| Show FREE SPEECH AXD CHBJSTIA3fZTr The dispatches the other day contained con-tained the following Little Rock Ark Jan SThe municipal mu-nicipal authorities of Little Rock today to-day refused Col Robert G Ingersoll permission to lecture in this city on Sunday evening Incersoll desired to deliver a nonreligious lecture en Sunday February 2 We presume that the reason why the permission to lecture was not granted gran-ted to Colonel Ingersoll was because of that gentlemans well known agnostic agnos-tic views on the subject of revealed religion The municipal authorities of Little Rock In this committed a blunder They thought perhaps they were protecting pro-tecting the Christian religion from the attacks of a bold blasphemer of It but their action will do the Christian religion more harm than any attack Colonel Ingersoll would have made upon it provided he had desired to attack itwhich does not appear In this country it is our pride and our boast that freedom of speech and of the press Is a sacred right and so devotedly attached to that idea have Americans become that any denial or It any infringement of it shocks the American sense of justice of liberty of fairness and leads them to doubt both the worthiness and the strength of that cause In whose behalf the freedom of speech Is curtailed That the Action of themunicipal authorities of Little Rock Is a curtailment of the freedom of speech admits of no doubt If It shall be argued that the citizens I of Little Rock are Christians and that it was right for the city authorities to infringe the freedom of speech in order to protect those same Christians from the Dar and humiliation that an attack upon their religion would likely produce the answer Is that the people of Little Rock like the people of all other communities have the remedy against such shocks In their own handsthey could stay away from the lecture There is nothing which compels them to listen to one who assails their cherished ideas of revelation and religion But doubtless there were others who wanted to hear the colonel and it was not right to deprive them of the privilege and above all It was not right to deny to I the colonel that freedom of speech which would be accorded to him in I every other city we believe of the American Union Can it be that the Christian religion In Little Rock Is of such fragile constitution con-stitution that it fears the attack that Colonel Ingersoll can make upon I Is it so that after nineteen centuries of existence in the midst of merciless assault and never ending debate that Christianity in a large city of one I of the foremost Christian nations must Invoko a denial of the freedom I of speech in order to protect i from the argument and invective of an outspoken out-spoken ootionent Has Christianity In that city become so Door so timid and weak that it needs such aid as comes from proscription and the muzzling muz-zling of Its ODDonents If that were the universal condition then unquestionably unques-tionably the decline of Christianity is far advanced and Its declension henceforth would be as rapid as its advancement in orimative Christian centuries was glorious And I it cannot stand free inquiry and free discussion then I ought to go down and I will and no such efforts as those resorted to by the municipal authorities of Little Rock will save it Such tactics would but proclaim Its weakness and advertise the fear that would lurk in cowards hearts that revealed religion cannot withstand the tempest of fierce debate The Christians of Little Rock do not well in denying Colonel Ingersoll the privilege of lecturing in their city Tne Christian religion has nothing to fear from the pyrotechnic assaults he makes upon It Stronger and more brilliant men than the olonel who assaulted i have failed t destroy i In the stately history of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire there lurks a solemn sneer more potent for evil against the Christian religion than all the phillipics of Ingersoll and Voltaire Vol-taire combined Gibbons great work has been read for more than a hundred hun-dred years vet Christianity still lives and i lives by the very virtue o Its truth and the sublimity of the character charac-ter of Jesus ChrIst Men hold different views of the Christian Chris-tian religion Some look upon it as being in the full blaze of an ever increasing in-creasing glory and others as being In its decline and deplore the absence of its departed splendor But even the latter must allow that i the sun of its glory has set i has left behind I In the sky some beautiful lights Its traditions of Jesus Christ his discourses dis-courses his parables the evidence of his boundless love and patience arid long suffering so that in its weakest aspect i is strong so strong in fact that all the expressed doubts of agnostics ag-nostics l the Invective of blasphemers blasphem-ers of It cannot altogether shake Christian faith We listen to the argument ar-gument of the rationalists against the possibility of miracles to the argu ments of others based on the Inaccuracies Inaccu-racies of the Christian annals to the races witticisms of the more shallow critics and even to the reckless bitterness of the common bla hemer But after all is over through the mists and doubts raised by all these skeptics combined there stands Jesus of Nazareth calm dignified patient with no anger In his face at the human weakness which led us to doubt His hand is outstretched out-stretched still and we hear that matchless voice sayinirI am the way the truth and the le I a man believe in me though he were dead yet shall he live Let agnostics and atheists have free speech all they can do all they can say will never rob humanity of that hope nor can they move that peasant teacher out of his place in the human consciousness and while he remains the foundation of things religious stand secure |
