Interview A Reply To The Rev Mr Lansing.

Robert Green Ingersoll

Rev. Isaac J. Lansing of Meriden, Conn., recently denounced Col. Robert G. Ingersoll from the pulpit of the Meriden Methodist Church, and had the Opera House closed against him. This led a Union reporter to show Colonel Ingersoll what Mr. Lansing had said and to interrogate him with the following results.

A REPLY TO THE REV. MR. LANSING.

QUESTION: Did you favor the sending of obscene matter through the mails as alleged by the Rev. Mr. Lansing?

ANSWER: Of course not, and no honest man ever thought that I did. This charge is too malicious and silly to be answered. Mr. Lansing knows better. He has made this charge many times and he will make it again.

QUESTION: Is it a fact that there are thousands of clergymen in the country whom you would fear to meet in fair debate?

ANSWER: No; the fact is I would like to meet them all in one. The pulpit is not burdened with genius. There are a few great men engaged in preaching, but they are not orthodox. I cannot conceive that a Freethinker has anything to fear from the pulpit, except misrepresentation. Of course, there are thousand of ministers too small to discuss with -- ministers who stand for nothing in the church -- and with such clergymen I cannot afford to discuss anything. If the Presbyterians, or the Congregationalists, or the Methodists would select some man, and endorse him as their champion, I would like to meet him in debate. Such a man I will pay to discuss with me. I will give him most excellent wages, and pay all the expenses of the discussion besides. There is but one safe course for ministers -- they must assert. They must declare. They must swear to it and stick to it, but they must not try to reason.

QUESTION: You have never seen Rev. Mr. Lansing. To the people of Meriden and thereabouts he is well-known. Judging from what has been told you of his utterances and actions, what kind of a man would you take him to be?

ANSWER: I would take him to be a Christian. He talks like one, and he acts like one. If Christianity is right, Lansing is right. If salvation depends upon belief, and if unbelievers are to be eternally damned, then an Infidel has no right to speak. He should not be allowed to murder the souls of his fellow-men. Lansing does the best he knows how. He thinks that God hates an unbeliever, and he tries to act like God. Lansing knows that he must have the right to slander a man whom God is to eternally damn.

QUESTION: Mr. Lansing speaks of you as a wolf coming with fangs sharpened by three hundred dollars a night to tear the lambs of his flock. What do you say to that?

ANSWER: All I have to say is, that I often get three times that amount, and sometimes much more. I guess his lambs can take care of themselves. I am not very fond of mutton anyway. Such talk Mr. Lansing ought to be ashamed of. The idea that he is a shepherd -- that he is on guard -- is simply preposterous. He has few sheep in his congregation that know as little on the wolf question as he does. He ought to know that his sheep support him -- his sheep protect him; and without the sheep poor Lansing would be devoured by the wolves himself.

QUESTION: Shall you sue the Opera House management for breach of contract?

ANSWER: I guess not; but I may pay Lansing something for advertising my lecture. I suppose Mr. Wilcox (who controls the Opera House) did what he thought was right. I hear that he is a good man. He probably got a little frightened and began to think about the day of judgment, He could not help it, and I cannot help laughing at him.

QUESTION: Those in Meriden who most strongly oppose you are radical Republicans. Is it not a fact that you possess the confidence and friendship of some of the most respected leaders of that party?

ANSWER: I think that all the respectable ones are friends of mine. I am a Republican because I believe in the liberty of the body, and I am an Infidel because I believe in the liberty of the mind. There is no need of freeing cages. Let us free the birds. If Mr. Lansing knew me, he would be a great friend. He would probably annoy me by the frequency and length of his visits.

QUESTION: During the recent presidential campaign did any clergymen denounce you for your teachings, that you are aware of?

ANSWER: Some did, but they would not if they had been running for office on the Republican ticket.

QUESTION: What is most needed in our public men?

ANSWER: Hearts and brains.

QUESTION: Would people be any more moral solely because of a disbelief in orthodox teaching and in the Bible as an inspired book, in your opinion?

ANSWER: Yes; if a man really believes that God once upheld slavery; that he commanded soldiers to kill women and babes; that he believed in polygamy; that he persecuted for opinion's sake; that he will punish forever, and that he hates an unbeliever, the effect in my judgment will be bad. It always has been bad. This belief built the dungeons of the Inquisition. This belief made the Puritan murder the Quaker. and this belief has raised the devil with Mr. Lansing.

QUESTION: Do you believe there will ever be a millennium, and if so how will it come about?

ANSWER: It will probably start in Meriden, as I have been informed that Lansing is going to leave.

QUESTION: Is there anything else bearing upon the question at issue or that would make good reading, that I have forgotten, that you would like to say?

ANSWER: Yes. Good-bye. --

The Sunday Union, New Haven, Conn. April 10, 1881.

BEACONSFIELD, LENT AND REVIVALS.

QUESTION: What have you to say about the attack of Dr. Buckley on you, and your lecture?

