At the county court house, where he spoke on “The Jewish God” for the Free Thought Association, Browne said that if the Bible were fully understood and read in the light of the times in which it was written, there would be no need for further “infidel meetings.” This inspired Wise to quip that such free thinking probably pleased the speaker’s free-thinking listeners. Despite lingering reservations about biblical criticism, Wise also praised the speech for having “sustained the Bible and its connection with science clearly shown and in perfect accord.”7
The reference to infidel meetings applied to the hugely popular lectures of another Peoria resident, the brilliant lawyer, teacher, preacher and war hero, Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll. Known as the Great Agnostic because of his strong opposition to religion, Ingersoll’s popularity increasingly threatened religious leaders. With Darwinism looming as a thunder cloud over the church, Protestants felt especially vulnerable to agnosticism. Church leaders organized tent revivals in an effort to reinvigorate the faith, but Ingersoll’s rhetoric was highly entertaining and soon exceeded Darwinism as a perceived threat to Christianity. The preacher cleverly manipulated facts to support his case against God, communicating directly and charmingly to his eager listeners. The power of his words and his personality exemplified the religious community’s worst fears.8
In January 1874, the Peoria Democrat announced that “Rev. Dr. Browne, of the Hebrew Church” successfully challenged Ingersoll. When after his oration the Great Agnostic invited comments from the audience, Browne rose to his feet and refuted Ingersoll’s “unjust attacks...upon the Bible and religion.” According to one witness, the young rabbi “handled the theories of the speaker without gloves” for twenty minutes, using “a keen-edged dissecting knife with the skill of an old master.” Thereafter newspapers referred to Browne as “The Man Who Could Challenge Ingersoll.”9
Debates between Ingersoll and such personages as Jeremiah Black, Reverend Henry Field and British Prime Minister William Gladstone made news for over two decades. During these years public controversy grew more heated, and likewise spurred the demand for Browne to refute the agnostic. In 1881, Bishop John P. Newman of New York recommended Browne as “the only man who can answer Ingersoll.” Ten years later, a reporter in Lincoln, Nebraska, wrote, “After hearing Dr. Browne, it could be easily understood why the bold and eloquent Ingersoll is afraid to meet him.... Dr. Browne, like Colonel Ingersoll, has full sway over his audience, but the rabbi holds his people spellbound by the earnestness of his reasoning, addressing himself to the souls of his hearers, and binding them to his own deep religious convictions.”10
Although Browne continued to denounce Ingersoll, it is uncertain if they ever confronted each other in person after their initial encounter in Peoria. Had Browne devoted himself to preaching the compatibility of science and religion with the same intensity as Ingersoll preached against it, he might have hastened the day when the world could accept both. He might even have averted the Scopes “Monkey” Trial or the current twenty-first century brush with Creationism.
Browne had other interests though, and as a congregational rabbi, other responsibilities. In 1873, he represented Peoria at the founding conference of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Wise’s first landmark achievement in his mammoth effort to organize American Judaism. Besides serving on the committee for permanent organization, Browne proposed reforms that addressed such ongoing issues as the still competing prayer books and problems caused by self-proclaimed rabbis who had neither training for the position nor compensating intellectual achievements. He wanted the UAHC to exercise jurisdiction over its congregations and their rabbis, appoint a council to adjudicate problems arising between them, and form a committee (from which he excluded himself) to examine the credentials of men who claimed to be rabbis, licensing those who were qualified and exposing the fraud of those who were not.11
Both motions were ruled out of order. Lay leaders remained wary of any suggestion that implied imposition of authority, and Wise, having witnessed Isaac Leeser’s failed attempts to form a union, was not disposed to entertain any proposal that threatened divisiveness. He understood the delicate balance needed to keep all parties at the table, and knew that in order to achieve his goal of a rabbinical seminary, he must gather under his banner all of the dissident factions. Eventually— when the timing was right—he embraced Browne’s issues as his own.12
Although social anti-Semitism had not yet highlighted an obvious need for rabbis to be ambassadors to the gentiles, Peoria’s Jews increasingly appreciated their rabbi’s spectacular success in that role. They reelected him unanimously in 1874, and again sent him to the UAHC conference. Whereas business at the first conference had centered on organization, delegates at the second one concentrated on resolutions concerning ecumenism and patriotism, religious education, obtaining English Bibles, circuit preaching (apparently needed due to the scarcity of qualified rabbis fluent in English), the sharing of rabbis for communities too small to support one full time, properly honoring major donors, and organization of the rabbinical seminary. No rabbis were listed as members of reporting committees. Browne again pressed for regulations to improve the treatment of qualified rabbis and weed out the unqualified, still without success.13
Later that year, Browne became inadvertently involved in the personal life of his mentor. The Wise family had not heard from son Leo or known his whereabouts for four years, at which time he had absconded with funds entrusted to his father for the forthcoming Hebrew Union College. Long considered a “wild boy,” Leo had run away from home at least once before, supposedly to join the Mexican army. Browne had been like an older brother to Leo while living in Cincinnati, sometimes interceding for him with his father. Fully realizing that the boy might resent him for doing so, Browne nonetheless occasionally tried to “put him straight” with brotherly counsel.14
On November 5, 1874, Leo sent Browne a note indicating that he was in Peoria and needed to see him. Browne welcomed him and listened to his confession. Leo admitted having spent all of the stolen money, then signing onto an English ship bound for Africa, and frequently landing in the brig. Despairing that his life was hopeless, he told Browne, “If they give me an unkind word at home, I shall leave at once and forever.”15
Browne tried to console Leo, assured him of a home if he ever needed one, and then hurried him off to Cincinnati where his mother lay dying. At her funeral a month later, Leo told Browne that he felt he had killed her.16
Theresa Wise had been like a mother to Browne, and her death was as much a blow to him as to her own children. Wise understood his grief and acknowledged it by including him in the family circle for the mourning rituals. As they observed Theresa’s casket being taken from her home to the hearse and on to Wise’s Temple B’nai Jeshurun for the funeral, it was Browne who read from Psalms and led the recitation of kaddish, the traditional mourner’s prayer. At the service itself Browne co-officiated with Wise’s distinguished Cincinnati colleague and dearest friend, Rabbi Max Lilienthal.17
That sorrowful event marked the end of an era for Browne as well as for the Wises. The patriarch soon remarried, sired more children, and changed forever the ambience at Floral House on College Hill. Its new mistress, Selma Bondi Wise, busy with her own growing family, had neither time nor interest in cultivating her husband’s former student.
Leo vowed to repent and promised Browne to become “a different man”in the future. Within a year he again appealed for help, this time in a frantic plea for medication with which to abort a friend’s pregnancy. Browne balked at that one. Ethics, law and morality overrode his sense of brotherhood. Leo never forgave him for refusing. Soon thereafter Leo became his father’s surrogate as editor of the American Israelite, an ongoing position that enabled him to exact revenge upon those who offended him. Browne was not alone in receiving that revenge as years went by.18
Soon after Theresa Wise’s death, Browne received a terrifying prognosis from Dr. Joseph Aub, the famous Cincinnati ophthalmologist who had been treating him