Is Immortality Desirable?

IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE - 1896 - - THE INGERSOLL LECTURESHIP - Extract fmm the will of Miss Caroline Hnskell Ingersoll, who died in Keene, County of Cheshire, New Hampshire, Jan. 26,2893. First. In carrying out the wishes of my late beloved father, George Goldthwait Ingersoll, as declared by him in his last will and testament, I give and bequeath to Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., where my late father was graduated, and which he always held in love and honor, the sum of Five thousand dollars 5,000 as a fund for the establishment of a Lectureship on a plan somewhat similar to that of the Dudleian lecture, that is - one lecture to be delivered each year, on any convenient day between the last day of May and the first day of December, on this subject, the Immortality of Man, said lecture not to form a part of the usual college course, nor to be delivered by any Professor or Tutor as part of his usual routine of instruction, though any such Professor or Tutor may be appointed to such service. The choice of said lecturer is not to be limited to any one religious denomination, nor to any one profession, but may be that of either clergyman or layman, the appointment to take place at least six months before the delivery of said lecture. The above sum to be safely invested and three fourths of the annual interest thereof to be paid to the lecturer for his services and the remaining fourth to be expended in the publishment and gratuitous distribution of the lecture, a copy of which is always to be furnished by the lecturer for such purpose. The same lecture to be named and known as the Ingersoll lecture on the Immortality of Man. IT is with a certain sense of temerity that I stand beforeyou tonight, a sense inspired not only by the place and the audience, but by the subject on which I am to speak. l am succeeding in a tarnous university many distinguished men and for that my only apology is the invitation with which I was honored. But also, I am to speak on the Immortality of Man and in defence of that audacity what can I say Surely, it may be thought, a man must be very bold or very shameless who is prepared to discourse on such a theme. For either, it would seem, he must profess to know what the wisest have admitted to be beyond their ken or he must be a charlatan, ready to talk about matters of which he knows nothing...