ANSWER: I never heard of Dr. Buckley until after I had lectured in Brooklyn. He seems to think that it was extremely ill bred in me to deliver a lecture on the "Liberty of Man, Woman and Child, "during Lent. Lent is just as good as any other part of the year, and no part can be too good to do good. It was not a part of my object to hurt the feelings of the Episcopalians and Catholics. If they think that there is some subtle relation between hunger and heaven, or that faith depends upon, or is strengthened by famine, or that veal, during Lent, is the enemy of virtue, or that beef breeds blasphemy, while fish feeds faith -- of course, all this is nothing to me. They have a right to say that vice depends on victuals, sanctity on soup, religion on rice and chastity on cheese, but they have no right to say that a lecture on liberty is an insult to them because they are hungry. I suppose that Lent was instituted in memory of the Savior's fast. At one time it was supposed that only a divine being could live forty days without food. This supposition has been overthrown.

It has been demonstrated by Dr. Tanner to be utterly without foundation. What possible good did it do the world for Christ to go without food for forty days? Why should we follow such an example? As a rule, hungry people are cross, contrary, obstinate, peevish and unpleasant. A good dinner puts a man at peace with all the world -- makes him generous, good natured and happy. He feels like kissing his wife and children. The future looks bright. He wants to help the needy. The good in him predominates, and he wonders that any man was ever stingy or cruel. Your good cook is a civilizer, and without good food, well prepared, intellectual progress is simply impossible. Most of the orthodox creeds were born of bad cooking. Bad food produced dyspepsia, and dyspepsia produced Calvinism, and Calvinism is the cancer of Christianity. Oatmeal is responsible for the worst features of Scotch Presbyterianism. Half cooked beans account for the religion of the Puritans. Fried bacon and saleratus biscuit underlie the doctrine of State Rights. Lent is a mistake, fasting is a blunder, and bad cooking is a crime.

QUESTION: It is stated that you went to Brooklyn while Beecher and Talmage were holding revivals, and that you did so for the purpose of breaking them up. How is this?

ANSWER: I had not the slightest idea of interfering with the revivals. They amounted to nothing. They were not alive enough to be killed. Surely one lecture could not destroy two revivals. Still, I think that if all the persons engaged in the revivals had spent the same length of time in cleaning the streets, the good result would have been more apparent. The truth is, that the old way of converting people will have to be abandoned. The Americans are getting hard to scare, and a revival without the "scare" is scarcely worth holding. Such maniacs as Hammond and the "Boy Preacher" fill asylums and terrify children. After saying what he has about hell, Mr. Beecher ought to know that he is not the man to conduct a revival. A revival sermon with hell left out -- with the brimstone gone -- with the worm that never dies, dead, and the Devil absent is the broadest farce. Mr. Talmage believes in the ancient way. With him hell is a burning reality. He can hear the shrikes and groans. He is of that order of mind that rejoices in these things. If he could only convince others, he would be a great revivalist. He cannot terrify, he astonishes, He is the clown of the horrible -- one of Jehovah's jesters, I am not responsible for the revival failure in Brooklyn. I wish I were. I would have the happiness of knowing that I had been instrumental in preserving the sanity of my fellow-men.

QUESTION: How do you account for these attacks?

ANSWER: It was not so much what I said that excited the wrath of the reverend gentlemen as the fact that I had a great house. They contrasted their failure with my success. The fact is, the people are getting tired of the old ideas. They are beginning to think for themselves. Eternal punishment seems to them like eternal revenge. They see that Christ could not atone for the sins of others; that belief ought not to be rewarded and honest doubt punished forever; that good deeds are better than bad creeds, and that liberty is the rightful heritage of every soul.

QUESTION: Were you an admirer of Lord Beaconsfield?

ANSWER: In some respects. He was on our side during the war, and gave it as his opinion that the Union would be preserved. Mr. Gladstone congratulated Jefferson Davis on having founded a new nation. I shall never forget Beaconsfield for his kindness, nor Gladstone for his malice. Beaconsfield was an intellectual gymnast, a political athlete, one of the most adroit men in the world. He had the persistence of his race. In spite of the prejudices of eighteen hundred years, he rose to the highest position that can be occupied by a citizen. During his administration England again became a Continental power and played her game of European chess. I have never regarded Beaconsfield as a man controlled by principle, or by his heart. He was strictly a politician. He always acted as though he thought the clubs were looking at him. He knew all the arts belonging to his trade. He would have succeeded anywhere, if by "succeeding" is meant the attainment of position and power. But after all, such men are splendid failures. They give themselves and others a great deal of trouble -- they wear the tinsel crown of temporary success and then fade from public view. They astonish the pit, they gain the applause of the galleries, but when the curtain falls there is nothing left to benefit mankind. Beaconsfield held convictions somewhat in contempt. He had the imagination of the East united with the ambition of an Englishman. With him, to succeed was to have done right.

QUESTION: What do you think of him as an author?

ANSWER: Most of his characters are like himself -- puppets moved by the string of self-interest. The men are adroit, the women mostly heartless. They catch each other with false bait. They have great worldly wisdom. Their virtue and vice are mechanical. They have hearts like clocks -- filled with wheels and springs. The author winds them up. In his novels Disraeli allows us to enter the greenroom of his head. We see the ropes, the pulleys and the old masks. In all things, in politics and in literature, he was cold, cunning, accurate, able and successful. His books will, in a little while, follow their author to their grave. After all, the good will live longest. --

Washington Correspondent, Brooklyn Eagle, April 24, 1881.