DR. COLLYER'S REPLY.

Dr. Collyer Relates a Little Story-A Book that cost Mr. Ingersoll the Governorship of Illinois-The Volume Philosophically

Gonsidered-Heavy Blows.

I HAVE been told a gentleman went to see Mr. Ingersoll once, when he lived in Peoria, and finding a fine copy of Voltaire in his library, said, "Pray, Sir, what did this cost you?" "I believe it cost me the governorship of the State of Illinois," was the swift and pregnant answer. 1 can not but recall the incident as he stands in the light of his lecture. He seems to be saying, "It is my turn now, and I will do what I can to square the account. I will dethrone your God to-day amid peals of laughter; blow His being down the wind on the wings of my epigrams. I have those about me who will send my words flying all over the state. I will start a crusade which will shut up your churches some day, silence your immemorial prayers, slay all the hopes that would strive after something more than this momentary gleam between the eternities, make of no account the grand deep truth that life struck sharp on death makes awful lightning,' and so dwarf our human kind that when we get man where we want him he shall never again be able to look over the low billows of his green graves, and end the fight by making my own creed good once, for all that

Man, God's last work, who seemed so fair,

Such splendid purpose in his eyes,

Who rolled the psalms in wintry skies,

Who built him fanes for fruitless prayer,

Who trusted God was love indeed,
And love, creation's final law;

Though nature red, in tooth and claw,
With raven, shrieked against his creed;
Who loved, who suffered countless ills,
Who battled for the true and just,
Is blown about the desert dust,

And sealed within the iron hills."

Now, since we first knew Mr. Ingersoll by report, there has been a time when those who can only believe in God as a rather helpless little brother, by no means able to take care of Himself, and in themselves as big brothers, who are bound to stand up for Him, might have felt there was grave danger in such a sight as we have witnessed-of a vast array of men and women, some of them it is fair to believe of a thoughtful turn, assembled to hear the last and best word which can be said why God should be dethroned, and His presence and providence numbered among the things that seemed true enough once, but pass away inevitably in the process through which we arise from "our dead selves to higher things."

Sparks Flying in all Directions-Singular Mental Phenomenc Occasioned by $25.000 a Year.

He was clothed once in a fine austerity; went on his lonely way quite content, to give grave and serious reasons for rejecting what so many of us hold dearer than our life, and was faithful to his instinct and insight, though such ovations as were ever given him—as Dr. Dyer used to say of the old abolitionists-might take the form mainly of rotten eggs. I know of more than one man, who, in those days, nourished a deep and most tender regard for him, and found something noble in the stand he made for the best a man can do and be, who has to abide so utterly alone. But Mr. Ingersoll, roystering around as the popular advocate of

atheism, at $25,000 a year, as the common report goes, is quite another sort of a man, No doubt the laborer is worthy of his hire. Those who run the thing may be trusted to see to that, and a good many of us who stand on the other side may not be much better, according to the old proverb that it is "money makes the mare go." Still, as this always turns the fine edge of our endeavor, and makes us weak for good when we make it at all a matter of barter and sale, so it must be with Mr. Ingersoll, making him weak for what I can not but believe to be evil. He is no more in such a case than the second batch of reformers in the old times, who argued lustily for a reformation, while still they grew rich on the Church. lands. No more than your Archbishop, in the Church of England, arguing on the godliness of tythes and priestly authority. So Mr. Ingersoll, in motley, trying to laughi the deepest and most sacred convictions of men down the wind under the guise of girding at the Pentateuch (for we must thank him, I say again, for the frankness with which he tells us this is his ultimate aim), is a very different man to the quiet, manful fellow we used to hear of in Peoria long ago, who won such regard from those who could at all understand him. The man in the ring, whose sole business it is to make you laugh, makes no converts even to rough riding. And so there is ground for neither hope nor fear, as we stand on that side or this, about the advance of atheism, so long as this remains as the best method of its choicest champions. It may make headway with such men as Voltaire had to handle, and in such times; but this serious and deep-hearted race of ours never did take to this kind of thing, and never will. It is only as the crackling of the thorns under a pot.

Nor can this bitter and relentless spirit toward those who differ help the advocates of atheism any more than it does