John Greenleaf Whitter
This Document is on The Quaker Writings Home Page.
Just God! and these are they
Who minister at thine alter, God of
Right!
Men who their hands with prayer and
blessing lay
On Israel's Ark of light!
What! preach, and kidnap men?
Give thanks, and rob thy own
afflicted poor?
Talk of thy glorious liberty, and then
Bold hard the captive's door?
What! servants of thy own
Merciful Son, who came to seek and
save
The homeless and the outcast, fettering
down
The tasked and plundered slave!
Pilate and Herod, friends!
Chief priests and rulers, as of old,
combine!
Just God and holy! is that church,
which lends
Strength to the spoiler, thine?
Paid hypocrites, who turn
Judgment aside, and rob the Holy
Book
Of those high words of truth which
search and burn
In warning and rebuke;
Feed fat, ye locusts, feed!
And, in your tasselled pulpits, thank
the Lord
That, from the toiling bondman's
utter need,
Ye pile your own full board.
How long, O Lord! how long
Shall such a priesthood barter truth
away,
And in Thy name, for robbery and
wrong
At Thy own altars pray?
Is not Thy hand stretched forth
Visibly in the heavens, to awe and
smite?
Shall not the living God of all the
earth,
And heaven above, do right?
Woe, them, to all who grind
Their brethren of a common Father
down!
To all who plunder from the immortal
mind
Its bright and glorious crown!
Woe to the priesthood! woe
To those whose hire is with the price
of blood;
Perverting, darkening, changing, as
they go,
The searching truths of God!
Their power and their might
Shall perish; and their very names
shall be
Vile before all the people, in the light
Of a world's liberty.
Oh, speed the moment on
When Wrong shall cease, and Liberty
and Love
And Truth and Right throughout the
earth be known
As in their home above.