The Truth of History
Including \"Conversion of the Arch Atheist.\"

by Robert G. Ingersoll
(1887)

From The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll (Dresden Edition, 1900–1902), Volume 11.
Source: https://thegreatagnostic.com/works/the-truth-of-history/
Public domain. CC0 / Public Domain Mark 1.0.

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THOUSANDS of Christians have asked: How was it possible for Christ and
his apostles to deceive the people of Jerusalem? How came the miracles
to be believed? Who had the impudence to say that lepers had been
cleansed, and that the dead had been raised? How could such impostors
have escaped exposure?

I ask: How did Mohammed deceive the people of Mecca? How has the
Catholic Church imposed upon millions of people? Who can account for the
success of falsehood?

Millions of people are directly interested in the false. They live by
lying. To deceive is the business of their lives. Truth is a cripple;
lies have wings. It is almost impossible to overtake and kill and bury
a lie. If you do, some one will erect a monument over the grave, and the
lie is born again as an epitaph. Let me give you a case in point.

A few days ago the Matlock Register, a paper published in England,
printed the following:

Conversion of the Arch Atheist

"Mr. Isaac Loveland, of Shoreham, desires us to insert the following:—

"November 27, 1886.

"Dear Mr. Loveland.—A day or two since, I received from Mr.
Hine the exhilarating intelligence that through his lectures on the
'Identity of the British Nation with Lost Israel,' in Canada and the
United States, that Col. Bob Ingersoll, the arch Atheist, has been
converted to Christianity, and has joined the Episcopal Church. Praise
the Lord!!! 5,000 of his followers have been won for Christ through
Mr. Hine's grand mission work, the other side of the Atlantic. The
Colonel's cousin, the Rev. Mr. Ingersoll, wrote to Mr. Hine soon after
he began lecturing in America, informing him that his lectures had made
a great impression on the Colonel and other Atheists. I noted it at the
time in the Messenger. Bradlaugh will yet be converted; his brother has
been, and has joined a British Israel Identity Association. This is
progress, and shows what an energetic, determined man (like Mr. Hine),
who is earnest in his faith, can do.

"Very faithfully yours,

"H. HODSON RUGG.

"Grove-road, St. John's Wood, London."

How can we account for an article like that? Who made up this story? Who
had the impudence to publish it?

As a matter of fact, I never saw Mr. Hine, never heard of him until this
extract was received by me in the month of December. I never read a word
about the "Identity of Lost Israel with the British Nation." It is a
question in which I never had, and never expect to have, the slightest
possible interest.

Nothing can be more preposterous than that the Englishman in whose veins
can be found the blood of the Saxon, the Dane, the Norman, the Piet, the
Scot and the Celt, is the descendant of "Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." The
English language does not bear the remotest resemblance to the Hebrew,
and yet it is claimed by the Reverend Hod-son Rugg that not only myself,
but five thousand other Atheists, were converted by the Rev. Mr. Hine,
because of his theory that Englishmen and Americans are simply Jews in
disguise.

This letter, in my judgment, was published to be used by missionaries in
China, Japan, India and Africa.

If stories like this can be circulated about a living man, what may we
not expect concerning the dead who have opposed the church?

Countless falsehoods have been circulated about all the opponents of
superstition. Whoever attacks the popular falsehoods of his time will
find that a lie defends itself by telling other lies. Nothing is so
prolific, nothing can so multiply itself, nothing can lay and hatch as
many eggs, as a good, healthy, religious lie.

And nothing is more wonderful than the credulity of the believers in the
supernatural. They feel under a kind of obligation to believe everything
in favor of their religion, or against any form of what they are pleased
to call "Infidelity."

The old falsehoods about Voltaire, Paine, Hume, Julian, Diderot and
hundreds of others, grow green every spring. They are answered; they
are demonstrated to be without the slightest foundation; but they
rarely die. And when one does die there seems to be a kind of Caesarian
operation, so that in each instance although the mother dies the child
lives to undergo, if necessary, a like operation, leaving another child,
and sometimes two.

There are thousands and thousands of tongues ready to repeat what the
owners know to be false, and these lies are a part of the stock in
trade, the valuable assets, of superstition. No church can afford to
throw its property away. To admit that these stories are false now, is
to admit that the church has been busy lying for hundreds of years, and
it is also to admit that the word of the church is not and cannot be
taken as evidence of any fact.

A few years ago, I had a little controversy with the editor of the New
York Observer, the Rev. Irenaeus Prime, (who is now supposed to be
in heaven enjoying the bliss of seeing Infidels in hell), as to whether
Thomas Paine recanted his religious opinions. I offered to deposit a
thousand dollars for the benefit of a charity, if the reverend doctor
would substantiate the charge that Paine recanted. I forced the New York
Observer to admit that Paine did not recant, and compelled that paper
to say that "Thomas Paine died a blaspheming Infidel."

A few months afterward an English paper was sent to me—a religious
paper—and in that paper was a statement to the effect that the editor
of the New York Observer had claimed that Paine recanted; that I had
offered to give a thousand dollars to any charity that Mr. Prime might
select, if he would establish the fact that Paine did recant; and that
so overwhelming was the testimony brought forward by Mr. Prime, that I
admitted that Paine did recant, and paid the thousand dollars.

This is another instance of what might be called the truth of history.

I wrote to the editor of that paper, telling the exact facts, and
offering him advertising rates to publish the denial, and in addition,
stated that if he would send me a copy of his paper with the denial, I
would send him twenty-five dollars for his trouble. I received no reply,
and the lie is in all probability still on its travels, going from
Sunday school to Sunday school, from pulpit to pulpit, from hypocrite
to savage,—that is to say, from missionary to Hottentot—without the
slightest evidence of fatigue—fresh and strong, and in its cheeks the
roses and lilies of perfect health.

Some person, expecting to add another gem to his crown of glory, put
in circulation the story that one of my daughters had joined the
Presbyterian Church,—a story without the slightest foundation—and
although denied a hundred times, it is still being printed and
circulated for the edification of the faithful. Every few days I receive
some letter of inquiry as to this charge, and I have industriously
denied it for years, but up to the present time, it shows no signs of
death—not even of weakness.

Another religious gentleman put in print the charge that my son, having
been raised in the atmosphere of Infidelity, had become insane and died
in an asylum. Notwithstanding the fact that I never had a son, the story
still goes right on, and is repeated day after day without the semblance
of a blush.

Now, if all this is done while I am alive and well, and while I have all
the facilities of our century for spreading the denials, what will be
done after my lips are closed?

The mendacity of superstition is almost enough to make a man believe in
the supernatural.

And so I might go on for a hundred columns. Billions of falsehoods have
been told and there are trillions yet to come. The doctrines of Malthus
have nothing to do with this particular kind of reproduction.

"And there are also many other falsehoods which the church has told, the
which if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world
itself could not contain the books that should be written."—The Truth
Seeker, New York, February, 19,1887.
