The Great Agnostic Read Online Free PDF Page B

sermon excerpt from a Catholic priest. Even though Chicago was a city in the process of transformation by Catholic immigration from Italy and Slavic countries and by Jewish immigration from Russia and eastern Europe, Protestant opinions were still considered the only opinions that counted. The ministers alternated between assertions that Ingersoll had had no effect at all on American religion (if this was so, one wonders why so many divines devoted their sermons to speaking ill of the dead)and anger at his successful efforts to lead misguided souls astray (especially, from the clerical perspective, the young, gullible, and poorly educated). The Reverend George A. Wallace, a Congregationalist minister, outdid the rest of the Chicago clergy with his claim that “all intelligent students of history know, Christianity and the church have been the authors and saviors of all the world’s liberties, civil and religious.” 6
    Notable for their absence from the public prints were the voices of prominent national Republican politicians whose campaigns had benefited so greatly from Ingersoll’s political oratory. All Republican candidates for the presidency, beginning with Ulysses S. Grant, had been eager for the support of the crowds who gathered—in some instances, by the thousands—to hear Ingersoll speak on their behalf, but none of those still alive (including the sitting president, William McKinley) were willing to be associated with the nation’s best-known heretic. Received opinion was also unanimous on another point: Republican presidents had been absolutely right to bar Ingersoll from any important appointive government job as a result of his agnosticism. President Rutherford B. Hayes rejected a proposal from Illinois Republicans that Ingersoll be named U.S. minister to Berlin in 1877. The
Times
commented approvingly in its obituary, “The suggestion that a dedicated and boasting unbeliever should be chosento represent a Christian country brought a storm of indignation.” Indeed, the press itself had raised a storm about Ingersoll’s irreligion when his name was being bandied about as a possible ambassador. Why, he could never use the common German expression “Mein Gott!” According to
The Washington Post,
Ingersoll was already employed in the diplomatic corps as the “sleek, jolly plenipotentiary of his Satanic Majesty to the United States of America.” 7
    There were, of course, endless tributes to Ingersoll, but most of them came from people already associated in some way with religious unorthodoxy. Some of the most powerful praise came from those on the left, like Eugene V. Debs, who had disagreed with many of Ingersoll’s political and economic opinions over the years. In the
Truth Seeker
roundup of eulogies for the Great Agnostic, Debs wrote:
    The name of Robert G. Ingersoll is written in the Pantheon of the world. More than any other man he destroyed religious superstition. Like an electric storm he purified the religious atmosphere. With rare courage and brilliant ability he applied himself to his tasks and won an immortality of gratitude and glory. He was the Shakespeare of oratory. … Ingersoll lived and died far in advance of his time. He fought nobly for the transformation of this world into a habitableplace, and long after the last echo of detraction will be silence his name will be loved and honored and his fame will shine resplendent, for his immortality is fixed and glorious. 8
    Ingersoll’s personal charm was so great (apparently, only the
New York Times
could remain immune to the appeal of a man who kept his cash in an unlocked drawer) that even newspaper writers who felt obliged to condemn his antireligious views took care to separate the man from his agnosticism. The
Chicago Tribune,
which dutifully reported the universal disapproval of Ingersoll by the city’s clergy, concentrated on his personal qualities and speaking talents in the