the earth. They found that most of the rocks had been deposited and stratified in the water--rocks 70,000 feet in thickness. They found that the coal was once vegetable matter. They made the best calculations they could of the time required to make the coal, and concluded that it must have taken at least six or seven millions of years. They examined the chalk cliffs, found that they were composed of the microscopic sh.e.l.ls of minute organisms, that is to say, the dust of these sh.e.l.ls.

This dust settled over areas as large as Europe and in some places the chalk is a mile in depth. This must have required many millions of years.

Lyell, the highest authority on the subject, says that it must have required, to cause the changes that we know, at least two hundred million years. Think of these vast deposits caused by the slow falling of infinitesimal atoms of impalpable dust through the silent depths of ancient seas! Think of the microscopical forms of life, constructing their minute houses of lime, giving life to others, leaving their mansions beneath the waves, and so through countless generations building the foundations of continents and islands.

Go back of all life that we now know--back of all the flying lizards, the armored monsters, the hissing serpents, the winged and fanged horrors--back to the Laurentian rocks--to the eozoon, the first of living things that we have found--back of all mountains, seas and rivers--back to the first incrustation of the molten world--back of wave of fire and robe of flame--back to the time when all the substance of the earth blazed in the glowing sun with all the stars that wheel about the central fire.

Think of the days and nights that lie between!--think of the centuries, the withered leaves of time, that strew the desert of the past!

Nature does not hurry. Time cannot be wasted--cannot be lost. The future remains eternal and all the past is as though it had not been--as though it were to be. The infinite knows neither loss nor gain.

We know something of the history of the world--something of the human race; and we know that man has lived and struggled through want and war, through pestilence and famine, through ignorance and crime, through fear and hope, on the old earth for millions and millions of years.

At last we know that infallible popes, and countless priests and clergymen, who had been "called," filled with the Holy Ghost, and presidents of colleges, kings, emperors and executives of nations had mistaken the blundering guesses of ignorant savages for the wisdom of an infinite G.o.d.

At last we know that the story of creation, of the beginning of things, as told in the "sacred book," is not only untrue, but utterly absurd and idiotic. Now we know that the inspired writers did not know and that the G.o.d who inspired them did not know.

We are no longer misled by myths and legends. We rely upon facts. The world is our witness and the stars testify for us.

What have the worldly done?

They have investigated the religions of the world--have read the sacred books, the prophecies, the commandments, the rules of conduct. They have studied the symbols, the ceremonies, the prayers and sacrifices. And they have shown that all religions are substantially the same--produced by the same causes--that all rest on a misconception of the facts in nature--that all are founded on ignorance and fear, on mistake and mystery.

They have found that Christianity is like the rest--that it was not a revelation, but a natural growth--that its G.o.ds and devils, its heavens and h.e.l.ls, were borrowed--that its ceremonies and sacraments were souvenirs of other religions--that no part of it came from heaven, but that it was all made by savage man. They found that Jehovah was a tribal G.o.d and that his ancestors had lived on the banks of the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Ganges and the Nile, and these ancestors were traced back to still more savage forms.

They found that all the sacred books were filled with inspired mistake and sacred absurdity.

But, say the Christians, we have the only inspired book. We have the Old Testament and the New. Where did you get the Old Testament? From the Jews?--Yes.

Let me tell you about it.

After the Jews returned from Babylon, about 400 years before Christ, Ezra commenced making the Bible. You will find an account of this in the Bible.

We know that Genesis was written after the Captivity--because it was from the Babylonians that the Jews got the story of the creation--of Adam and Eve, of the Garden--of the serpent, and the tree of life--of the flood--and from them they learned about the Sabbath.

You find nothing about that holy day in Judges, Joshua, Samuel, Kings or Chronicles--nothing in Job, the Psalms, in Esther, Solomon's Song or Ecclesiastes. Only in books written by Ezra after the return from Babylon.

When Ezra finished the inspired book, he placed it in the temple. It was written on the skins of beasts, and, so far as we know, there was but one.

What became of this Bible?

Jerusalem was taken by t.i.tus about 70 years after Christ. The temple was destroyed and, at the request of Josephus, the Holy Bible was sent to Vespasian the Emperor, at Rome.

And this Holy Bible has never been seen or heard of since. So much for that.

Then there was a copy, or rather a translation, called the Septuagint.

How was that made?

It is said that Ptolemy Soter and his son Ptolemy Philadelphus obtained a translation of the Jewish Bible. This translation was made by seventy persons.

At that time the Jewish Bible did not contain Daniel, Ecclesiastes, but few of the Psalms and only a part of Isaiah.

What became of this translation known as the Septuagint?

It was burned in the Bruchium Library forty-seven years before Christ.

Then there was another so-called copy of part of the Bible, known as the Samaritan Roll of the Pentateuch.

But this is not considered of any value.