"Let Them Sleep"*



General Lew Wallace

I just read a terrific piece entitled "The Passion of Lew Wallace," By John Swansburg, in Slate. Lew Wallace, author of one of the best selling American novels of all time, Ben Hur, was no mere writer, though it was Ben Hur that earned him his fortune. He was a heroic, yet unfairly disgraced, Civil War general, diplomat, and a Governor of the New Mexico territory, among other occupations.

 

The genesis of Ben Hur, a novel that, according to Swansburg, had no small influence in healing the nation after the Civil War, is an interesting one. It began with an overnight conversation between Wallace and Robert Ingersol, the Christopher Hitchens of the 19th century. Ingersol, like Wallace (and another non-believer and great American man of letters, Ambrose Bierce) fought at bloody Shiloh. He came to be known as "The Great Agnostic." I knew of him because my grandfather's middle name was Ingersol. His father was one of the many that Robert Ingersol influenced in his lifetime, so he inserted Ingersol's name between between Otto and Patterson. I read my grandfather's copy of Great speeches of Col. R. G. Ingersoll Complete. Ingersol was a speaker in great demand and, like Hitchens, a hit on the lecture circuit, speaking and debating on God's existence and the authority of the Bible in front of huge and often paying crowds. He was a great orator and a good and clever writer. When I read Hitchens' God is Not Great, I couldn't miss Ingersol's direct influence.

Col. Robert Ingersol

Back to Ben Hur. In 1876 Ingersol and Wallace were on a train heading home from the Republican National Convention in Cincinnati, where Ingersol had just delivered the nominating speech for James Blaine that Wallace called " . .  . one of the greatest speeches of our history and of all time." Ingersol invited Wallace join him for a conversation, one that ended up lasting for hours, about the existence of God. In Wallace's own words:

 

Ingersoll thereupon began to speak. He went over the whole question of the Bible, of the Immortality of the soul, of the divinity of God and of heaven and hell. He vomited forth Ideas and arguments, like an intellectual volcano, overwhelming my soul with them. He kept this up all the way to Indianapolis, and the result was that, when I left the train there, I walked the streets for an hour to quiet myself before going to bed. Prior to that I had paid almost no attention to the Bible or religion. My life had been full and I had overlooked matters of the soul. I then decided that these were the great questions for man to study, and also that every man must investigate them for himself. I began at once to read the Bible, devoting my time chiefly to the New Testament and the life and sayings of Christ . . . The result was that I came to believe In the Bible. I gave up all doubt of the existence of a God, and that fact is as firmly settled in my mind as the fact of my own existence. I came also to believe in Christ as the best embodiment of the Divine Spirit in man and to accept him as my model. This study caused me to remodel my plan of "Ben Hur. (The Sunday Oregonian Portland, November 6, 1905)

 

Ironically, in this way, The Great Agnostic helped inspire the novel that had more influence on the spiritual lives of 19th century Americans (and many since) than any other. Justly or unjustly, reason is no match for faith. Read Ingersol (or Thomas Paine, or Hitchens). You will find his case against faith and the Bible convincing, but if you are already a believer, his arguments will probably leave you unaffected. His arguments appeal to and entertain your head, but they may well fail to threaten your heart. One is affected in the heart by the great stories of faith, love and sacrifice. As Pascal said, "Love has reasons which reason cannot understand." Science and reason are responsible for improving the lot of mankind more than anything else. But faith, in its many forms, gives us reason to go on, a motive to improve things, to see another day. Ingersol and Wallace represent two more reasons why I call myself believing agnostic.

 

*Those Who Don't Feel This Love - Rumi

Those who don't feel this love
pulling them like a river
those who don't drink dawn
like a cup of spring water
or take sunset like supper
those who don't want to change
let them sleep...


This Love is beyond the study of theology
that old trickery and hypocrisy
If you want to improve your mind that way
sleep on. I've given up on my brain
I've torn the cloth to shreds
and thrown it away.
 
If you're not completely naked
wrap your beautiful robe of words around you
and sleep.
~Jellaludin Rumi