Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Vol. I by Robert G. Ingersoll

McBane, do the 'greater part of the teaching, while Latin and history occupied his own attention'. In 1853, 'Bob' Ingersoll taught a term of school in Metropolis, Illinois, where he let one of his students, the future Judge Angus M.

The Madison trial occurred when young Robert was nine years old, and it was the unjust and bigoted treatment his father received which made him the enemy, first of Calvinism, and later of Christianity in its other forms. Howerer, he soon removed to Wisconsin, going from there to Illinois, where he died. Elder John went before the higher church authorities and was permitted to continue his clerical labors. The evidence adduced-the trial is one of the abiding traditions of the dull little town of Madison-was of the most trivial and ridiculous character, but the committee which heard it decided that though he had done 'nothing inconsistent with his Christian character,' he was 'inconsistent with his ministerial character,' and forbade him to preach in the future. Upon this occasion he was charged with prevarication and unministerial conduct. His ministerial career was, in fact, substantially brought to a close by a church trial which occurred while he was pastor of the Congregational Church at Madison, Ohio, and at which his third wife appeared as prosecutor. They caused him to frequently change his charges, and several times made him the defendant in church trials. On the contrary the elder Ingersoll's liberal views were a source of constant trouble between him and his narrow-minded parishioners. The popular impression which credits Ingersoll's infidelity in the main to his father's severe orthodoxy and the austere and gloomy surroundings in which his boyhood was spent is wholly wrong.

His father, John Ingersoll, was a Congregationalist minister and a man of mark in his time, a deep thinker, a logical and eloquent speaker, broud minded and generously tolerant of the views of others. Though for many years the most noted of American infidels, Colonel Ingersoll was born and reared in a devoutly Christian household. The elder Ingersoll's later pastoral experiences influenced young Robert negatively, however, as The Elmira Telegram described in 1890 :

Ingersoll remained for a few months as co-pastor/associate pastor under Finney. Finney while Finney was on a tour of Europe. John Ingersoll filled the pulpit for American revivalist Charles G. His father, John Ingersoll, was an abolitionist-leaning Presbyterian preacher, whose radical views forced his family to move frequently. Robert Ingersoll was born in Dresden, New York.

Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Vol. I by Robert G. Ingersoll