Colonel Robert Ingersoll spoke at his brother's grave

 

 

I sometimes wonder why anyone would choose not to believe in God.  If you question whether or not disbelief is a choice, then please consider the simple fact that every child is born with the ability to look at the evidence and from a very early age will ask his parents, "Mama, where did the earth come from?" or "Mama, who made the stars and moon?"   The despair and hopelessness that accompanies disbelief is enough to drive men away from atheism rather than toward it.  Some years ago I filed the following two incidents that demonstrate my point:

Chicago(U.P.) Clarence Darrow, seventy-eight years old today and waiting to die "without fear or enthusiasm," settled himself in a rocking chair and talked of life and death.  "I no longer doubt," he said. "I know now that there is nothing after death -- nothing to look forward to in joy or in fear." "I am not the agnostic any more, I am a materialist. It took me more than fifty years to find it out. "All my life I have been seeking some definite proof of God – something I could put my finger on and say 'This is fact.' But my doubts are at rest now. I know that such fact does not exist. "When I die -- as I shall soon -- my body will decay. My mind will decay and my intellect will be gone. My soul? There is no such thing."

The great agnostic of the last century, Colonel Robert Ingersoll, spoke at his brother's grave. What an orator he was! What an intellect was his. What a great power for God this man could have been.  President Garfield, who was one of the pall bearers, said that the Colonel broke down and cried like a child in the delivery of that speech. Among other things, Ingersoll said: "Whether in mid-ocean, or amidst the breakers of the farther shore, a wreck must mark the end of each and all.  Though every hour is rich with love, and every moment is jeweled with a joy, it will at its close be a tragedy as deep and d ark as can be woven of the warp and woof of mystery and death.  Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities; we strive in vain to look beyond the heights; we cry aloud, and the only answer is our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word." 

This, dear reader, is the epitome of despair.  How much better to be able to say, "I have fought the good fight of faith," or "I know whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to guard that which I have committed unto him."  Ingersoll's words are a fair representation of the hopelessness of disbelief.  No wonder the man broke down and wept such tears of disbelief!

by Tom Wacaster