Meditation 1361
Heretics and Heresies
by: Robert G. Ingersoll
(Page 11 of 16)
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Eighth. With having doubted that God was the author of the 109th Psalm.
The portion of that psalm which carries with it the clearest and most satisfactory evidences of inspiration, and which has afforded almost unspeakable consolation to the Presbyterian church, is as follows:
Set thou a wicked man over him; and let Satan stand at his right hand.
When he shall be judged, let him be condemned; and let his prayer become sin.
Let his days be few; and let another take his office.
Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.
Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg; let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.
Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labor.
Let there be none to extend mercy unto him; neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children.
Let his posterity be cut off: and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.
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But do thou for me, O God the Lord, for Thy name's sake; because Thy mercy is good, deliver Thou me.
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I will greatly praise the Lord with my mouth.Think of a God wicked and malicious enough to inspire this prayer. Think of one infamous enough to answer it.
Had this inspired psalm been found in some temple erected for the worship of snakes, or in the possession of some cannibal king, written with blood upon the dried skins of babes, there would have been a perfect harmony between its surroundings and its sentiments.
No wonder that the author of this inspired psalm coldly received Socrates and Penelope, and reserved his sweetest smiles for Catharine the Second.