putterings 493 < 494 > 495 index
puttering over the punctuation marks; I prepared a discourse
It has corrected more errors, and better inculcated the ideal of liberty than any other known agent, and yet there are men who deride this Book, and scoff at its teachings! Men who prate about reason, and are ignorant of the term reason. Some people are ever challenging all things but themselves. Suppose I challenge such an one, asking “Who are you?” You reply, “I am a thinking animal.” How do you know you think? Such as these stand puttering over the punctuation marks of the Old Book...
I prepared a discourse on a line that would affect those not accustomed to logical processes...
It was in this quibbling that infidelity thrived. The great principles of the Bible were overlooked in these unseemly wrangles over insignificant things
— from what I believe to be a passage regarding the poisonous “quibblings... calculated to do harm” of Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899), Free Thought proponent known as “the Great Agnostic,” in
Peeps into Life : Autobiography of Rev. John Mathews, D. D., A minister of the gospel for sixty years. Published by Request of The Tennessee Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church South (1904) : 291, 290
NYPL copy/scan (via google books) : link
same (via hathitrust) : link
September 6, 1907
Rev. JOHN MATHEWS, D.D., died St. Louis, MO, Sept. 1, 1907; born Philadelphia, Pa., June 13, 1826; of Scots-Irish descent; licensed to preach in Methodist Church, March 1845, and joined the Tennessee Methodist Conference in 1846; after long service he retired in 1902; wrote an autobiography, “Peep Into Life.”
from Genealogical Abstracts from Reported Deaths / The Nashville Christian Advocate
1905-1907 : link
index : link
There are a few references to slavery in the volume — “The subject of slavery was agitating the nation” (p35); “The country was convulsed over the slavery question” (p 59); or (in a different sense) “It is a strange thing that men and women can be so complacent about the slavery of sin” (p 253; rather than the sin of slavery!). The Church contented itself to bring Jesus to the slaves, but not the slaves out of captivity.
a search for “slave” in the same volume is instructive.
—
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899)
wikipedia : link
aside — interesting figure, as are his wife Eva Parker Ingersoll (1841-1923) and their two daughters