Whose only proof you give of having life,
Is better stipends got 'mid prayer and strife!
Great worlds roll on-illimitable as the wind—-
Yet each an atom in the Maker's mind,
Which sing in harmony through boundless spheres,
Beyond the reach of Time's eternal years.
What then are you? you impious, paltry mites!
That thus you dare disturb God's days and nights,
And arrogate with strife to judge each other,
Like drunken Folly, and his idiot brother!
Back to your wine! but dread our future ire,
If you again to judge mankind aspire,
And dare pick motes from out your fellow-mite,
While beams of selfishness bedim your sight! 1
And preach up precepts which you will not act,
As if with Satan you would hold compact.
Begone!-live well yourselves; for that alone
Can prove the passport to your Maker's throne;
Like Joshua of old, with one accord
Determined be in heart to serve the Lord!
Then fewer faults you'll spy-have less of strife;
For too much scolding makes a faithless wife.
And let me warn you, if your God you'd praise,
Believe He from the dust his saints can raise,-
Yes!-from the mental sea of ignorance and sin,
Can fishermen transform, to fish for men:
Without the aid of Latin or of Greek,
Eternal wisdom will from Nature speak.
Ay, and with tongues of living fire 2 will preach
The language of the soul, which all may teach;
Without your aid the Maker will be God,
For man shall worship, though his priesthood nod.
1 No doubt, as a "church waxeth rich, her doctrines, unhappily, become dim and obscure; as a light is less seen if placed in a lamp of chased gold, than beheld through a shade of glass."
"When the apostles were sitting together, there appeared unto them cloven tongues, as of fire, and they sat upon each of them and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit of God gave them utterance." John Knox, also, would not attempt to preach for years, until he felt satisfied in his own mind that he was able to do so consistently. And even Moses, God's own selected teacher, would not attempt to preach to the Israelites, fearing he could not do so efficiently. But now-a-days, the would-be apostles and teachers of truth are made by dint of Latin and Greek--not by the Spirit of God, or natural aptitude for such an important mission.
Go, and be wise! nor make His word a lie
By being camels at the needle's eye;
Nor practise vices hideous as the night,
And yet pretend you love His glorious light!
Be wise, pay cunning Ritual no respect,
For God loves neither Formula nor Sect;
Nor like the woman of Samaria be,
To think His worship with man's creeds agree;
No special place to worship God there is,
Himself a Spirit, claims the heart as his;
In Truth and Spirit only can you worship God-
The church a hill-side or a way-side road;
The Great Almighty is more pleased with that
Than formal worshipping you know not what.'
Thus saying, up on burning wings they flew,
Just as the summer sun was peering through,
And smiling sweetly o'er the bay's deep blue.
Then each apostle, as he rose above,
On Scotland cast a heavenly look of love;
But on the trembling spectres of her Kirk
A scowl they cast, which made the morning mirk.
Then, in its welcome cloud and native haze,
Each spell-bound hypocrite crawled different ways;
And when at length the ruddy morning broke,
And College clapper gave its second stroke-
And old Kate Kennedy, with her iron tongue,
Proclaimed that Night's dark mantle off was flung-
Then busy Day came bustling into life,
To cheer once more the pawky sons of Fife.
Up sprang the lark, who left his mossy bed
To chaunt the pæans of the silent dead;
While screaming terns on fitful pinions flew,
And left Tents-moor to yell those wranglers through;
Two solitary herons by the rock's green side,
Like Greed, stood watching the receding tide;
Yet even these their crests did angry rear
To see earth's proud disturbers slink away in fearAs if they felt the world was perfect made,
'Twas man made preaching oft a priestly trade.
The pied male eider sported in the bay,
The hawk skimmed proudly on the cheerful day,
And swift the laughing gull and silver mew,
With screams of rapture, cleft the sunbeams through;
The sparrows chirped upon the ivy'd wall
(Hearers complacent of the midnight brawl-
They seemed quite heedless of the scolding pair,
As if in pews they had been sleeping there);
With joy the mavis hailed the smiling morn,
And blackbirds whistled on the aged thorn;
The swallow twittered in her crumbling hole,
And starlings chattered on the broken sole;
The very insects danced their little hour,
Unawed by kirks, for all their fancied power,
And lived a happier, though a shorter life,
For too much wisdom oft engenders strife;
"For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight,
His can't be wrong whose life is in the right."
Man's vain, abortive knowledge ne'er yet made
A single mite, nor formed one living blade:
These yet may live and wave when man is gone,
And mould or lichens feed where gilding shone.
Churches shall spring up, flourish, and decay:
Empires, like moons, shall wax and wane away;
But Thou shalt live, Thou changeless, faultless God!
To guide Creation with unerring rod,
In spite of thee, thou mock creation's lord,
Who metes out charity with Damnation's sword,
While Truth is sacrificed, and Christ ignored!
As Truth-fledged Bibles through the press first flew
To strike down Satan and his phantom crew,
And hurl his personality to hell,
Which heaven-sent reason shall at last dispel :
So, "Onward!" Progress cries aloud,
"And wrap the old translation in its shroud!"
King James and all his monks have had their sway,
As Night's pale silver hails the golden Day.
No more with God the bugbear fiend shall vie,
Nor ten, in hell, of every dozen, lie;
Whate'er is good, is God, and He is peace!
The adverse principle will misery increase;
But priestcraft's Devil-he, at last, must cease-
No more to freeze the crystal fount of life,
And make of earth a hell of endless strife.
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