Ingersoll’s Doctrines and Their Consequences
COL. INGERSOLL has his "disciples," as every other prominent teacher of error has. But he will not be likely to get much comfort from their lives and examples. If he had been present at the execution of Gove Johnston, the notorious train robber and murderer in Arkansas, the other week, and had heard the miserable man's confession, it might have opened a question or two in his mind. This is what the condemned criminal is reported to have said: "I have been a fast disciple of Bob Ingersoll. His doctrines have failed as a rule of life, and they will not at all serve as a basis of hope in death. Ingersoll's doctrines have brought me here." Yet it is doubtful if a man as irreverent and reckless as Ingersoll would profit by the lesson if he had heard it. But a theory which so blunts the sensibilities of man stands self-condemned before all considerate and moral people.—Selected.